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Feds to Highway Signs: You Have Two Years to Stop Being Funny
- theandrewbailey 3y agohttps://archive.is/72aRe https://archive.is/72aRe
- marssaxman 3y agoThank you, really appreciate the archive link; WSJ articles are unreadable for me without it.
- vineyardmike 3y agoLet’s do billboards next. They seem like a way. Another distraction problem, and it’d have the side affect of making our society more aesthetically appealing.
- OldGuyInTheClub 3y agoYou are so right. So Cal has enormous high-def video billboards set to blind. These humorous dot-matrix signs aren't in the same universe of distraction.
- aftbit 3y agoI always hated that one near the apartment buildings on 80 (or is it 580) by Central (north of El Cerrito). It was blindingly bright and constantly moving. Should be illegal.
- hex4def6 3y agoHumorous signs are far more memorable, even if you reach a smaller percentage of the population. A generic "OBEY POSTED TRAFFIC SIGNS," while readable by 79% of the population, is barely going to mentally register for nearly all of them. By comparison, a sign that only 40% of drivers understand the pop culture reference to might be more effective overall if they think about it for the next week. And at least for all the examples in the article, even if you don't get a culture reference, the gist of the message is still understandable. Don't DUI, don't use your cell phone, etc. A much worse sin for those message boards is when they use multiple pages to convey something. "ROAD CLOSURE FROM SEPT 16 UNTIL" <4 second delay> ... Well, I guess I'll never know.
- sn0n 3y agoAll I saw was "you have 2 years to see who can be the most funny".
- TheCoelacanth 3y agoAh, yes. It's the funny signs that are dangerous, not the colossal pickup trucks with a hood higher than many adults' heads. Thanks for the great work regulators.
- windows2020 3y agoHas anyone else noticed a general increase in informality? Windows 11: * :( ... We're just collecting some error info ... * You might want to plug in your PC. You're a highway sign that when activated should convey important information unambiguously in an authoritative way. And you're my computer and I need our relationship to be formal. I'm your boss.
- emchammer 3y agoYes, including on a state government website I recently used which responded with a patronizing "good job!" for submitting a form. The inappropriateness of that aside, concealing a public sign message in humor is discriminatory to those who do not have English as a first language. To do so with pop culture references, there might even be a case for discrimination against national origin, which is in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Not to mention it goes against the enormous amount of research and engineering that has gone into making those signs and typefaces legible and reliable. It's not the same thing as Ad Council television adverts.