Signs With Design Errors

Started by CentralCAroadgeek, June 29, 2012, 08:22:36 PM

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CentralCAroadgeek

Here, you can show signs that have design errors to them. Made this thread so that the "Erroneous Road Signs" thread only shows signs with erroneous information. Inspired by this post by vtk:
Quote from: vtk on June 29, 2012, 04:10:20 AM
We need a thread for signs that aren't the worst, but are awkward or have minor problems that should be easily avoidable.

Here's a picture to start this off:

It's pretty hard to notice, but the exit number on this sign is crooked. By that, I mean that the "7" is lower that the other numbers. This sign is located on Highway 101 north in San Jose.


Alps

That ranks up there with the SB Garden State Parkway photo I took today where the NJ 72 shield is slightly off center.

Takumi

Another fine creation of Colonial Heights Department of Public Works. Strange font and too much white space.

Quote from: Rothman on July 15, 2021, 07:52:59 AM
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Don't @ me. Seriously.

national highway 1

^ I do like the lighting in your photo, Takumi, as it has the same character like a polaroid image.
:nod:
"Set up road signs; put up guideposts. Take note of the highway, the road that you take." Jeremiah 31:21

vtk

#4
US 35 WB approaching Octa

(damn cameraphone shutter lag!)

I don't think any of the legend on this sign should be in mixed-case (or Clearview, strictly speaking).  And of course the state route marker is backwards.  Must be relatively new, because of the use of CV and it's not on Street View.

Also, why no control cities on this or any other guide signs for this exit?  Columbus, Cincinnati, Octa, Milledgeville, TO OH 729, take your pick!
Wait, it's all Ohio? Always has been.

Central Avenue

lol backwards OH outline.

I've noticed that, with the adoption of Clearview, ODOT has started putting messages in mixed-case that they would previously have put in all-caps:




It's like someone noticed that all-caps Clearview is dumb but their boss forbids them from using the "old" font. :P

Routewitches. These children of the moving road gather strength from travel . . . Rather than controlling the road, routewitches choose to work with it, borrowing its strength and using it to make bargains with entities both living and dead. -- Seanan McGuire, Sparrow Hill Road

PurdueBill

Same types of issues in the 2009 Clearview just south of downtown Akron with mixed-case things that should be all-caps, but in this case the button copy signs also had the mixed-case where it didn't belong.  FOLLOW and NORTH ought to be all-caps.



And here is an example of the now-gone button copy that featured mixed-case for the FOLLOW and NORTH.  This pic was taken during the replacement process; the crew off to the right of the road is one of the sign replacement crews.


Interestingly, just south of there they did have FOLLOW in all-caps on the old button copy and new Clearview signs for 277.  The old sign is face-down in the grass; the new one has already changed in two ways--it got an enormous new tab with yellow LEFT field (the tab is about half the height of the main sign), and the error shield (I'd love to know what the error was--77?) was covered with a larger I-76 shield on a green background to cover the error.  If it's not one thing wrong with the signs, it's another....

elsmere241

Can't get it on Google Maps, but in Newark, DE on Christina Parkway nw-bound just past Elkton Road, there is (or was) this sign in black-on-white:

MERGE
LEFT
LANE
ENDS

Mr. Matté

Quote from: Compulov on July 02, 2012, 09:00:08 PM
I *much* prefer that newer variant of this sign. This way you know exactly what you're getting into. Reduced speed ahead is too vague. Am I going from a 50 zone to 25 (not unheard of), or just 45 to 40? This example from Allentown, NJ sticks with me: http://goo.gl/maps/4rNC
(above from the Least Useful Signs thread)

I passed that sign today on my bicycle and I saw something wrong with that sign clearly with my own eyes versus a blurry Streetview shot from 2007. It appears that the Speed Limit 40 part of that warning sign is just a reflective sticker pasted onto the yellow diamond base. I know this because whoever stuck that SL 40 onto the sign didn't do a good job, there were air bubbles and bunching (don't know the exact wording) on the white part of that sign. While this doesn't affect the conveying of the information on the sign especially if you're in a car (or the heavy trucks on that particular road from the concrete factory east of there) driving 55 mph, it's just sloppy workmanship.

vtk

Quote from: Central Avenue on July 03, 2012, 09:06:01 AM


Last year I offered some kind of intangible reward for the first photo of that new Clearview sign.  Without researching it, I think you probably win.  Enjoy your, um... was it digital brownies?
Wait, it's all Ohio? Always has been.

PurdueBill

I find the panels that ODOT added reading "LEVEL 1 TRAUMA CENTER" on the BBS for Exit 21C on I-76 really irksome.  Microscopic all-caps Clearview surrounded by what seems to be too much open space.  I know that they were probably leaving an appropriate amount of space above and below the text, but with the text so tiny, it just looks terrible.  Why not taller letters? Or two lines of text?

Fwiw, pictures of the corresponding sign eastbound always come out blurry.  However, that actually would be a good comparison to simulate less-than-optimal viewing conditions or eyesight.  The eastbound sign is overhead--note how all the other lettering is still legible (to me, anyway) when you view the full-size image, but the microscopic Clearview is much harder to read.  Why did they bother adding those panels if they are going to be so hard to read?

CentralCAroadgeek

^ I think that sign's very focus is to get more people to go to the trauma center because of trying to read that sign.  :sombrero:

roadfro

^^ The design error there is the "need" to advertise the fact that the hospital has a level 1 trauma center. I would argue most people don't even know what that really means... In an emergency, you're going to look for the nearest hospital period.
Roadfro - AARoads Pacific Southwest moderator since 2010, Nevada roadgeek since 1983.

roadman

Quote from: Central Avenue on July 03, 2012, 09:06:01 AM
lol backwards OH outline.

I've noticed that, with the adoption of Clearview, ODOT has started putting messages in mixed-case that they would previously have put in all-caps:




It's like someone noticed that all-caps Clearview is dumb but their boss forbids them from using the "old" font. :P



Is ODOT really still testing the pavement they put down 40 years ago?

That having been said, I would think this qualifies for "most pointless sign" instead.  Most states that have experimental installations, like the pavement marking test beds on I-80 in Pennsylvania, note the limits of the test area with small markers instead of large signs on S-beam posts.
"And ninety-five is the route you were on.  It was not the speed limit sign."  - Jim Croce (from Speedball Tucker)

"My life has been a tapestry
Of years of roads and highway signs" (with apologies to Carole King and Tom Rush)

NE2

Quote from: roadman on July 04, 2012, 11:13:24 AM
That having been said, I would think this qualifies for "most pointless sign" instead.  Most states that have experimental installations, like the pavement marking test beds on I-80 in Pennsylvania, note the limits of the test area with small markers instead of large signs on S-beam posts.
Except that this one is really strange, with four roadways, of which only two are in use at any time.
pre-1945 Florida route log

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J N Winkler

Quote from: roadfro on July 04, 2012, 04:22:01 AMThe design error there is the "need" to advertise the fact that the hospital has a level 1 trauma center. I would argue most people don't even know what that really means... In an emergency, you're going to look for the nearest hospital period.

I agree that this should not be signed, on the basis that patients for whom the distinction between Level 1 and lesser grades of trauma center is critical will not be trying to get to the Level 1 facility on their own.  Instead, they will be taken there by ambulance, in which case it is the paramedics who will not need to rely on signs for trauma center ratings, or by medevac, in which case signs on the road will not do any good.
"It is necessary to spend a hundred lire now to save a thousand lire later."--Piero Puricelli, explaining the need for a first-class road system to Benito Mussolini

agentsteel53

is that in such a bad neighborhood that there would be people dropping off gunshot victims, etc, at the Level 1 facility instead of calling an ambulance?
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PurdueBill

Quote from: J N Winkler on July 04, 2012, 11:59:05 AM
Quote from: roadfro on July 04, 2012, 04:22:01 AMThe design error there is the "need" to advertise the fact that the hospital has a level 1 trauma center. I would argue most people don't even know what that really means... In an emergency, you're going to look for the nearest hospital period.

I agree that this should not be signed, on the basis that patients for whom the distinction between Level 1 and lesser grades of trauma center is critical will not be trying to get to the Level 1 facility on their own.  Instead, they will be taken there by ambulance, in which case it is the paramedics who will not need to rely on signs for trauma center ratings, or by medevac, in which case signs on the road will not do any good.

I find it odd too, but I remember reading somewhere that Ohio was not alone in adding signage indicating Level 1 Trauma Center locations; South Carolina supposedly had something similar in the works at one time.  What drives me nuts about those particular signs is how tiny the all-caps Clearview is--why not use something legible?  (Wasn't Clearview made for uses that were NOT all-caps?)

Central Avenue

Honestly, I think the legibility issue with the "Level 1 Trauma Center" signs has little to do with Clearview--if they'd used FHWA lettering that tiny it would be just as illegible.

It seems like the easiest thing to do--short of using a bigger panel with two lines of text--would be to use a narrower series and increase the height of the lettering.
Routewitches. These children of the moving road gather strength from travel . . . Rather than controlling the road, routewitches choose to work with it, borrowing its strength and using it to make bargains with entities both living and dead. -- Seanan McGuire, Sparrow Hill Road

PurdueBill

Quote from: Central Avenue on July 04, 2012, 03:21:59 PM
Honestly, I think the legibility issue with the "Level 1 Trauma Center" signs has little to do with Clearview--if they'd used FHWA lettering that tiny it would be just as illegible.

It seems like the easiest thing to do--short of using a bigger panel with two lines of text--would be to use a narrower series and increase the height of the lettering.

That was my thinking when I saw it as well--why not something like a Series C or D or something that is tall for its width?--but ODOT loves Clearview now and the only Clearview widths that FHWA approved are 5-W and 5-W-R, so when ODOT uses Clearview, they seem to use 5-W--and then we are stuck with something like this.  If ODOT would consider using non-Clearview, then a narrower face would certainly have helped.  (The FHWA Clearview FAQ notes that 3-W, the counterpart of Series D, scored lower than D for legibility and is thus verboten.  So, if ODOT insists on Clearview, then they are stuck with the Series E(M) counterpart, which is too wide for its height for this instance.)

kphoger

Couldn't they have just left out the word Center altogether and conveyed the same meaning?
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
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Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

CentralCAroadgeek

On this sign along I-880 south, the exit tab is misaligned:

Compulov

Quote from: Mr. Matté on July 03, 2012, 04:25:38 PM
Quote from: Compulov on July 02, 2012, 09:00:08 PM
I *much* prefer that newer variant of this sign. This way you know exactly what you're getting into. Reduced speed ahead is too vague. Am I going from a 50 zone to 25 (not unheard of), or just 45 to 40? This example from Allentown, NJ sticks with me: http://goo.gl/maps/4rNC
(above from the Least Useful Signs thread)

I passed that sign today on my bicycle and I saw something wrong with that sign clearly with my own eyes versus a blurry Streetview shot from 2007. It appears that the Speed Limit 40 part of that warning sign is just a reflective sticker pasted onto the yellow diamond base. I know this because whoever stuck that SL 40 onto the sign didn't do a good job, there were air bubbles and bunching (don't know the exact wording) on the white part of that sign. While this doesn't affect the conveying of the information on the sign especially if you're in a car (or the heavy trucks on that particular road from the concrete factory east of there) driving 55 mph, it's just sloppy workmanship.

I wonder if that's a recent issue with that sign. I used to drive up that way at least once every few weeks (hence why I bought it up, I thought it was novel at the time) as I was driving between my apartment in East Windsor and my parents' place in Lakewood (I found the county routes to be a more relaxing trip than taking 195). I don't recall the sign peeling or bubbling when I saw it then, but I haven't been up that way since 2008.

national highway 1

Quote from: CentralCAroadgeek on July 05, 2012, 05:21:25 PM
On this sign along I-880 south, the exit tab is misaligned:

Also, shouldn't the top border of the main signface be included and also be continuous with the bottom border of the exit tab?
(by looking at the Bailey Ave example above)
"Set up road signs; put up guideposts. Take note of the highway, the road that you take." Jeremiah 31:21

KEK Inc.

#24
Quote from: national highway 1 on July 05, 2012, 08:29:25 PM
Quote from: CentralCAroadgeek on July 05, 2012, 05:21:25 PM
On this sign along I-880 south, the exit tab is misaligned:

Also, shouldn't the top border of the main signface be included and also be continuous with the bottom border of the exit tab?
(by looking at the Bailey Ave example above)

Not always.  California does both. 





The style in question is less common on overhead signs, but it's pretty common among smaller signs.

---

Here's an oddy only 10 miles away from the original post's sign. 



These are rare.  I think there may be a couple more on I-5.
Take the road less traveled.



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