Metropol

Alexia wrote:Going slightly off the point - I'd wager that if the council are putting up signs like the one posted by the OP, where large prints of text are preferred to small symbols and icons, they have no qualms about the budget they have to spend on road signs.

Of course - but that's because governments don't have to work especially hard for their money. They have the power of taxation at their disposal - whatever they want to spend money on, they just claim the necessary funds from the people. There is very little incentive for governments to minimise their costs in that environment. Spending more money on new road signs might seem like small beer - but I suspect taxpayers would rather have the money in their own pockets.

Alexia wrote:

I'd been wondering what on earth those are! I had assumed they were for maintenance workers or some such.

Now I know about them, though, I don't think they're such a bad idea. A bit redundant since everyone has GPS or mobile phones which each provide some degree of placement; but they actually seem a lot clearer than the posts. For one thing, you can read such a sign while driving, instead of having to stop the car and get out. And I can't believe they cost that much as a percentage of the general cost of motorway building and upkeep.

The signs indicate, apparently:

Top row: Road you're on.
Middle row: Carriageway or slipway - indicated by A and B for main carriageways going to and away from junction 1 of the motorway; and by other letters for things like spurs, sliproads and entrances and exits to services and the like.
Bottom row: Distance from / to origin of motorway (in practice, junction 1)

Huh, so that's what it means... like finding out the last word in a cryptic crossword.

Apologies for dragging this thread up, but it seemed a good place as any to share this gem from Fox News' front page headline story, one of their NewsCorp rips:

Passengers on the 8:4 5.a.m Flybe flight to Paris were just minutes away from landing at their destination when they were told they would have to go all the way back to Cardiff, England.

I wonder how they would react if I was to mistake that Detroit was in Canada?

No no, you're meant to put the shit city in the good country so it'd be like putting quebec in the USA!

I do remember seeing a multi-lingual sign in York recently. It said "Cars are not permitted in the city centre", or something along those lines, in English, French and German. I have also seen at least three signs which tell me to "Drive on the left", in the aforementioned languages. One in Hull, one near Dover and another in London (I think...).

Makes sense, they're the places you're most likely to see people that aren't used to driving on the left.

Sput wrote:Makes sense, they're the places you're most likely to see people that aren't used to driving on the left.

Over here they dislike any of these conformities, so you can be out in the bumpkin midlands possibly a hundred miles away from the nearest German tourist, when a random "ACHTUNG! Links fahren" sign pops up.