Freeway ends sign
Freeway conditions end here, so expect a lower limit, intersections and traffic that can stop.
- The group at a distance
- Rectangular, often wide. Green for routes, blue for services.
- Does this group carry the law
- Mostly informational, but the road it announces carries rules.
- In the sign deck
- 3 questions ask about this sign
What to do when you see it
In the order you do it, from the moment the sign comes into view.
- Start slowing before the sign, because the limit beyond it will be lower.
- Expect intersections, traffic lights, pedestrians and parked cars, none of which were there a minute ago.
- Increase your scanning, since freeway driving lets your eyes settle further ahead than a suburban road allows.
- Watch your speed carefully for the next few minutes, because coming off a long high speed run makes 60 km/h feel like walking pace.
Where you see it
Where a motorway ends at an arterial road, at the edge of a built up area, and at the end of a bypass around a town.
Across the states and territories
Used nationally, with local naming differences between freeway, motorway and expressway. The transition is longer and better signed on the newer urban motorways than at the end of an older rural bypass, so do not rely on the sign alone to tell you the road has changed character.
Tell it apart from these
Both signs at the same size, next to each other, with the one line that separates them. These are the pairs people mix up under time pressure.
- Freeway endsthis pageFreeway begins
The two are the bookends of the same length of road, and reading the wrong one leaves you accelerating where you should be slowing.
Freeway begins: Freeway rules start here, so no pedestrians, bicycles or learner restrictions that bar the freeway, and no stopping except in an emergency.
- Freeway endsthis pageEnd of speed limit
The end of a freeway is not an end of speed limit sign. The number falls rather than being lifted.
End of speed limit: The lower limit finishes here and the normal limit for that road applies from this point.
How the knowledge tests use it
Speed adaptation is the tested idea: after a long fast run, your sense of speed is unreliable and you have to read the speedometer.
A real question from the sign deckWhat does this sign mean?
Past this sign you are back on an ordinary road, with intersections, traffic lights, driveways, people on foot and usually a lower limit.
State and territory driver handbooks, freeway and motorway driving
Try it in a question
The sign tests draw the artwork above the question and ask what it means, which is closer to the way you meet a sign on the road than reading a page about it. They are original questions written for this site rather than an agency's published bank.
More guide and service signs
Green for routes and directions, blue for services.