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Archive for September 1st, 2009

Name That Sign

I got them all right — but you’d be somehow disappointed if I didn’t, right? Not that it was very difficult (though I will admit to taking a flyer on the “hazardous materials” entry). For a real run for your money have a go at the U.K.’s Highway Code (my favorite is the warning sign that says, simply, “ford”; hint, it’s not product placement).

(thanks Peter)

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Posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 8:36 pm by: Tom Vanderbilt
2 Comments. Click here to leave a comment.

If You Can’t See My Mirrors

Though I didn’t see the above fine specimen represented, my pal Phil Patton’s treatise on the graphic design of truck warning stickers is well worth a read. Unlike so many other segments of road safety, it is utterly unstandardized, and filled with interesting variation.

That raises an interesting point, how warning someone about the same hazard can involve different strategies. One way is to simply say DON’T, without further explanation. Graphically, this is represented by the classic circle and slash over an icon representing an activity. But another way is to show the consequences of an act. You can warn people away from a behavior by depicting its results. Think of the dramatic arched back of a person in the throes of electrocution in some signs. Verbally, a famous case of this approach is the mother’s classic warning about the Red Ryder B-B gun her son dreams of, in the 1983 film A Christmas Story: “You’ll shoot your eye out!”

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Posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 4:21 pm by: Tom Vanderbilt
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Conflicts

Two disturbing things across the transom. The former attorney general of Ontario, charged in the death of a cyclist in Toronto (ironically in light of the recent press on Chris Cavacuiti), apparently in some kind of altercation.

And in Wisconsin, a current legislator (one account says his license was once suspended) blows a red light, striking a cyclist.

(thanks Rob)

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Posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 2:18 pm by: Tom Vanderbilt
12 Comments. Click here to leave a comment.

Touché

Via the BBC:

There has been traffic chaos in two Paris suburbs after their feuding mayors declared the same busy road one-way, but in opposite directions.

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Posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 12:36 pm by: Tom Vanderbilt
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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

Please send tips, news, research papers, links, photos (bad road signs, outrageous bumper stickers, spectacularly awful acts of driving or parking or anything traffic-related), or ideas for my Slate.com Transport column to me at: info@howwedrive.com.

For publicity inquiries, please contact Kate Runde at Vintage: krunde@randomhouse.com.

For editorial inquiries, please contact Zoe Pagnamenta at The Zoe Pagnamenta Agency: zoe@zpagency.com.

For speaking engagement inquiries, please contact
Jenna Meulemans at the Knopf Speaker Bureau.

Order Traffic from:

Amazon | B&N | Borders
Random House | Powell’s

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Drive-on-the-left types can order the book from Amazon.co.uk.

For UK publicity enquiries please contact Rosie Glaisher at Penguin.

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