Does this sound familiar? I’m doing the Mum’s Taxi thing, picking kids off and running them down to after-school activities like the typical parent these days. It might not be a long drive, but the amount of signage that I go past is fairly large.
You’ve got the school speed limit sign complete with the times that these apply. You’ve got a roundabout or two to go through with all the signs associated with those (at least they’re not multi-lane roundabouts). There are a handful of Give Way signs on the way, a couple of Children Crossing signs, a No Parking sign outside the school and some Bus Stop signs on the way to the activities. I’m lucky that the route I use doesn’t involve traffic lights with all the umpteen different signs that are involved there depending on the lane that you want to go to. Signs everywhere – flashing, in some cases.
But those aren’t the only signs I see. Thanks to an acute outbreak of road works by my local council, I’m coming across the “road works” signs (once known as Men At Work signs), plus road cones and people in high-viz vests putting up bright coloured barriers to stop people driving/walking/biking into the hole they’re trying to dig.
On top of all this, you’ve got all the advertising material and the signage to tell you that you have actually reached the gym or wherever you need to go. Signs, signs, signs. And in a few places, you’ve got the signs for cyclists and pedestrians into the bargain.
It doesn’t get much better once you get into the countryside. Not only do you get the boards telling you that you’ve got XXX km to go until you get to the city where Grandma lives and signs telling you to watch out for horses/wombats/strong crosswinds/railway crossings, you also get the signs telling you about the intersections you can expect ahead of you. These include my candidate for most pointless sign: the one about falling rocks. OK, it’s kind of handy to know that there might be a rock on the road ahead of me, but you can get debris on the road anywhere, so I’m usually scanning the road for hazards. But if a rock falls when I’m driving through the area, I never know what I can really do about that. Second on my list of “statements of the blinking obvious” is the one about a railway crossing ahead complete with “prepare to stop” emblazoned on it. Really, I’m going to drive out into the middle of the intersection in front of an oncoming train without that sign, aren’t I?
Signs might be all very well and good, and they do serve a useful purpose. However, if we are continually confronted by signs left, right and centre (and let’s not even start on the information provided by in-car information systems at the same time), we become blasé about them and start tuning them out. It certainly doesn’t help when businesses decide to make their signs look rather like road signs. Sometimes, the powers that be up the ante by adding brighter colours and flashing lights. But then everyone starts doing it. And then we tune out the new level of attention-grabbing signage and the cycle continues.
I can just remember when the local fire engine had just one or maybe two red lights and a siren. Now, every emergency vehicle seems to flash like a Christmas tree on steroids and sounds like it’s doubled the decibel level of the sirens just to cut through all the other flashing lights and sounds around us. Yes, it’s important to see emergency vehicles, but is it really necessary to go to these levels? Just think how quickly people respond when they see those little red and blue lights mounted discreetly on a Holden Commodore letting them know that they’ve just lead-footed it past an unmarked police car…
I sometimes wonder if the information overload actually contributes to road safety rather than addressing it. I’m not alone in thinking this. There are Austroads research publications about this and there have been those campaigns about the dangers of distracted driving. However, the billboards reminding us not to drive distracted are themselves distractions…