You Know you are in this state

[paulthemapguy]

Let's see if you all are thinking of the Great Lakes state I'm thinking of with these hints:

1. Trombone signals with sideways heads!
2. Truss signals with two signal heads; the one at the end gets stabbed into from the side
3. Truss signals with one signal head; the truss attaches at the top of the head (older installs only). Far-left post-mounted signals supplement the overhead ones, and near-right ones often too for some reason
4. Cable-mounted doghouse signals where the protected/permitted left arrows are in a separate row, and the other three 5. sections are in a row just to the right
6. Cable-mounted signals that will be 8 inches all the time and barely noticeable (older installs only). New installs are all  12-inch with backplates with yellow borders (swanky)
7. Cable-mounted signals with left arrows indicated by a backlit "LEFT" sign above, and the red ball flashes to indicate a left turn is permitted after stopping
8. Cable-mounted signals with the electrical wires sticking out like bedhead on top of the ones that carry tension.

You know your in Michigan when the sign says Potholes Ahead.

I was waiting to see how long it would take before someone made this super original quip as if their state is the only one with faulty roads.

[texaskdog]

You probably can guess this state pretty easily. I count at least 6 distinct ways you would know that this is in this state, even without the presence of the others. Anyone care to guess them?

- sideways stoplights
- giant-ass star art on the retaining wall and stars on the support pillars of the flyover at right
- U-shaped "goalpost" pole for shields
- T-shaped sign post for the right turn must turn right sign
- "Beltway 8"

What am I missing?

Your last three weren't inherently what I had in mind, but they make sense for Texas nonetheless. Here were my other 4:

- The fact that the junction is a giant stack with a volleyball feeder road intersection underneath
- The Texas U-turns
- The excessive clearance signs on the overpasses
- The flood gauge (maybe not exactly a Texas thing, but totally a Houston thing)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_U-turn

I find it interesting that the wikipedia schematic has the Texas U-turn over the freeway. Most (if not all) of them I've seen have it under the freeway.

I've seen a lot of both above and below.
Lots of flood gauges in Austin and west texas too.  My first time driving in Texas I was on 170 during a storm and discovered the gauges.

[Scott5114]

You probably can guess this state pretty easily. I count at least 6 distinct ways you would know that this is in this state, even without the presence of the others. Anyone care to guess them?

- sideways stoplights
- giant-ass star art on the retaining wall and stars on the support pillars of the flyover at right
- U-shaped "goalpost" pole for shields
- T-shaped sign post for the right turn must turn right sign
- "Beltway 8"

What am I missing?

Your last three weren't inherently what I had in mind, but they make sense for Texas nonetheless. Here were my other 4:

- The fact that the junction is a giant stack with a volleyball feeder road intersection underneath
- The Texas U-turns
- The excessive clearance signs on the overpasses
- The flood gauge (maybe not exactly a Texas thing, but totally a Houston thing)

I don't associate flood gauges and excessive clearance signs on overpasses with Texas, since flood gauges are in the MUTCD (and the only place I've seen them in use is actually in Missouri) and excessive clearance signs are an Oklahoma thing too.

Meanwhile, the T-shaped and U-shaped mounting posts on TxDOT signage–even more so if you add the yellow reflective band on the post–can be seen statewide, even in rural parts of the state like the Panhandle. I probably should have picked up on the turnaround lane, but they're common enough in OKC that it doesn't strike me as uniquely Texan as it would most people.

[Road Hog]

Mileage sign after the junction:

Mileage sign before the junction:

Two neighboring states that do it different.

[Flint1979]

Let's see if you all are thinking of the Great Lakes state I'm thinking of with these hints:

1. Trombone signals with sideways heads!
2. Truss signals with two signal heads; the one at the end gets stabbed into from the side
3. Truss signals with one signal head; the truss attaches at the top of the head (older installs only). Far-left post-mounted signals supplement the overhead ones, and near-right ones often too for some reason
4. Cable-mounted doghouse signals where the protected/permitted left arrows are in a separate row, and the other three 5. sections are in a row just to the right
6. Cable-mounted signals that will be 8 inches all the time and barely noticeable (older installs only). New installs are all  12-inch with backplates with yellow borders (swanky)
7. Cable-mounted signals with left arrows indicated by a backlit "LEFT" sign above, and the red ball flashes to indicate a left turn is permitted after stopping
8. Cable-mounted signals with the electrical wires sticking out like bedhead on top of the ones that carry tension.

You know your in Michigan when the sign says Potholes Ahead.

I was waiting to see how long it would take before someone made this super original quip as if their state is the only one with faulty roads.

Maybe if Michigan was the only state I drive around in then you could say that but Michigan is behind the eight ball on road repair compared to many other states.

[SkyPesos]

Are there other states besides Ohio that display on-ramp BGS on both sides of a side gantry behind a traffic signal for the right turn side like this?

[CtrlAltDel]

Are there other states besides Ohio that display on-ramp BGS on both sides of a side gantry behind a traffic signal for the right turn side like this?

Indiana usually only does that with left-turn equivalents. Only rarely is the right-turn equivalent posted like that. It does happen, though.

[kphoger]

I know I'm in Montana when the city of Missoula gets stupid busy at peak traffic times every day, and I'm starting to hate the city's major roadways, Broadway in particular. Man, I hate that road.

You knkow you're in Montana when you're in Missoula.  Geez...

[bassoon1986]

What it feels like in this state lately




iPhone

[plain]

This is how you know you're in VA

Image from GSV



moto g(7) optimo (XT1952DL)

What it feels like in this state lately




iPhone

Another obvious Louisiana feature is the "one piece" mast & arm used for the traffic signals there, plus the green housings for the signals themselves.

[interstatefan990]

You know you're in New York when a 55 zone is posted as "STATE SPEED LIMIT 55" and not just "SPEED LIMIT 55".

[roadman65]

This is how you know you're in VA

Image from GSV



moto g(7) optimo (XT1952DL)

What it feels like in this state lately




iPhone

Another obvious Louisiana feature is the "one piece" mast & arm used for the traffic signals there, plus the green housings for the signals themselves.

If you see horizontal housings with the same one piece you are in Texas.

[KCRoadFan]

Minnesota

Definitely. Called this one before I even clicked on the links. 

Oh, this too.

https://www.google.com/maps/@46.132179,-92.8876098,3a,30y,135.53h,82.23t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s7lyMJ7aVw0s0_SXMf7F31w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Also Minnesota: Highway signs at traffic light junctions where the highway shield appears on a small green sign, attached to the signal mast arm. Right next to the street name in Series E. Very visible that way.

I really love how Minnesota does signalized intersections along highways. I wish more states were like that.

[SkyPesos]

Sort of obvious one here for each state...

Their State Route shield.

[Big John]

^^ KY/IA/MS circle?
MA/ME/WVCT square?

[paulthemapguy]

Here is an interesting Virginia exclusive:


20210423_162255 by Paul Drives, on Flickr

[Scott5114]

The few things that Oklahoma DOT gets consistent:
-JCT plates that are the same size as the EAST, SOUTH, etc plates and BUSINESS (et al.) banners
-Square arrow plates about the same size as the shield, no matter the type of arrow

If you were back in the button-copy era:
-S. E. ##^TH St.

[Rothman]

^^ KY/IA/MS circle?
MA/ME/WVCT square?

Hm.  CT squares seem distinct to me.

[US 89]

If you were back in the button-copy era:
-S. E. ##^TH St.

You mean this wasn't always how that was done?

[Scott5114]

If you were back in the button-copy era:
-S. E. ##^TH St.

You mean this wasn't always how that was done?

That's a pretty pathetic practice on the part of the OKC road department.

Classic ODOT button copy looked like this. Remember this well, since this era was the last time ODOT signage wasn't total dog shit.


The underline-the-ordinal practice has sometimes been carried over to reflective-sheeting signs too (let's just ignore whatever the hell is going on with that I-40 shield):


With the most recent sign replacements in OKC, numbered streets have been sanitized to the more pedestrian "SE 15th St".

[ran4sh]

I wish more places would just do what NYC does, post "15 St" on signage, which is understood to mean Fifteenth Street.

In Atlanta, older signs for the 10 St/14 St exit spelled out the number, "Tenth St" "Fourteenth St". About 2 decades ago GDOT changed it to "10th St" etc.

[Scott5114]

I wish more places would just do what NYC does, post "15 St" on signage, which is understood to mean Fifteenth Street.

That's lame. It's not "Fifteen Street", it's "Fifteenth Street", which reduces to numbers as "15th", not "15".

In Atlanta, older signs for the 10 St/14 St exit spelled out the number, "Tenth St" "Fourteenth St". About 2 decades ago GDOT changed it to "10th St" etc.

Spelling out the words for ordinals is even worse, because it's harder to recognize at speed ("Fourteenth" and "Fifteenth" look sort of close at a glance, as do "Second" and "Seventh") and it's sort of pretentious–what are you gonna do when you get to the newer parts of the city, write out "One hundred and twenty-second Street"? No, you're going to use digits, so stop playing grammar school games about writing out low numbers and use digits starting at 1st St.

[roadman65]

Georgia

When span wire signals have the box set up being pulled on a four sides with another cable to the strain pole.

Tbh, I have no idea why other states don't do that.

GDOT says that they prefer span wire (as opposed to mast arms) because span wire makes it easier to position a signal in the correct location (per the MUTCD). Which makes sense, because if one wanted to use a mast arm to position those signals in that location, the pole would be closer to the road (and thus less safe) than the existing pole that holds the span wire.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50436541278_285af12844_o_d.jpg
Most states with span wire use one cable diagonally or a square box between posts.
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51172509277_154dfe931d_k.jpg

[ran4sh]

I wish more places would just do what NYC does, post "15 St" on signage, which is understood to mean Fifteenth Street.

That's lame. It's not "Fifteen Street", it's "Fifteenth Street", which reduces to numbers as "15th", not "15".

In Atlanta, older signs for the 10 St/14 St exit spelled out the number, "Tenth St" "Fourteenth St". About 2 decades ago GDOT changed it to "10th St" etc.

Spelling out the words for ordinals is even worse, because it's harder to recognize at speed ("Fourteenth" and "Fifteenth" look sort of close at a glance, as do "Second" and "Seventh") and it's sort of pretentious–what are you gonna do when you get to the newer parts of the city, write out "One hundred and twenty-second Street"? No, you're going to use digits, so stop playing grammar school games about writing out low numbers and use digits starting at 1st St.

It's interesting that you oppose the use of words instead of numerals on the basis of it being harder to read at speed, but you don't recognize that the NY way of omitting the "th" is also meant to be easier to read at speed.

[Scott5114]

I wish more places would just do what NYC does, post "15 St" on signage, which is understood to mean Fifteenth Street.

That's lame. It's not "Fifteen Street", it's "Fifteenth Street", which reduces to numbers as "15th", not "15".

In Atlanta, older signs for the 10 St/14 St exit spelled out the number, "Tenth St" "Fourteenth St". About 2 decades ago GDOT changed it to "10th St" etc.

Spelling out the words for ordinals is even worse, because it's harder to recognize at speed ("Fourteenth" and "Fifteenth" look sort of close at a glance, as do "Second" and "Seventh") and it's sort of pretentious–what are you gonna do when you get to the newer parts of the city, write out "One hundred and twenty-second Street"? No, you're going to use digits, so stop playing grammar school games about writing out low numbers and use digits starting at 1st St.

It's interesting that you oppose the use of words instead of numerals on the basis of it being harder to read at speed, but you don't recognize that the NY way of omitting the "th" is also meant to be easier to read at speed.

Because that's not the same thing.

Our brains work on quick pattern recognition. Reading doesn't happen by you consciously looking at each glyph in a word and piecing them together–your brain recognizes a pattern in the glyphs and says "Oh, hey, this word looks a lot like 'stork' cause it's five letters and it's got an ascender in the second and fifth slots." (Obviously, there's a bit more that goes into it than that, but that's the basic idea.) This tendency in mental processing is why the 2009 MUTCD required lower-case text on destination messages, because the unique shapes of words set in mixed-case text helps speed mental text processing.

The main problem with writing out ordinal numbers is that a lot of English words for numbers are so damn long. Sure, you can spot the difference between "stork" and "stark" pretty quickly, but how about "Storkanstarkandstorkand" versus "Storkanstorkandstarkand"? At speed, Fourteenth and Fifteenth are a long string of letters starting with "F" and ending with "teenth". "Fxxteenth"–better take a good look closer to figure out what those x's really are. "Seventh" and "Second" also more or less blend together into "Sexxnxx".

Meanwhile "15th" and "29th" are two digits and two letters, or four characters total. Digits are generally pretty easy to tell apart from one another (although long strings of digits are not, but fortunately it's rare to get a street with more than a three-digit number outside of Utah), and it's such a short expression, so this is extremely easy to parse. "Seventeenth" is 11 characters and "17th" is 4, which means you can eliminate 7 characters that your brain doesn't have to parse.

Meanwhile, going from "17th" to "17" only eliminates two characters, at the expense of making the sign less accurate to spoken language, like you might get from someone saying their address to you or giving you directions. Including the ordinal gives the brain context to why this number is here, since it is seeing "##th" and going "Oh, this is an ordinal number, which usually only appears as a numbered street or avenue", as opposed to just "##" and thinking "Okay, why is this number here?" and having to actually read the surrounding text to glean the context that this is a numbered street. (Fortunately, the way signs are constructed in the US means that bare cardinal numbers that aren't set off from the main text by way of an exit tab or shield don't appear on guide sign legends much, although there are outliers like "29 Palms" where they do.)