Strange road markings in Malta (5 photos)

At first, you might think that this marking was either drawn by some drunk local Vasya, whose hands were shaking terribly, or that the marking machine had something broken in the spray gun guide, and it was jerking left and right.





But these assumptions, of course, turned out to be completely unfounded.

In some places, the dividing strip suddenly turned from a solid straight line into a broken line, and parallel to them, exactly the same broken lines were drawn along the side of the road.



But nowhere else, except for the streets in Valletta and neighboring Sliema, have I ever seen such markings.





But in these cities it is found quite often on different streets.

And during my first walk, its necessity quickly became clear to me.

It is applied in places where it is necessary to reduce the speed of cars.

This signals drivers to start slowing down or to be ready to stop.

As a rule, these unusual broken markings begin 50 meters before pedestrian crossings, which in Malta are practically equipped with push-button controls: the green traffic light is constantly on for drivers so as not to stop the flow in vain, and the red one lights up only when someone who wants to cross the road presses a button on the pole .



And for the reason that drivers usually drive non-stop on familiar sections of the streets, such broken markings encourage them to be more careful and look at the traffic lights so as not to miss if the light turns red and a person steps out onto the road.

Here it is also important to understand two nuances - features of drivers in Malta.

Firstly, because this is an island, there are no mass tourists in their cars, the island itself is small, so the locals have learned all the roads by heart, getting used to their rhythm of movement and that the traffic lights are usually always green.

Secondly, drivers in Malta often drive aggressively, speed up even in the city and do not really like to follow the rules.

So these additional precautions are absolutely necessary.



I wonder, by the way, why they didn’t think of the noise stripes we are used to, which are put on roads in places like this where there is a pedestrian crossing, but it is not used often.