Reassurance marker

A reassurance marker or confirming marker is a type of traffic sign that confirms the identity of the route being traveled on. It does not provide information found on other types of road signs, such as distances traveled, distances to other locations or upcoming intersections, as is done by highway location markers.

It is a

numbered highway

.

North America

In the United States and Canada, reassurance markers (also called reassurance shields or confirming shields) usually take the form of a

gantry

.

In the United States, reassurance shields are defined in Section 2D.31 of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD).^[1] The MUTCD recommends that reassurance assemblies be placed:

25–200 feet (8–61 m) after intersections of numbered highways
Between intersections in urban areas as needed
After leaving the limits of any incorporated city or town
Periodically in other places for reassurance purposes

The MUTCD requires a cardinal directional sign to be posted with the route shield to further reassure travelers that they are traveling the correct direction on their route. However, this standard is not always followed, especially in urban areas. One example of this is found in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, where directional signs for Interstate 64 are not posted between the road's eastern terminus in Chesapeake and Interstate 264 in Norfolk, because the road travels in the opposite compass direction from its official designation (although the route in the Norfolk-to-Chesapeake direction is a continuation of I-64 east, it travels westward at that point).

Europe

lamp post on Leeson Street, Dublin, on what was formerly the N11 (now the R138

)

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).^[2] The extent to which such signs are used varies between countries.

In the

motorways and national roads

, route markers are placed midway between two route confirmatory signs if they are more than six kilometres apart.