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Previous: Inconsistency in menu items | Main | Next: Ya tops
March 30, 2005 12:07 AM
Broken: Sign in Cinque Terre
David writes:
There are no trees, houses, or mixed-sex soccer playing in this Italian town (cinque terre).
Well, I guess every Italian knows what this means. It's also not broken if you're Dutch. We have a similar traffic sign. ( http://proto.thinkquest.nl/~klb019/images/Bord-G05.jpg and http://proto.thinkquest.nl/~klb019/images/Bord-G06.jpg )
It denotes a special kind of homezone/residential area where the speed limit is 30 km/hour and pedestrians have the right of way. Drivers are warned for the presence of playing children.
So don't think something is broken because you never seen it before. When you go abroad make sure you know the traffic signs!
Remark:
I was talking about the Dutch version of the traffic sign. I guess that the Italian version has a similar meaning but I don't know for sure.
I assume it means one of these things, but I don't know which:
a) that you are leaving the urban settlement area of the town, and the laws about driving at urban settlement areas don't apply beyond this sign.
b) that you leaving the mixed-use street or a street at the residential area, and the laws about driving on such streets don't apply beyond this sign.
To other side of the road probably has a similar sign, expect without the red line. This page shows similar Finnish signs (571-574).
Hmm. The link didn't get through... Here's the URL:
http://alk.tiehallinto.fi/www2/liikennemerkit/ohjemerkit.htm
This isn't the first time something like this ha s appeared. Wasn't there a similar posting about a similar sign in Paris ?
FFS posters; learn a bit about the rest of the world before you decide that it's 'broken' just because you haven't seen it before!
I can confirm that this sign means that you're leaving a residential area (Fine zona residenziale). The sign is regulated by Italian driving laws (Segnali utili per la guida - Art. 135 DPR 495/92 - Art. 39 C.d.S.). Of course you have to know the meaning of road signs if you want to get a driving license in Italy.
BTW road signs are the same throughout Europe.
Yes, I can confirm that meaning too. But I think that when David says that 'This is broken' is because, in fact, it's:
Signs are to express a message in a picture. The idea is that if you see a traffic sing, you would have to be able to guess its meaning. This is the reason why it's broken: it's a bad traffic sign.
To say that someone "needs to learn about the rest of the world" does not change the fact that it is broken. As the previous poster said, if it isn't readily apparent what the sign means, it is broken. In the US, a red line through an icon generally means "this is not allowed." So to your typical American, this sign appears to mean that houses, trees and kids playing aren't allowed, which doesn't make very much sense.
Granted, the sign as pictured is out of context. It should be obvious as you are driving that you are leaving a residential area. Still, some text, even if it's in Italian, would have helped clarify the meaning. (Non-Americans complain about how American signs are written out in English, but every sensible traveller in a foreign country should know enough of the language to make an approximate translation. YOu don't have that on a sign that is just an icon.)
What truly is broken in all of this is that there is no global standard for road signage.
Well why not just put a speed limit sign? When I leave a school zone, do I need a school with a red line through it? And even if I know it means "leaving residential area" how do I know what the new speed limit is? It's a strange way of doing things.
I thought the tree was a mushroom cloud, so I thought it was one of those silly "nuclear free zones" that were all the rage last century. :)
And the sign behind it does seem to ban that shade of blue. Maybe the things in the forest are attracted to the Bad Color. Or maybe it mean "look, pretty much everything is banned here".
Citizen Of Trantor writes:
I thought the tree was a mushroom cloud, so I thought it was one of those silly "nuclear free zones" that were all the rage last century. :)
Funny that. My home citys slogan was/is "a nuclear free zone" where some cities would have "home of the (sports team)" or something.
for some reason I was always a little dissapointed at not having any nukes around.
Our ducth friend is right!
The red bar means that you are exiting an area with a traffic limitation.
I think that in Europe we have the same signs.
Bye
Matteo
P.S. The boy is playing soccer, while the girl wants only to marry him.
The reason why these area signs are needed is that the speed limit is not the only thing that is affected. I don't know about Italy, but in Finland the residential area (/mixed-use street) sign means the following:
- Driving a motor vehicle is only acceptable if you're accessing some residential building.
- Except for certain exempted classes of vehicles, vehicles can only be parked at explicitly marked spots.
- The speed of a vehicle must be selected according to pedestrian traffic and can't exceed 20 km/h.
- Vehicles must give priority to pedestrian traffic.
Turning that into a self-contained sign would make quite a long sign or quite interesting symbols. Anyway, when the residential area (/mixed-use street) ends, the new speed limit will be the standard speed limit for urban settlement areas (50 km/h). And yes, there are eight more differences between driving at a standard road and at an urban settlement area.
The problem with textual road signs is that they are either elaborate and long or strange and short. For example, even if I knew what "a pedestrian" and "a crossing" meant, it would take quite a long to figure out what a "PED XING" is. And even if the sign said "pedestrian crossing", I wouldn't know how I'm supposed to behave there. And if I took the lessons to learn it, I could have learned the symbol just as easily.
These signs are common in europe...
Although I agree they are quite vague.
In response to jay's comment: I assume that when you visit China and there is a sign solely written you should be able to make an approximate translation as well?
Icons are much more useful, but they must avoid ambiguity. Why is it that almost any U.S. sign is not featured, as they are almost always only written, being quite useless to those without a knowledge of English. Especially signs that say "no thru street" or "xing" as they aren't even translatable with a dictionary.
Residential area, not broken. If you remember, there was a sign for pedestrian zone from Paris (or was it Brussels?).
You are stupid, when you don't use common sense and just point out things that look broken to you. Now you look broken to us.
Aapo Laitinen is right. The sign in front means the end of:
- Driving a motor vehicle is only acceptable if you're accessing some residential building.
- Except for certain exempted classes of vehicles, vehicles can only be parked at explicitly marked spots.
- The speed of a vehicle must be selected according to pedestrian traffic and can't exceed 20 km/h.
- Vehicles must give priority to pedestrian traffic
The sign behind means loading or unloading only, no parking or standing for more than 3 minutes. If you live in Europe you will know this traffic signs and they are the same in most of the eastern countries. Americans would not know, because they can't even drive right. This is why they can't drive faster than 120-130km/h on the interstate or Autobahn.
"So don't think something is broken because you never seen it before. When you go abroad make sure you know the traffic signs!"
Seems to me, a sign that is supposedly universal in its message (i.e. no language-specific text) and fails to convey its message - is broken.
MB: "This is why they can't drive faster than 120-130km/h on the interstate"
Hey the legal speed limit may be 55 MPH (88 KPH) to 65 MPH (104) on most interstate highways, but that has never stopped the majority of American drivers from going any less 75 MPH (120 KPH) most of the time. Speed limits are just a *suggestion* here. Well, up until an officer decides you are the one he's going to fine for speeding, that is.
>Seems to me, a sign that is supposedly universal in its message (i.e. no language-specific text) and fails to convey its message - is broken.
Wrong. A sign has to work with its cultural context. Not everybody relies on the automobile as much as the US. Not everyone drives on the right. Not everybody reads from left to right. Not every colour means the same in every country.
Now, if you're a rule-based German like myself and took your driving test within the past 50 years, you know that signs with a blue background tell you to *do* something, like drive a minimum speed, park there, play here. A white background tells to *not* to do something, like not drive faster than a certain speed, not enter a street, not exceed a certain weight. So this blue sign appears at the beginning of a "quiet" street, where pedestrians have the priority, where children may play in the street and where cars thus have to adjust their speed to an appropriate pace, which is deemed to be between 5km/h (that's walking) and 10km/h (that's an average bicycle). And at the end of every zone regulated by a sign, that regulation is canceled by the red line. That also goes for the end of a town or village, as it implies that the local speed limit is also canceled for the benefit of whatever the limit may be for the open road.
You would thus never experience the said sign without having seen the positive version of it, unless you're an irresponsible driver or a dumb tourist with a selective view.
If you have a driver's license, you know these rules.
If you asked me as a designer whether this sign is well designed, i'd say hell no. Way too many detailed depictions, no conceptual abstraction except for the physical shapes. A sign designed by committee (aren't they all), and thus broken from a communication point of view. The comment, however -- while quite funny -- simply exposed the writer's lack of knowledge.
I don't get what the argument is about. The sign is weird! It's funny and seemingly broken if you don't know what it means! As long as your're an american idiot (great cd) like me, I don't see why we can't just laugh and not make a big deal.
It looks broken, if you're foreign you've never seen a sign like that. It's confusing, because signs are different from country to country. They should standardize them or something...
When I read comments from people saying, in effect, "I don't get it; therefore it's broken," I have to cringe. Example:
"Seems to me, a sign that is supposedly universal in its message (i.e. no language-specific text) and fails to convey its message - is broken."
It's NOT broken for the people it's intended for, for all the reasons the European commenters have noted. It's contextual; it just happens NOT to be your context.
There are no doubt plenty of signs in the U.S. that seem natural to us that a foreign visitor would find broken. Does that make them broken universally, as you would suggest?
The problem isn't that Europeans don't know the sign. Europeans have memorized this sign's meaning, and so of course they know it. But the same could be said of *any* arbitrary sign - if you've memorized it, you'll know its meaning whether it's two children playing in front of a house with a tree or a green triangle inside a purple square.
The problem is that iconic signs should be, at least to some degree, understandable even to people who haven't memorized them. There should be some relationship between the icons and the meaning. Here we have two people playing, a tree, and a house, all crossed by the "forbidden" glyph. But what is being forbidden? Having children? Children playing? Planting trees? Entering houses? All of the above? Something else?
If you know the sign, having learned it when you started to drive, you don't need to translate it - the whole is in your memory. But if you've never seen this particular sign before, you'll attempt to deduce a meaning from the components of the sign, and those are hopelessly confusing. Icons are supposed to be understandable.
You may say that everyone should memorize all traffic signs in a country they may drive in, but then what's the point of using semi-descriptive icons to begin with? Might as well use the green triangle in the purple square, in that case. It's just as easy to memorize.
Some memorization is going to be necessary, of course. The "forbidden sign" (the diagonal red line) is an arbitrary glyph. But memorizing a few of those, then using deduction to figure out signs based on them, is far easier - and more likely to be universal - than memorizing dozens or hundreds of special-purpose signs.
I'm guessing no one will ever read this, and if they do, and comment, I won't see it, but I found this to be an interesting article, for all those claiming that Europeans know what all these signs mean, so Americans (I'm not American) should just stop complaining about it:
http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/display.var.585046.0.drivers_are_confused_by_road_signs.php
In Europe are 4 types of road signs.
1. white circle with red border - this means - this is not allowed
2. blue circle or rectangle - this means - some kind of information
3. white triangle with red border - this means - warning!
4. stop signs
in USA are many signs with english text - but in Europe is many languages, so there are "common knowledge" pictures instead.
Oh, come one, people ... the meaning of this sign is SO obvious: "Children are not allowed to play soccer outdoors during nuclear attacks."
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Previous: Inconsistency in menu items | Main | Next: Ya tops
And according to the sign behind it, no dark blue sky.
Posted by: Robert at March 30, 2005 12:45 AM