The Department for Transport is reviewing traffic signs policy and new advice on how to reduce clutter will be published later this year.

When busy Kensington High Street in central London was stripped of excess road furniture, for example, it helped reduce accidents by 47 percent.

For signs to be most effective, ministers say, they should be kept to a minimum.

Hammond said the abundance of so-called street furniture often makes towns resemble "scrapyards（廢品堆放場）," confusingmotorists（開汽車的人）and obstructingpedestrians（行人）.

The government says that in some cases traffic signs are installed by councils in the mistaken belief they are legally required, when they are not.

"Our streets are losing their English character," Pickles said. "We are being overrun byscruffy（破舊的，不整潔的）signs,bossy（跋扈的，浮雕裝飾的）bollards,patchwork（拼湊物，混雜物）paving and railed-off roads -- wasting taxpayers' money that could be better spent on fixingpotholes（凹坑）."

Ministers want the public to inform local authorities of particularly bad examples of excess signage, to clean up the national landscape.

Even traffic lights are in thefiring line（作戰(zhàn)最前線，射擊線）.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles and Transport Secretary Philip Hammond has written to local council leaders in England, calling on them to cut the number ofunsightly（丟臉的，不雅的）signs and other "streetclutter（雜亂，混亂）."

日前，英國政府呼吁拆除過多的路標、欄桿和廣告牌，稱這些街道舉措措施破壞了英國城鎮(zhèn)的景觀。

The British government has declared war on the profusion of unnecessary road traffic signs, railings and advertising boards, saying they blight towns' English character.