I found a picture of the most confusing set of instructions for a light switch you could ever imagine via Boing Boing today. And it reminded me of a sign I ran across when doing a story on pedestrian safety.
This sign rests under a crosswalk in New Brunswick, New Jersey. And to be honest, I can’t understand why more people haven’t been found dead in the middle of this intersection.
The photo comes courtesy of the New Jersey Bicycle and Pedestrian Resource Center at Rutgers University.
chiron613 says
June 29, 2007 at 6:25 pmI don’t know… it makes perfect sense to me, if you read all the words. Of course, if you are in a hurry, trying to cross a street, then you may try to skim, and all you’ll see are “Walk” “Don’t Walk”, which does get confusing…
Brad Linder says
June 29, 2007 at 6:28 pmI think my issue is that it shouldn’t take nearly so many words to explain a traffic signal with two words on it: Walk, and Don’t.
It takes about as long to read this sign as it does to cross the street. Incidentally, if this is the street I think it is, the pedestrian almost never gets the signal anyway. We stood on that corner for about 10 minutes before giving up and jaywalking.
jaunesk@gmail.com says
June 30, 2007 at 6:55 amIt will take a tragedy for people to wake up and start following instruction.
Thanks for visiting
SK
Riley says
July 1, 2007 at 6:58 pmThe central problem is the use of nested instructions to convey information about a potential hazard. (IF this, THEN this, ELSE this…) Anybody with the ability to decode the sign probably already knows how to cross the street…
A secondary problem is that the sign assumes fluency in English…
Fornicator says
April 21, 2012 at 5:35 pmagreed. If you don't understand it you have more problems than the sign does.