Monday 12th June 2006

Signage Overload

IAM urge drivers to read the road as well as signs

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The Institute of Advanced Motorists is suggesting today that we're suffering from information overload when it comes to road signage and that we're missing the information on the road in front of us.

The IAM warns that drivers tend to ignore all but the most basic of road signs. A red light will still get most drivers to stop, most of the time, whilst a junction marking stating "STOP" in large capital letters is often ignored; at best it will be treated as a "give way" and then only by the locals who should know the dangers well.

There are so many instructions, official and unofficial, so many direction signs and road signs competing for attention that drivers already have their heads full of information coming at them from eye level. That's resulting in many drivers being oblivious to the markings on the road beneath them.

They go on to urge drivers to take heed of the markings on the road both official (white lines, cross hatching etc) and tips left by other road users (skid marks, mud from tractors etc).

[Peter Ward]

Defintely true that there are too many roadsigns. It's therefore easy to be concentrating on the important ones plus the road itself and to miss the "unimportant" speed limit changes.

[Mr Whippy]

Doesn't help that most rural, national > 30 zone changes are now decorated with enough distracting material to put anyone off the more important things.

I have no idea when a simple sign stopped being enough for anyone who passed a UK driving examination.

Seems to have happened in other areas now, with 10 different ways of saying the same thing in some places. We loose the important information in a sea of repeat messages and pointless info-feed.

Dave

Edited by Mr Whippy on Monday 12th June 10:02

[unobtainum]

I teach pupils to consider signs such as "SLOW" etc as a warning, and not to blindly do as it tells you.

But the amount of signs is, in my oppinion a reflection of the governments attitude.

They are always telling us how to do everything, what to do, not to do, when to do it etc.

And then when we miss a speed limit change, that has no benefit anyway and is a needless "nanny state" excercise, they zapp us with a camera.

[CTE]

I guess they cannot afford to engineer the roads correctly, so in order to appear to be doing something, they bombard us with warning signs. More short term bodging.....

[Parrot of Doom]

Too much signage is a massive problem IMO. Well it was for me when I was going out with observers before my test. Thankfully the examiner didn't ask me any signage questions. I know what they all mean, but spotting them amongst the plethora of roadside clutter can be very difficult at times.










What really annoys me are signs pointing out perfectly visible (night and day) curves in the road, with a reflective yellow backing!

IMO the most useful signs are the ones denoting junctions ahead. They're the ones that should be made more visible, most other signs are spurious.

[lolaking]

Like everything else in our country the roads are being dumbed down BUT what makes the government this that if people aren't bright enough to use common sense on the roads they'll be bright enough to read and heed signage! More wasted money...discuss

[anorakuk]

I just wish the money was spent on repairing the Goddam roads, not telling us the same thing half a dozen times in a couple of hundred yards. The joke of it is I really do feel there are instances where the 'dumb down' sign approach is applied to national>local limits, but you can't get anywhere near the feckin limit cos the road is so knackered in the first place ..grrr

Dave

[7db]

Used to be one more sign for every accident on the hazard, or is that no longer the case?

[Peter Ward]

Some good examples there, Parrot of Doom. What I find so "interesting" is how often the huge "safety camera" warning signs actually obscure the normal road signs. Coming south to the Longbridge roundabout on the A46 (M40 J15) is a classic example of where the multiple camera warning signs both outnumber and obscure the signs you actually need to circumnavigate the roundabout successfully.

[GTRene]

way to many signs everywhere...the time it takes you to look at them can cause accidents so its also unsafe in some ways and inferring! better all people use their heads and drive safe where conditions aloud(that means in some cases even faster driving where roads and skils aloud) so drive to your skils keep attented to other road users and pedestrians and drive to the circomstanses! use your eyes and head for that road and not all the signs that gets your concentration of that road...
GTRene

[chim666]

Add to the tally of signs in the images reproduced earlier, the markings on the road. After all, they are warning/information signs too.

[Chris944]

I think a lot of it is road side SPAM put up by people who have no idea how to communicate with drivers. My view is thar a good idea would be to have a person called a road manager. The road manager would have the responsibvility for ensuring that drivers on the road the person managed would be correctly and efficiently informed, warned and kept moving. Any one that wanted to interrupt the flow of traffic, warn or inform drivers would have to go to this person. That includes the Police too wishing to restrict or close the road after an incident.

The road manager would be measured by vehicle throughput on the manageed roads. Any interruption to vehicle flow would affect this.

I'd like the idea of hsaving a person in the DEpt of TRansport to go tro and complain about M25 traffic flow interruptions, ludicrously delayed switch-off of Police warning signs, silly too slow traffic sopeeds in contraflows, excessively long road-closures such as the weekend 7-hour job on the M25 near Leatherhead because of a burning lorry. Close the whole road? What moron thought up that one.

Chris.

[antispeed]

As an experiment, think of you local road or street and write down all its signage in 3 catagories, catogory 1 = normal road signs on posts, catogory 2 = all road signs painted on road, catogory 3 = all advertising signage, Then actually go and see how many you missed!
IF I'm correct, it will be around half.

why? because you get used to seeing the same thing day in day out your brain ignores them,
that explains why some poor moterists are caught by fixed cameras, they 'forgot' they were there,

[10 Pence Short]

Wasn't there a recent case on the A58 near Leeds where a chap got off a speeding charge due to the speed limit signs being illegal, seeming they were actually yellow rectangular signs with the usual sign painted in the middle, rather than just the circular signs?

Frankly, there are so many signs pointing out advertisements, additional speed limits, hazards of varying degrees and even a daft amount of painted road markings, that you'd totally miss a hazard because of the sign trying to point it out!

[Mr Whippy]

Parrot of Doom said:

THEY are what do my head in.

A speed limit change is usually given with a HUGE sign anyway, easily 2ft across and visible from 100 yards. So WHY OH WHY do we need markers saying 3 > 2 > 1, bumps in the road, red patches and all that junk?

It doesn't make the 30 zone more important, it just makes people complacent probably, new signs that ARE important may be lost in the clutter, or obscure more signs.

ONE 30 round sign would be perfectly adequate where the zone changed... WHY?

Any road engineers care to tell why all that junk is actually required? Surely any driver worth passing their test found the old style 30 sign adequate? Anyone who needs that junk shouldn't be on the road imho.

Dave

[7db]

Those count-down to speed limit signs are recommended not placed by DfT guidelines. If you have some, speak to the numpties in LA to ask them why...

[TripleS]

Mr Whippy said:

Parrot of Doom said:

THEY are what do my head in.

A speed limit change is usually given with a HUGE sign anyway, easily 2ft across and visible from 100 yards. So WHY OH WHY do we need markers saying 3 > 2 > 1, bumps in the road, red patches and all that junk?

Dave

I don't mind the 3, 2, 1 countdown markers on the approach to a 30 limit, and there are places where that advance warning can be helpful. You're right about all the road paint though. We could do without most of that IMHO, then we might derive more benefit from what remains - and the same applies with signs in general.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

[gdaybruce]

And then there are the signs that say "Caution, Altererd Priorities Ahead". Two years after the priorities actually were altered ...

[10 Pence Short]

I particularly dislike the large areas of red anti-skid that get put down seemingly every time a council wagon stops.

A multicoloured surface only complicates what is often an overcrowded scene in the first place, and considering it's usually on patches of road supposed to separate the traffic, i.e. hatched central markings, the anti skid properties are superfluous, anyway.

[Peter Ward]

10 Pence Short said:

I particularly dislike the large areas of red anti-skid that get put down seemingly every time a council wagon stops.

A multicoloured surface only complicates what is often an overcrowded scene in the first place, and considering it's usually on patches of road supposed to separate the traffic, i.e. hatched central markings, the anti skid properties are superfluous, anyway.

Yes, it looks horrible. I used to hate the green paint that the French (used to?) put down the middle of urban roads to simulate grass. Having red in the same place is much worse!

And then there's the raised yellow rumble strips, that inexplicably go ALL THE WAY across the road rather than just on the side that (some road engineer thinks) needs it.

Oh the pain of it all. One joy of old films now is seeing the simplicity of the road layouts and the lack of both signage and paint. I guess we'll never get there again, but it's nice to dream sometimes....