Take it Off!?

Jan. 10, 2007

A traffic engineer should have caught my sister in the act 20 years ago. This way it would have been flushed out of the system by now and the Europeans could keep their flaunting to themselves.

At the impressionable age of 18 my sister, who is now a lawyer, was found by a . . . ahem . . . uniformed local official trying to swipe a street sign with her vanload of friends. She was let off the hook. I don’t know what transpired during questioning, but I am pretty sure there was no mention of an attempt to lower the confusion of drivers in the area.

A traffic engineer should have caught my sister in the act 20 years ago. This way it would have been flushed out of the system by now and the Europeans could keep their flaunting to themselves.

At the impressionable age of 18 my sister, who is now a lawyer, was found by a . . . ahem . . . uniformed local official trying to swipe a street sign with her vanload of friends. She was let off the hook. I don’t know what transpired during questioning, but I am pretty sure there was no mention of an attempt to lower the confusion of drivers in the area.

In Europe, they are pulling out all the stripes, symbols and verbiage. A couple of years ago, a town in England was testing a pilot program that eliminated pavement center striping. The thought was motorists are subconsciously fixed to their lane, so why bother painting any type of separation. It supposedly worked, causing more communities and fellow countries to scrape the asphalt or concrete landscape.

This naked revolution is now tapping the flesh of those involved with traffic signage and asking them to take notice of this new movement of driver comfort. The Dutch towns have recently taken a wrench to forests of street placards and have lifted barricades in the center of towns. In Germany, officials are chipping away at curbs to help with the flow of traffic, and London has gone to the extent of removing hundreds of yards of pedestrian safety barriers.

This traffic management madness is again foaming over with positive results. Bus drivers are reporting it takes less time to manipulate through city centers; the injury and fatality rate is dipping; and in London, where they left pedestrians to fend for themselves, officials say the number of walkers injured has fallen a stunning 60%.

Everyone is comparing the movement to the one of peace, love and happiness that rode along in the 1960s. Officials claim that drivers are acting in a more civilized way and that more and more are developing hand signals as an advanced form of communication. U.S. engineers have been invited overseas to witness the psychological swing.

I get plenty of hand signals driving around the Chicagoland area. Believe me, Americans have a full comprehension of that language. Perhaps my biggest pet peeve—albeit a bit unfair—are those lost drivers that wander around aimlessly and slowly trying to find their way. In the midst of the clutter of big city driving, I am having a hard time seeing how these types would not be resorted to a 5 mph speed limit trying to figure out if a certain street is a one way or not.

If anything, I think what this nation needs is another coating of signs and pavement markings. I can’t tell you how many times I have traveled darkened streets trying to find my hotel and squinting my eyes to the point of sinus pain in an attempt to read signs of direction. The state of Florida has launched a widespread campaign of lighted street signs. I don’t know why more have not followed suit.

At best, most pavement markings start going dull in about a year. Those at the state, county and city level, however, avoid any fresh coatings well beyond the expiration date. With the U.S. population aging, it is more important than ever to keep lane markings sharp and bright.

Streets are configured a little differently in Europe, and after walking the streets of Paris I can see why there is a call to simplify signage. However, this is one idea that needs to remain planted thousands of miles away.

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