Is that sign real?
It is awful design. The meaning is complete obscure to me.
The picture is an adult and child playing on the street. This street is for adults and children to play in.
In practise, in countries where it's less common it will have a text description, and you'd then recognize it abroad even when you don't understand the text: http://www.highwaycodeuk.co.uk/uploads/3/2/9/2/3292309/publi...
Circular blue must be done. Pedestrians must use this path: https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/footway-sign-picture-id...
Red-bordered circles forbid something: https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/no-pedestrians-road-sign-253...
And red-bordered triangels warn of something: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Singapor...
You should now understand all the road signs used outside the USA and Australia :-)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_street
In Europe you have to demonstrate knowing traffic signs before you get a driver's license. They usually are graphics, not text like in US.
I'm unaware of any state in which you don't have to do the same to get a learner's permit.
Test questions are a mix of obscure regulatory stuff (e.g. "what is the penalty for a 1 time DUI if the offender is age X and they have had Y speeding tickets in the last $X months?"), identifying signage (e.g. "a do not enter sign is what shape and colors?") and describing the appropriate action in a particular situation.
>They usually are graphics, not text like in US.
Literacy is technically optional to read signs in the US as well. Only auxiliary information is communicated via text. You'd just spend a lot of time waiting around when you could take a right on red or do a lot less sitting at red lights depending on whether you acknowledge the presence of signs you can't read.
Driving is more important to being a functioning member of society so in general we make getting a license easier and don't bend you over quite so hard if you do things wrong on the road. It varies a lot by state.
Warning of children in/near the road: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/04/Ma...
There's a design language you learn: circular for mandatory, triangular for advisory, square for informational. Blue background for positive, red border for negative.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkehrsberuhigter_Bereich#/me...
The official meaning is "begining of a traffic calming area" (verkehrsberuhigter Bereich) but most people call it "Spielstraße" (literal translation "street for playing"). I don't know if the sign was designed after the common term for those streets or vice versa.
As for the obscurity: A lot of traffic signs are, you learn their meaning in driving school.
The idea is that this is an area where people live, and where cars, playing children and pedestrians can be expected to mix. To drivers this is a strong indication that they need to take great care when maneuvering because just about anything can happen. Typically the sign is accompanied by an explicit speed limit of 10 or 15 km/hour, or, alternatively it is encoded in the local bylaws but that doesn't really help for visiting traffic.
The whole idea behind traffic signs is not that you can decode them if you have never seen them before (though that is a nice benefit if you can have it) but that given some basic rules and a small booklet of those signs you can learn them by heart and the basic rules will help you to distinguish in case you forgot a sign or weren't sure.
As such this one is pretty clear, all the elements on it are also present on other traffic signs and the blue rectangle tells the rest of the story. As a driver I have no problem understanding this sign in isolation without looking up its definition, the sign is also common enough around here that you can understand what it means by the context within which it is placed.
It's fine. It's just not the kind of sign you are thinking of.
There are at least two kinds of sign.
One kind tells you what the rules are or gives you specific instructions. An example of this kind of sign would be one that tells you that you must wear ear protection, or one that tells you that you must wear a hard hat.
Another kind tells you that you are in a region where a special set of rules apply. Examples are construction zone signs and school zone signs. These signs don't tell you WHAT the rules are, they just tell you that you are entering a place where the rule set changes from one well known set to a different well known set.
From what others have said, it seems this sign is the second kind. It's telling you that you are entering a region where the streets are shared more equally between cars, pedestrians, and playing children than they are in most places, and so you need to follow the rules that apply to such regions instead of the regular traffic rules.
Incidentally it drove me crazy when I saw big red X's in circles upon moving to a place with European signage. It always felt wrong to proceed, when in fact the sign means don't stop. https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/50403/what-does-t...
In practice, many drivers do not like them, but it's probably because they are never pedestrians in those places. I often drive, bike and walk in the place shown above and I really find it nice, even if you sometimes have to wait for a minute or so for pedestrians to cross.