I like efficient drawings and flowcharts. I like trying to consolidate multiple messages into a coherent, terse, informative model. You should see some of my flow charts and network diagrams.
But there’s a time and a place. Traffic signage probably isn’t it, even though I admire this pic that Kelson [1] passes on from the Skyline Trail in SoCal.
I don’t object to what they’ve done — trying to show who yields to whom where there is more than one rule. It’s just that by the time you figure out where you are on the food chain, you’ve probably slammed your bicycle into a horse or something.
I wonder if it would be more straightforward in one of two ways:
1. Two signs (subject to graphic tweaking): “YIELD to HORSES ” and “CYCLES YIELD to ALL.”
2. A single sign that denotes top right-of-way priority (instead of suggesting who has lesser RoW than others), e.g.,:
RIGHT OF WAY BELONGS TO
1. HORSES
2. PEDESTRIANS
3. CYCLES
Maybe taper the font size (or graphic size) down, to make the priorities clearer. Or change #3 to “Everyone Else” so that viewers only have to see if they apply to one of two groups.
I dunno — maybe I’m trying to be too efficient here, too. But I think either of the above would work better than what someone else came up with above.
1 Comment To "Being a bit too efficient"
#1 Comment By decrepitoldfool On Wed 19-Dec-07 7:46pm @ 7:46pm
This is actually a difficult problem as anyone in advertising could verify. As Don Norman says; “Signs don’t work”. That is, getting anyone to notice any sign at all is tough, and communicating anything more complicated than “Stop!” is harder.
Here’s a sign trying to communicate a relatively complex idea; cascading right-of-way. Everyone yields to horses; bicycles yield to everyone, and pedestrians are in the middle. No word on rollerblades or scooters, thought some trails attempt to ban skateboards even if used for long-run transport. (One of the students in our college of business commutes to class on a 3-foot-long skateboard.)
One serious implication of pedestrian right-of-way over bicycles is that pedestrians should NOT attempt to “get out of the way” of bicycles. That way lies many accidents as a pedestrian can make lateral course-changes much faster than a bicycle can. But the cyclist will universally be blamed in the ensuing collision despite the physics involved.
Come Spring I’ll write a post about bicycle-pedestrian interactions. A far more complex topic than city council idiots and safety ‘experts’ suppose.