Highway shield

Highway shields are used by travellers, commuters, and all levels of government for identifying, navigating, and organising routes within a given jurisdiction.

In Victoria Freeway shields were used (white-on-green with 'F' prefix) until the late 1980s, while during the 1990s Queensland and New South Wales implemented a hexagonal blue-on-white Metroad system of urban arterial routes.

Federal and state highways shields are standardized in Brazil by the National Transit Department (DENATRAN), but implementation is not always consistent nor even existent.

Shields for core highways in Alberta use black route number on a white squared-off bullet, while shields for local highways (500-986) use black route number on a white oval.

On the other hand, instead of an inverted trapezoid, the single-tier city of Toronto uses a roundel for its municipally-maintained freeways, the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway.

The design is two-tone gold-on-green, with the road name in white on the green outer ring, and either the cardinal direction (for reassurance markers) or an arrow (for guidance to the freeway) in black on the gold inner disc.

The national highways of Japan use a triangular blue shield with a white route number.

The expressways use a rectangular green shield with a white letter and number combination with the name of the route written in Japanese and English.

The Shuto Expressway system also uses this sign but with the route name written in kanji-characters above the number.

According to the Manual on Traffic Control Devices Standard Traffic Signs archived by Malaysian Public Works Department, a standard Malaysian highway shield consists of a yellow hexagon shield with black border line which resembles the Public Works Department's logo itself.

The highway shield standard is used for all expressways, federal and state roads in Malaysia, which can be distinguished through the numbering scheme used (please refer to the Road signs in Malaysia article for details).New Zealand shields are similar to the bullet-shaped markers used in Hong Kong, but are red rather than yellow.

Maryland uses the default sporadically for locally maintained sections of state-numbered highways, most often in Baltimore, but otherwise uses a different design.

State outlines are used for primary numbered routes in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, new signs in North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma, and for secondary numbered routes in Texas.

Other options include basic geometric shapes besides a circle (like squares in Illinois and Indiana, and diamonds in Michigan and North Carolina), or a design representing the state (like Pennsylvania's keystone design, Utah's beehive, Kansas' sunflower, and New Hampshire's Old Man of the Mountain).

Wisconsin's symbol is a nod to its former triangular shields, while utilizing a second rectangular outline to better fit a number at full-height.

Many countries worldwide, such as the United Kingdom and France, do not use shields, instead relying on text representations of highway numbers.

The Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals specifies that "road identification signs" consist of the route number framed in a rectangle, a shield, or the relevant state's route classification symbol (if one exists).

The shields for Interstate highways (left) and U.S. routes (right) can be seen on this set of reassurance markers in Southwest Virginia indicating two sets of wrong-way concurrencies
The advance sign for the junction with the highway 4 ( E8 / E75 ) on the highway 20 in Oulu, Finland , looking east.
Autobahn Number
Federal Road Number
The default state route marker in the United States—now used by only five states for their primary routes.