What does the sign under the sign mean?

Explanation

The length of the section of road with dangerous bends.

The red triangular sign above warns of "successive dangerous bends", and the supplementary plate beneath it shows the figure 100 m between two upward arrows. Those two arrows are decisive: when the figure is enclosed between arrows, that figure is the length of the hazardous section itself, meaning that from the sign onwards the road remains winding for 100 metres.

That visual cue is the boundary between two families of supplementary plate that are constantly confused in the exam. If the plate carries only a figure with no arrows, that figure is your distance to the start of the hazard; but if the figure appears between arrows, the subject is the length of the zone. Before choosing an option, look at the arrows first, not the number.

The safety reason for this sign is simple: the driver must know how far he has to stay cautious. In successive bends, forward visibility is limited, tyre grip is reduced in the curve, and overtaking is effectively blind. If the driver assumes the danger is only the first bend, he accelerates immediately after leaving the first curve and finds himself entering the second with excess speed; that is the scenario that ends in leaving the road and colliding with an oncoming vehicle. The figure on the sign is written precisely to close off that crash.

• If the figure were written without arrows this reading would be correct, but the arrows on either side mean a zone, not a distance to the first bend. This is the commonest trap of this very question. • The distance between two bends is not the subject of any supplementary plate at all; a supplementary plate states either the distance to the start of the hazard or the length of the whole hazardous section.

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