They already do this heavily in India. Mostly due to a lack of good road signage. Landmarks are what defined navigation. Where I live (Bangalore), we have junctions named after KFC and Sony, cos those stores have been there for so long.
I've long been a fan of logos on maps as an advertising opportunity that can also add value to the user. Over and above making it known that a store they may want is nearby, store signage helps with directions and navigation.
After all, which is more obvious to someone driving - a street sign or a McDonalds? So put golden arches on every GPS / UBD.
It has been happening to me for about a year now, with specifically Jack-in-the-Box. Seems like a win-win situation, street names are harder to detect while moving at higher speeds than a huge sign for a fast food place, and businesses get advertised. That's how I give directions to people as well, using landmarks.
Maybe I’m being too charitable, but I suspect it’s down to a few requirements: instantly/universally recognizable to drivers, easily visible from the street, located on corners, and always pronounced correctly by the maps voice.
Fast food restaurants and other major chains fit that bill reliably enough that you could automate adding them to directions. Telling drivers to take a right at, say, a local restaurant that may not have an obvious sign could easily be worse than relying on street signs.
Oh c'mon, like jedberg said, fast food chain restaurants and gas stations usually have good signage for driving (hat tip Learning from Las Vegas), so it makes sense to use them as visual milestones.
I love Naomi Klein and all, but sometimes looking for small side street sign while everyone's going at least 45mph on a stroad is nearly impossible.
Exactly, which is why I reject it as douchey, judgmental bullshit. We have terms for each type of thoroughfare in English already; they're seen on street signs and maps all over the USA.
I bet when street signs were introduced, people said "Are we seriously living in a a world where people can't look around at landmarks and know where they are? They need to look at the name written down on a sign? These popular street signs offered convenience that seems to have withered most people's brains"
That's very interesting. I've been to a few places in the U.S. where many, many intersections had no signage. To me it seemed absolutely crazy, but maybe the thinking was the same as the British practice: "this way people will have to pay attention".
As an anti-invasion tactic during World War II, a civil defence measure was to remove many road signs. That’d stop those nazis in their tracks.
So to this day, I find the UK a difficult country to navigate by signs alone as they are often absent at important local junctions.
In many other parts of the world, you can trace your way from a major destination by signs at forks/exits. In the UK, this often only works on ‘M’otorway routes. With satnav now ubiquitous, much local signposting tends to deplete over time, unless it is to control traffic flow.
Ya, the worst i've seen is huge flashing (like, stroboscopically, i kid you not) green crosses for drug stores here in France... There are a few traffic intersections where, after having lived here a few years, i still regularly confuse a far-off (3 blocks) green pharmacy sign with a green traffic light that applies to me. Apart from being highly fugly, i would venture that it's almost dangerously distracting. It seems pharmacies in particular are offenders in my city, the rest is all rather subdued (luckily).
This is great in idea but do seems like a gimmick. Do you honestly believe everyone on that road can read your sign posted in English ? I can judge this because I am from Bombay. After few min, crowd will just ignore the traffic light and take off. I really hope this works though ! Its insane how bay the noise pollution is.
Certainly there's plenty of places I've been a passenger in Asia and India where I would never try to drive -- but I think you're conflating 'remove signage' with 'keep signage (but assume all of it is ignored by everyone, all the time)'.
If Singapore is anything like downtown San Francisco, they may save paint and tax dollars by indicating where you can make a U-turn rather than where you can't. It could also be a way of reducing sign clutter, which is an eyesore and safety issue in the US.
The Poynton example seems strange. Maybe the signs as such were removed, but what they did was basically to convert from an intersection with lights to a roundabout. The roundabout clearly exists, even if the sign doesn't. People in the UK know very well how to default to that behaviour, so I wouldn't say it's really a shared space.
I'm looking forward to the year they stop putting up signs, because everybody will depend on a HUD/GPS or wireless glasses or contacts or something. The freeways will look like some post-apocalyptic wasteland with rusted eroded signs hanging lopsided off of weathered poles. While the travelers are reading and eating and playing games as they're whisked along in transport pods at 200 miles an hour.
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