Does anyone have any proof that the car actually picks up information from road signs and applies it? I am convinced it only uses the GPS info.

It applies 20mph speed limits seemingly at random on the rural roads nearby although there are no signs, whereas several motorway restrictions are ignored.

I believe it must be GPS cross referenced to an to an out of date database. I say this as I drove down the M1 last Friday and the car flagged 50 mph zones where there used to be roadworks, which are no longer there. Really frustrating.

It is supposed to read signs. However mine, if there is no map coverage for the area, like if it is a newly built road, just pops error every few minutes that sign recognition does not work. So without GPS it won't read anything.

Glad it's not just me. I think the random 20mph bits are because the council have talked about their intention to impose them sometime - but they've flagged it up on the mapping database already! I still don't think the technology is there to read and interpret roadsigns.

Edited 16 March16 Mar by chrisclin
Blooming spellchecker

It definitely uses traffic sign recognition as well as GPS/navigation data. This is actually stated in the User Manual for several of the driver-assist systems. For example, the Speed Limiter documentation says something along the lines of:

The system uses the following resources to evaluate the situation:
– Navigation data
– Traffic sign recognition

The problem is that neither source is perfect.

• Navigation data can be outdated or simply wrong.

• Traffic sign recognition can fail depending on conditions: rain, poor lighting, dirty or partially obscured signs, or signs that are visible but not applicable to your lane/direction.

Here is the Traffic Sign Recognition > Restrictions section from the (Octavia MY2025) User Manual:

A common example for me is motorway exits. The car will sometimes read the 40 km/h sign on an exit ramp while I'm still on the motorway and think the speed limit is 40. So the system clearly is reading real signs — it’s just not always interpreting them correctly.

In general, these systems are far from flawless. Even much more advanced implementations like those in Tesla sometimes struggle with speed limit detection. So it’s not surprising that simpler implementations used across various VAG cars make mistakes. And consider also that in your experience as a driver, you probably were at some point unsure what the speed limit is — maybe you glanced at the radio at the moment you passed the sign, or it was covered by a lorry.

The car is dealing with the same imperfect inputs — just with a camera and a database, and far less judgement than a human driver.

That’s also why it’s important not to become complacent with these systems. Know their limits so you don’t end up trusting them in situations where you shouldn’t. The same principle applies to any driver assist feature, going all the way back to the first cruise control systems.

I found during my one month free trial of Traffic Sign Recognition that the most noticeable effect was to pickup some remote data source different from the normal satnav. I also had phantom 50s where there had previously been roadworks, but now there was not a sign in sight ( on the M4 in my case). It also routinely gave me 70 mph when I was on a 30 mph road passing over a 70 one, and some other repeatable errors. It did also actually read some signs and was about 80% accurate in reading overhead variable limits on the motorway, and picked up a limited range of warning signs to show for just 7 seconds after passing them.

Overall, I was relieved to go back to just the (pretty reliable) satnav indication of permanent limits.

It definitely picks up signs as well as sat-nav data… ever followed a lorry with speed restriction stickers on the back of it… that’s fun when it picks those up!! 😆