A few days ago, I posted about
this awkward new APL in Georgia. I thought that it might've been inspired by a practice I'd seen in Florida. Since then, I've discovered that New Hampshire, Michigan, Missouri, and arguably New York have also apparently adopted this convention of using a simple-exit APL as a subtle means of signaling to drivers that an upcoming split will be signed with one or more properly-warranted APLs once an additional lane comes into play downstream. This has happened despite the fact that there's no such sign in the MUTCD, and despite the usual case that a simple arrowless conventional sign should be adequate to direct exiting traffic into the correct lane. To me, it seems unlikely that so many state D'sOT came up with this independently. Was there some discussion and coordination in channels that we're generally not privy to?
I believe that a key reason to follow signage conventions is that doing so communicates useful information even to drivers who couldn't accurately sketch out a proper BGS if their lives depended on it. I see this apparently-emerging convention as a laudable case of design pros exploiting human nature to accomplish a worthwhile purpose, which I think is pretty cool regardless of whether the actual convention is a good idea.
What I'm talking about, from New Hampshire c/o freewaydriver405. This is before the added lane:

And this is after. In this case, the added lane comes from an onramp, but Florida (at least) has used it where the lane is added independently:
