Signs With Design Errors

[Stratuscaster]

Not a design error per se, just poorly laid out within the confines of the California MUTCD.

[myosh_tino]

The legend for the Exit 103B panel seems awfully cramped amongst that exit tab. A very awkwardly designed sign on this sign assembly.

Not a design error per se, just poorly laid out within the confines of the California MUTCD.

IMO, there's very little Caltrans could have done to make layout any better.  The problem is you have a single dropped lane for CA-55 south which also serves as an option lane for CA-55 north.  Because Caltrans chose to include an I-5 pull through with down arrows pointing to each through lane, the CA-55 south sign is only 10 1/2 feet wide by my estimation which doesn't give you much room for a route shield, two lines of legend, a lane-drop panel and an exit "tab".  Even if California used external tabs, that CA-55 south sign would still have needed to use 12" E-modified for "Newport Beach" because the sign is too narrow to accommodate 16" legend.

For those of you with sign-making abilities, here is my drawing of the original sign with dimensions and details below...

I-5 Pull Through --- 486" x 120", 16" "Santa Ana", 36" I-5 Shield, 12" "NORTH"
CA-55 South --- 126" x 120", 12" "Newport Beach", 36" CA-55 Shield, 12" "SOUTH"
CA-55 North --- 220" x 120", 12" "Anaheim / Riverside", 36" CA-55 Shield, 12" "NORTH"
If you can lay this out any better while remaining within the dimensions of the existing sign panels, I would be thoroughly impressed.  I'll even allow the use of external exit tabs.

With all that said, I did try to improve the layout and here's the result...

The big change was to combine the two CA-55 signs into one so you'd only need one instance of the CA-55 shield.  I also reduced the size of the cardinal directions from 12" to 10" so I could increase "Newport Beach" from 12" to 13.3" E-modified.  The last change made was to drop Anaheim from the CA-55 north sign because, CA-55 doesn't go anywhere near Anaheim.  I-5 and CA-57 do.

[SignGeek101]

http://goo.gl/maps/qyCi5

Not sure if you can count this as a design error, but that arrow should be higher on that sign, not at the very bottom.

[jakeroot]

http://goo.gl/maps/qyCi5

Not sure if you can count this as a design error, but that arrow should be higher on that sign, not at the very bottom.

I'm not sure why the MOT went with the stubby arrow for those signs when just about every other sign has full-height arrows.

[KEK Inc.]

https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.195286,-122.789801,3a,21.1y,112.57h,90.6t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s5w9l7vWjMWj5PDetwkwKHQ!2e0

No; don't abuse 'NO ENTRY' signs like that.

[Brandon]

This has since been fixed:

[SignGeek101]

These brand new signs have a capital K when it should be a lowercase.

http://goo.gl/maps/UT5ZL

[jakeroot]

These brand new signs have a capital K when it should be a lowercase.

http://goo.gl/maps/UT5ZL

Improper use of metric! -- unless I'm mistaken, I do believe the SI symbols are supposed to be all lowercase, minus some like "mL".

[riiga]

These brand new signs have a capital K when it should be a lowercase.

http://goo.gl/maps/UT5ZL

Improper use of metric! -- unless I'm mistaken, I do believe the SI symbols are supposed to be all lowercase, minus some like "mL".

Both mL and ml are fine, but you're both right about the K. K is the symbol for (degrees) Kelvin, k the kilo prefix. There is no general rule about the case of SI symbols or prefixes though, some prefixes are upper case, but most are lower case.

[SignGeek101]

These brand new signs have a capital K when it should be a lowercase.

http://goo.gl/maps/UT5ZL

Improper use of metric! -- unless I'm mistaken, I do believe the SI symbols are supposed to be all lowercase, minus some like "mL".

Both mL and ml are fine, but you're both right about the K. K is the symbol for (degrees) Kelvin, k the kilo prefix. There is no general rule about the case of SI symbols or prefixes though, some prefixes are upper case, but most are lower case.

SI uses uppercase notation when the unit is named after someone. Examples include the Watt for James Watt, Pascal named after Blaise Pascal etc etc. Kilometre isn't named after anyone, so it should be a lowercase. mL (or L) is the only exception, because l looks like a 1.

100 L versus 100 l

[PurdueBill]

To be pedantic about a fine point: the abbreviation for a SI/metric (not exactly the same thing, but close) unit named after someone is capitalized, but the unit itself is not.  (e.g., the joule is named after Joule; the unit is lowercase but the unit capital J--same with the coulomb, volt, kelvin, hertz, newton, pascal, becquerel, etc.)  It's similar in formatting to chemical elements in that they are not proper nouns but their symbol gets first letter uppercase. 

Want fun with units and cases of letters?  The pressure unit "torr"....
name: torr (lowercase)
abbreviation: Torr (capital T)
Nearly every general chemistry text and most upper-level texts get it wrong according to the powers that be and use the lowercase one as the abbreviation.  Can you blame them though?

I can see that it's consistent across honorary units but the abbreviation being the same as the name is what kills you there.

On design errors, this two-for-one special drives me crazy every time I see it.  Both panels should read "next right" if not "Exit 3" (they were put in as part of the signage project that included adding exit numbering to OH 8), but neither does.  The lower sign looks like it belongs on the ramp approaching the signal.  "Keep right" is somewhat ambiguous as to whether or not to exit.  (Fortunately, if you did not exit, there is yet another hospital if you take the next exit--a couple to choose from, actually.)

[freebrickproductions]

Would Km be Kelvin*meters?
What in the world would you use that unit for anyways?

[riiga]

Would Km be Kelvin*meters?
What in the world would you use that unit for anyways?

Some sort of thermal bandwidth I'd guess, but I've never heard of such a unit being used.

[PurdueBill]

Properly I think that either a space or a raised dot should be used to indicate the multiplication (versus prefixing).  Not always a fan of citing Wikipedia, but the Derived Units section of the SI article shows examples with the raised dots as well as negative exponents which are used for denominator units.  So kelvin * meter would be K∙m.  One can probably come up with all sorts of interesting units that might wind up being needed to cancel others in an equation, I suppose. 

[Thing 342]

These brand new signs have a capital K when it should be a lowercase.

http://goo.gl/maps/UT5ZL

Improper use of metric! -- unless I'm mistaken, I do believe the SI symbols are supposed to be all lowercase, minus some like "mL".

Both mL and ml are fine, but you're both right about the K. K is the symbol for (degrees) Kelvin, k the kilo prefix. There is no general rule about the case of SI symbols or prefixes though, some prefixes are upper case, but most are lower case.

Prefixes beyond kilo (such as mega, giga, tera, and so on) are supposed to be capitalized, IIRC. Unit capitalization matters as well, with Mb and MB (the megabit and megabyte, respectively) being different units.

[PurdueBill]

These brand new signs have a capital K when it should be a lowercase.

http://goo.gl/maps/UT5ZL

Improper use of metric! -- unless I'm mistaken, I do believe the SI symbols are supposed to be all lowercase, minus some like "mL".

Both mL and ml are fine, but you're both right about the K. K is the symbol for (degrees) Kelvin, k the kilo prefix. There is no general rule about the case of SI symbols or prefixes though, some prefixes are upper case, but most are lower case.

Prefixes beyond kilo (such as mega, giga, tera, and so on) are supposed to be capitalized, IIRC. Unit capitalization matters as well, with Mb and MB (the megabit and megabyte, respectively) being different units.

Indeed, the case of the prefix is a big deal, and the unit should be in its proper case to avoid the wrong unit.  That is where this comes in as far as signs with design errors--on what signs you can find that are one-off metric ones, it's not uncommon to see things like "1 Km" or "1 KM" where it should/must be "1 km".  People used to laying out the bottom line in all caps (e.g., EXIT 1 MILE) may not be aware that the case of the letters is really important when metric units are used.

[KEK Inc.]

This has since been fixed:

Pretty much all of the signs in Cowlitz Co., WA are like that.

[jakeroot]

This has since been fixed:

Pretty much all of the signs in Cowlitz Co., WA are like that.

Just to confirm my suspicions, is the tab on the wrong side? I'm only hesitant to say "well of course" because A) the sign is on the right side of the road, and a left exit sign on the right side of the road sounds like nonsense, and B) the tab is on the side of the sign closest to the road, where (in my opinion) it is likelier to be spotted.

[KEK Inc.]

Pretty sure vanilla MUTCD standards state that exit tabs should reflect where the exit is going to be.  Of course, with the yellow 'LEFT' banner, that makes it sort of redundant.  For visibility sake, it really only matters in areas with overgrown foliage that may cover the right side of the sign.

[Kacie Jane]

This has since been fixed:

Pretty much all of the signs in Cowlitz Co., WA are like that.

It's only actually a few. I think I counted 3 on my last trip down there, two happened to be for the same exit (one in each direction).

[SignGeek101]

I don't know if this is a design error or not, but the shape of the interstate shield doesn't really look... standard. Not a fan of the series B use, but that happens often enough on 3 digit interstates.

http://goo.gl/maps/gdmf8

Compared to:

http://goo.gl/maps/nEx4f

[Zeffy]

^ Ah yes, the infamous bubble shield variant of the Interstate shield.

[6a]

Two design errors that are so severe, they are borderline information errors. Sorry no pics, but the first one is on GSV:
2. South side of Columbus, I-270 WB approaching I-71. Advance guide signs for I-71 display absolutely no indication that the right two lanes must exit. (Just in the last 24 hours, this part of 270 became four lanes WB, versus two before. The signs in question are new installs for this project, but they appear to be Clearviewized carbon copies of the old signs, complete with centered exit tabs.)

Passed through there today, they finally put up a portable message sign that no one reads, so at least they're aware of a problem.

[PurdueBill]

^ Ah yes, the infamous bubble shield variant of the Interstate shield.

Less common is the opposite--a squished 3DI shield for a 2DI.  It happens....Steve has a pic I got of one a few years back on his I-280 Ohio page.

If only they'd started with a bubble shield and compressed it back, it'd be fine.  But they started with a proper 3DI shield and compressed it.  Ugh!

[Stratuscaster]

That reminds me of some of the squished 2di shields in Wisconsin.