To be honest, I really hate the US highway styleguide. The signage, road lettering etc they have in the UK and some of Europe is infinitely better & more clear. As well as general road layout and design. It probably goes a long way to explaining why US roads are so unbelievably dangerous.
I'm quite surprised but how large and extensive this guide is.
As someone who learned to drive in Europe I've always been extremely confused by the signage and road layout of American roads. There is a pretty big difference in quality between state roads and federal roads. The former seem to have no coherent style, layout or identity while the latter seem pretty consistent. Given the above documents I can see there is a consistent style but the style does not seem to translate to a consistent user experience.
The three things that stand out to me are the amount of text on each sign, the lack of standardized rule about entries and exists, and the lack of road markings, specially at intersections.
The first one isn't necessarily a big problem but it's very weird to have all this text when you could have instead a very recognizable sign that you can understand from afar (the one way sign is a great example), instead of a white sign with black text that you can only read once you're close to it and only understand if you know English.
The second one makes highway layout extremely confusing and, at least for me, feel dangerous and stressful. Some Signs can tell you to take an exit with make 20m of notice and it's a 90° right turn and you also need to go from 120 kmph to 30 in that span. The reduced speed sign is only visible after you've turned so if you dont know the area you're almost always going too fast. Because it's a 90° turn with trees in the sides you can't anticipate what the traffic is like after the turn. If you know the area you probably have no problem handling this situation, but driving there for the first time feels like driving through a minefield. There are other instances of this with left exits, overtaking from both sides, turn right on red, stop sights everywhere, no priority system, and more.
The last one is incredibly frustrating when you come from Europe because over there, most intersections have redundant signage and markings. Intersections have street lights that tell you where to go, the road layout is advertised on a sign well in advance, and the paint on the road tells you how to turn and where to stop and even indicates speed limits or directions. Intersections in americas provide no such affordances. Intersections are basically a free for all between the incoming trafic, the people turning right on red and the pedestrians. I was expecting a lot more from a country which is built for cars.
It feels like roads are built for cars but not for drivers.
Driving across America, you will encounter a wide variety of cultures, landscapes, people and animals. But the one consistent thing that will stay the same from Maine to California are the signs you pass on the highway. That is because America’s roads and highways have a big, fat style guide.
I've always found it supremely clear and much less fussy than the US highway font, although I bet that's because I grew up with it. (There's something about the spacing of the letters on US signs that looks really odd to me, which I can't quite put my finger on.)
I'm sure they'd let the US use it if you asked nicely...
I think many US highway signs are too wordy. Seems that European signs are more iconic. They are faster to recognize and more pleasant to look at but maybe take a bit more education to understand. US driver education is woeful by most other first-world standards, so maybe that's part of why we seem to need so many signs that explain things in words.
It reminds me of how here in the US we often overuse signage and other markings on roads to 'prevent' accidents but roads with less markings that are obvious and direct tend to have less accidents by comparison. I wonder if part of the problem with American roads is the fact we assume people need information they don't need or use. I know that roads here aren't actively calmed by changing the quality of the road (roughness, width) and that often people ignore or outright get confused by whatever signage and markings are put up.
Having just returned from the USA, I must admit, whilst I strongly dislike like the "car culture" the street were incredibly well sign posted. A pet hate of mine here in the UK are missing signs.
Yeah, this annoys me so much. Some just grate (we don’t have ‘crosswalks’ here, we have ‘pedestrian crossings’) but for some things I literally just don’t really know what they look like in the US and have to just guess!
The article discusses "European" road signs as being something inspirational. They should specify that they were inspired by Spanish road signs, rather than "European" ones in general. For instance in Germany, freeway exits are notoriously poorly marked. In most situations you will only get a big blue sign that says Ausfahrt and no details nearby.
I personally find these examples much more practical and easier on the eyes. Traffic lights and roundabouts are marked. Main roads have bold edges, ALL ROADS ARE LABELLED.. Street numbers are shown at regular intervals!
I'm not sure what US driver education has to do with it, or on what basis you consider it "woeful".
But I've driven in both the US and Europe, and while a lot of the European signs are easy to figure out, a lot of them seem not only non-intuitive but also inconsistent, as well as difficult to read.
For example, "no stopping" is a red circle with a blue background and an X, while "no parking" is the same red circle with the same blue background and a slash, or half the X. Not only is all of this totally arbitrary, but there's almost zero contrast between the red and blue, so the opposite of being fast to recognize, or pleasant.
And then a slash in some cases means "end of" (end of no passing zone) but in other cases it means "no" (no left turn). So it essentially means both "allowed" and "not allowed", but I guess it's based on the color or orientation or something of the slash, or multiple thin slashes vs one big thick one?
I find myself very much preferring the help of "wordiness" in this case. The top priority while driving is clarity in messaging, not economy of space. What the US does, which is actually to combine symbols in many cases with text, gives both quick recognition and unambiguous information.
I never thought about why road signs are like that, but you are right. Interesting. Unlike my observation about the website, which somebody finds offensive or wrong, it seems :-D
Unless you're an American driver. Americans already don't know how to use normal ones in Europe. Then in America they make them wrong, with big yield signs that look like stop signs, unintuitive marking, confusing exits, and giant obstructions to the view that force people to stop at the entry to wait to see if a car is coming, and then refuse to enter if they see one far away.
I want fewer signs in general. Fewer billboards, fewer road signs, fewer placards posted by control-freak authoritarians.
I drove in Scandinavia a few years ago. They have a lot fewer road signs. Speed limits are by default and drivers are supposed to know them: 50kph in town. 80kph on rural roads. 100kph on motorways. Only if limits are different are there signs.
The signs they do have are mostly iconic, so other than street names, you don't have to read words. That is also more pleasing to the eye somehow.
This pattern sort-of exists in France too. The smaller streets have appropriate signage.
In fact France has several dozen different signs that as a US driver I had to learn and relearn. My wife who grew up there keeps pointing out my mistakes every time we visit.
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