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Beginner
Beginner's Guide to Road Bollards
A practical first pass at using roadside bollards as country clues.
BollardsRoadsRoadside Clues
Beginner guide
Build small families
Key takeaway
Small country pairs make bollards easier to learn and easier to use in rounds.
Learn bollards in small comparison families. This is faster than memorising a continent-wide chart and helps you avoid common 50/50 mistakes.
Useful families
- France versus Scotland-style lookalikes: French rural bollards can be round with a pointed top and a band. Similar-looking posts elsewhere often have a blunter top or different band behaviour.
- Italy versus Albania: both can use the triangular black-top style. Use plates, language, landscape, and road signs to separate them.
- Australia versus New Zealand: Australia commonly has a red front reflector and grey rear reflector. New Zealand's red strip wraps around the top more dramatically, and New Zealand also often has yellow centre lines and blue rural street signs.
- Nordics: Swedish, Finnish, and Norwegian roadside posts can all look black/white or snow-pole-like. Finland's long posts often have diagonal black sections; Norway is helped by orange-tinted yellow centre lines; Sweden often keeps road lines all white.
- UK versus Ireland: the UK commonly has black-topped black-based bollards with red front and white rear reflectors. Ireland can show green-and-white bollards, yellow outside road dashes, and yellow diamond warning signs.
The best study habit is to compare two countries at a time. Ask: "What feature would make me choose A over B?"