PRECISION DRIVING
Read and heed the signs
The Department of Transportation approves, designs and places road signs to improve traffic flow and enhance driver safety. I suggest that we all read and heed them.
Signs may be permanent or temporary, but they are all considered by traffic engineers to convey important information to drivers. Creating signs and placing them are formidable tasks, so the least we drivers can do is give them consideration.
The first challenge for sign designers is to communicate messages in one to three words; at speed, drivers have too little time to absorb lengthy messages. Secondly, the size, shape and color of signs must optimize delivery of the content. Finally, sign placement is a daunting task; if drivers are warned of one cautionary situation, virtually all of them must be covered, or drivers, dependant on warnings, may miss a hazard.
Heeding road signs may seem like common sense, but it’s obvious that we don’t all adhere to signage’s dictates. Drivers regularly exceed posted speed limits — signs that are very unambiguous. And speed limit signs are not the only ones unnoticed or ignored. Today I watched a vehicle make a right-hand turn during a red light indication at an intersection with a blatantly-displayed “NO TURN ON RED” sign. Last weekend, someone asked me who has the right of way during a freeway merge — evidently, they have missed the “YIELD RIGHT OF WAY” signs posted at the end of nearly every freeway entrance ramp.
Signs certainly don’t insure driver safety, but they help if noted with regard. Advance warnings of construction, congestion, bumps, hills, grades, detours, curves and curve speeds are all displayed for drivers via signage. Some of these situations are permanent, some are temporary, and others are ever-changing.
Information pertinent to temporary and changing conditions is the hardest to impart through signs. Changeable electronic reader boards are helpful for getting timely data to drivers in these situations.
While recently driving on a winding stretch of Washington’s SR 14 I found out that temporary signs do not always communicate a clear message. I was non-compliant when I thought I was compliant.
The first temporary sign sitting on the shoulder read, “35 MPH AHEAD,” followed by one reading “FLAGMAN AHEAD,” and then another stating, “BE PREPARED TO STOP.” Appropriately, I slowed, and within a few hundred feet saw two pickup trucks parked at the shoulder. A flagman with a “SLOW” sign on a stick stood by the window of one of the pickups conversing with its driver.
I drove slowly by them, then for another quarter mile down the road, but saw no more equipment, workers, signs, cones or anything else but roadway. I began to increase my speed, and was back up to the 65 mph limit a half mile past the flagman.
After driving another half mile of the winding road, I rounded a corner and was surprised by another pair of pickups on the opposing shoulder giving the same warning to drivers that I had seen in my direction of travel. At this point, on my side, was a temporary sign at the edge of the road reading, “END CONSTRUCTION.”
Even though I felt I was using due care and caution, I’d been speeding through the construction zone. I’m very aware that “END CONSTRUCTION” and “END ROAD WORK” signs are posted at the termination of established road projects. But I’ve also passed many “flagged” sites where once past the flagman, the work is over. Maybe there is a new rule that requires “end” signs at worksites, but I can’t find one.
Anyway, with the absence of machinery and people between the two flagmen, and the curves obscuring the second flagman post, I was misinformed. I’ve now learned that temporary signage may not tell the whole story. Workers may not have all the necessary signs in the truck to convey a complete message — something like, “ROADWORK FOR 2 MILES” would have made it safer for anyone working that winding section of road.
Signs are all placed with good intent — please read and heed them.
Readers may write to Bill Love, c/o The Spokesman-Review Auto Section,P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210. Or you may contact him via e-mail at precisiondriving@spokesman.com.
