A stop sign is a traffic sign designed to notify drivers that they must come to a complete stop and make sure the intersection (or railroad crossing) is safely clear of vehicles and pedestrians before continuing past the sign.Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, 1968. United Nations Publication. In many countries, the sign is a red octagon with the word STOP, in either English, the national language of that particular country, or both, displayed in white or yellow. The Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals previously allowed an alternative version: a red circle with a red inverted triangle with either a white or yellow background, and a black or dark blue STOP. Some countries may also use other types, such as Japan's inverted red triangle stop sign. Particular regulations regarding appearance, installation, and compliance with the signs vary by some jurisdictions.
Design and configuration The 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals previously allowed for two types of stop signs as well as several acceptable variants. Sign B2a is a red octagon with a white legend. The European Annex to the convention also allows the background to be "light yellow". Sign B2b, which was discontinued after the 2025 amendment, was a red circle with a red inverted triangle with either a white or yellow background, and a black or dark blue legend. The Convention allows for the word "STOP" to be in either English or the national language of the particular country. The finalized version by the United Nations Economic and Social Council's Conference on Road Traffic in 1968 (and in force in 1978) proposed standard stop sign diameters of 600, 900 or 1200 mm (24, 36 or 48 inches).
The United Kingdom and New Zealand stop signs are 750, 900 or 1200 mm (about 30, 36 or 48 inches), according to sign location and traffic speeds. New Zealand Transport Agency. Traffic Control Devices Manual: General requirements for traffic signs ,
In the United States, stop signs are across opposite flats of the red octagon, with a white border. The white uppercase legend is tall. Larger signs of with legend and border are used on multi-lane expressways. Regulatory provisions exist for extra-large signs with legend and border for use where sign visibility or reaction distance are limited, and the smallest permissible stop sign size for general usage is with an legend and border. The metric units specified in the US regulatory manuals are rounded approximations of US customary units, not exact conversions. The field, legend, and border are all retroreflective.
Some modern stop signs have flashing LEDs around the perimeter, which has been shown to substantially reduce crashes.
History
The first stop sign was created in 1914 by Detroit police sergeant Harold "Harry" Jackson, who was working as a traffic guard at a busy city intersection. One of the cross streets had a particularly low-visibility turn entering the intersection, almost always forcing Sgt. Jackson to slow down and hold back the traffic entering from that street. Looking for ways to make his job easier, he took a rectangular piece of plywood, cut the corners off of it to give it a distinct shape, wrote "STOP" over the center, and placed it facing the street. He noticed that his innovation improved the overall traffic flow through the intersection. After he shared his experience with fellow officers at a meeting, the practice started to spread across the city intersections. The next year, 1915, stop signs were adopted across Michigan.Signalfan. History of the Stop Sign in America. 1997. The first signs had black lettering on a white background and were , somewhat smaller than the current sign.
As stop signs became more widespread, a rural-dominated committee supported by the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) met in 1922 to standardize them and selected the octagonal shape that has been used in the United States ever since. The unique eight-sided shape of the sign allows drivers facing the back of the sign to identify that oncoming drivers have a stop sign and prevent confusion with other traffic signs. Another consideration of the AASHO was visibility and driver literacy, as summarized in subsequent State Highway Commission reports in the states of the U.S., was that the goal for signs "standardized throughout the Union" was that "The shape of the sign will indicate what it will mean. This has been worked up very carefully by the best-qualified men in the country and men who have made a thorough study of this question. It has been found that so many people have trouble in reading the sign that the shape of the sign is very much more important than the reading matter on it.""Seventeenth and Eighteenth Reports of the State Highway Commission to the Governor of Virginia for the Twenty-one months ending June 30, 1925" (Virginia State Highway Commission, 1925) p.37
The octagon was also chosen so that it could be identified easily at night since the original signs were not reflective. The more urban-oriented National Conference on Street and Highway Safety (NCSHS) advocated a smaller red-on-yellow stop sign. These two organizations eventually merged to form the Joint Committee on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which in 1935 published the first Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways (MUTCD) detailing the stop sign's specifications.
The MUTCDs stop sign specifications were altered eight times between 1935 and 1971. From 1924 to 1954, stop signs bore a red or black legend on a yellow field. Yellow was chosen because fade-resistant red materials were not available. Retro-reflective or self-lit signs were permitted in the 1935 MUTCD; retro-reflective ones were first required by the 1948 edition of the MUTCD, which also called for a height from the road crown to the bottom of the stop sign.Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. 1948 Edition. Part 1A, Section 31. "[A stop sign] shall be mounted so that its bottom will be feet above the crown of the roadway." The 1954 MUTCD newly specified a white legend on a red field, and increased the mount height specification to 5 feet in rural areas. Red traffic lights signify stop, so the new specification unified red as a stop signal whether given by a sign or a light. The current mounting height of was first specified in 1971.
US mandate, international adoption The MUTCD stop sign was already widely deployed in the United States when the use of other types of stop signs was eliminated in 1966. In 1968, this sign was adopted by the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals as part of United Nations Economic Commission for Europe's effort to standardize road travel across borders. The Convention specifies that be written either in English or the national language, and also allows a circular sign with red legend. Forty European countries are party to the convention.
Stop signs around the world
The red octagonal field with white English-language legend is the most common stop sign used around the world, but it is not universal; Japan uses an inverted solid red triangle, for example, and both Zambia and Zimbabwe until 2016 used a disc bearing a black cross. Moreover, there are many variants of the red-and-white octagonal sign. Although all English-speaking and many other countries use the word on stop signs, some jurisdictions use an equivalent word in their primary language instead, or in addition. Also, several languages borrowed the English word "stop" a long time ago, such as French, and therefore do not consider it to be a foreign word any more. The use of native languages is common on U.S. native reservations, especially those promoting language revitalization efforts, for example, and Israel uses no word, but rather a pictogram of a hand in a palm-forward "stop" gesture.
Asia
Countries in Asia generally use a native word, often in a non-Latin script. The sign's shape varies by location, with places such as South Korea, Hong Kong, or Taiwan using the standard octagon shape, with Japan using a triangle.
Canada
In the Canadian province of Quebec, modern signs read either or . As of 1987, Quebec removed the English stop from its road signs in favor of arrêt. Both stop and arrêt are considered valid French words, with France actually using the word "STOP" on its stop signs, and the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) notes that the use of "stop" on stop signs is attested in French since 1927.panneau ARRÊT , Office québécois de la langue française, granddictionnaire.com. At the time of the debates surrounding the adoption of the Charter of the French Language ("Bill 101") in 1977, the usage of "stop" was considered to be English and therefore controversial; some signs were occasionally vandalized with red spray paint to turn the word into "101".Photo by Flickr.com user "imagesdistributioncanada" However, it was later officially determined by the OQLF that "stop" is a valid French word in this context, and the older dual / usage is therefore considered redundant and therefore deprecated (à éviter). Newly installed signs thus use only one word, more commonly only in Québec, while is seen in predominantly English-speaking areas. The latter version of stop signs has been disagreed upon by some Quebec residents. Bilingual signs with are still placed in areas of Alberta, New Brunswick and Manitoba; the Acadian regions of Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island; on federal property in the National Capital Region; and at all border crossings of the Canada–United States border. On First Nations or Inuit territories, stop signs sometimes use the local aboriginal language in addition or instead of English, French, or both, such as Inuktitut . All other English-speaking areas of Canada use .
Europe
Countries in Europe generally have stop signs with the text , regardless of local language. There were some objections to this when introduced around the 1970s, but now this is accepted. Turkey is a notable exception to this, instead using the Turkish word for stop: "dur".
Latin America
In Spanish and Portuguese-speaking Caribbean and South American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, and Venezuela), signs bear the legend ("stop" in Portuguese and Spanish). Mexico and Central American countries bear the legend ("halt") instead.
Other countries
Arabic-speaking countries use (except for Lebanon, which only uses since 2019). Armenia uses and . Bangladesh and Nepal use a stop sign with no text. Brazil and Spanish-speaking Caribbean and South American nations use . Cambodia uses . China and Taiwan use , except that Mainland China's sign has a bolder word. Cuba still uses an old circular stop sign with a triangle that is used from the give way sign and black text. Ethiopia uses a version of the sign that says and . Hong Kong SAR uses a version of the sign that says , and . Iran and Afghanistan use . Israel and Palestine use a version of the stop sign with a raised hand. Japan uses a triangular sign that says and . Laos uses . Malaysia and Brunei use . Mongolia uses . Myanmar uses . Nigeria uses a yellow border and text. North Korea uses . South Korea uses and . Pakistan still uses an old circular style stop sign with a black raised hand. Russian-speaking countries use either or (i.e. transliterated into Russian), with the latter marking the place where vehicles should wait at traffic lights (displayed on a white rectangular sign). Thailand uses . Vanuatu uses a circular red stop sign.
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