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Sign...Sign...Everywhere a Sign

3/1/2015

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Did you ever wonder who writes those signs that fill our landscapes?  Every day we travel we are bombarded with places to go, things to buy, useful information, useless information, and, as in the case below, imponderable riddles.  We understand stop signs, speed limit signs, and location signs. However, the kind of sign shown below has to have a story behind it.  Someone had to express a need.  Perhaps there was a horrendous accident in this place forcing someone in government or a concerned group of citizens to promote the idea of the sign.  The next step is someone had to pay for the sign (more often than not the taxpayers) and get money obligated to manufacture and install the sign.  Someone had to decide on an appropriate size, color, and location for the sign.  At some point in that process someone composed the words for the sign. Even a sign of three words has many mothers and fathers.  This sign occurs in a set of signs with the previous sign several hundred feet distant indicating "Use Extreme Caution"... much like the drab cousin of the delightfully famous rhymes of the Burma Shave signs of days past.  This set of signs is imponderable because if one were in a zero visibility situation, the sign could not be read and would be redundant.  The set of signs do not tell the traveler how to respond in zero visibility and under what conditions this might occur.  The sign has all the earmarks of the highway safety people doing something in a situation when nothing can be done.  The next time you pass a sign to which your first reactions was, "Huh?", think about all the work that went into creating that momentary confusion.  

Here is my suggestion for a set of five signs to deal with the same issue.

As you speed on the road that is free, 
Take care to slow when you cannot see.  
And if the windshield fades to black,  
Please pull over and get off the track.  
Burma Shave!
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