coming from down south why is there a sing that says ‘to join the A50 for stoke stone ect. leave at J23A’ when J23A takes you up the side of the M1 to sit in a big queue of traffic at the roundabout that is bang off juntion J24
why can you not just leave at J24 and you would be right on the A50?
I like that sign - when most of the traffic follows it, I carry on to then next junction and get onto the A50 much quicker that those stuck in the queues!! 
Shhhhhhhh its a trade secret. 
Never ever do I leave at 23A always use 24. If there is a queue going to 24 and further the one to the A50 down the 453 is always worse.
I guess the thinking behind it was that the junction (24) feeds two major roads, the A50 and the A453, and if there’s a lot of traffic coming off then it is safer for the queues to build up on the adjoining road rather than on the motorway so they point drivers towards the 23a in the hope of spreading the congestion.
dowahdiddyman:
Never ever do I leave at 23A always use 24. If there is a queue going to 24 and further the one to the A50 down the 453 is always worse.
For some values of “always” - I often use those exits (sometimes I use J23A, sometimes J24, for no particular reason) and, as a way of alleviating the tedium I usually clock one or two easily identifiable trucks that appear to be using the other road just to see which of us gets onto the A50 first (childish, I know 
). It seems to be pretty evenly matched at the times I travel - which is usually around 7-8 in the morning.
As someone else mentioned, I think the reason for the signs is to encourage A50 traffic to queue on the dual carriageway rather than in lane 1 of the M1 - Once the queues start to tail back onto the Motorway, it rapidly gets very dodgy indeed.
We like to confuse, we use duplicate signs in Derbyshire. I often wonder if there was going to be a flyover near the Warren Lane Roundabout, or a realignment of the A50 South to the Services.