I have seen the signs
Has anyone ever thought about the amount of shite at the side of Irish roads?
I’m not talking about the old mattresses, supermarket trolleys and other stuff that has just been dumped.
No. I’m talking about the number of signs.
It never really struck me until I saw the alternative – a road system where signs are only erected if they are essential.
Take a drive on any road in Ireland and you will be accosted by signs warning you to put your seat belt on. You will see signs proudly proclaiming the number of deaths in the last couple of years, as if it were some kind of all-Ireland fucking competition. You will see signs exhorting you to tune into some local radio for “traffic information”. There are signs advertising Bed and Breakfasts, “Tourist Attractions”, festivals, local pubs and every fucking thing under the sun.
If there is some kind of match on, of course you will find a clatter of irritating signs saying that “so and so’s bar wishes The Lads all the best in Dublin” or some such shite.
And when you are done with all the above, you may even be lucky and find one that tells you that “Jesus loves you”.
All these signs do is distract. When you are supposed to be concentrating on the road ahead, you are reading some fucking useless sign telling you that Ballygobackwards is holding its village fete two months ago.
My award winner is one I saw some months ago on the M50, which [for non-Irish readers] is a lethal “motorway” [more often a car park] that circles Dublin. It was a huge monstrosity of a sign with flashing lights that spelled out different messages if you watched it long enough. It’s main message was to watch out for the car in front! Of course, most motorists would be concentrating too much on the sign to see its next message to bother about the car in front.
In France there is a remarkable lack of signage.
On the main routes, you will find massive gantries straddling the road, telling you which lane to be in for various destinations. At junctions, you will find large signs telling you where the side roads go.
They tend not to bother much with warning signs, as they assume a reasonable level of intelligence in the driver. So if you see a sign warning of a bad bend, you had better fucking believe it – it will be a bad bend.
Speed limits are well signposted, to such an extent that they even give advanced warning of a limit.
I wonder if anyone has ever actually done a survey into the number of accidents that are caused by Irish signage?
Maybe they should introduce a new one?
DANGER
Reading signs is a hazard
I havn’t drove a car for many years now but still have my license. Every month we northerners from Freedom2 Choose meet at a pub in Drighlington, not far from Bradford, (where we can smoke INSIDE as the landlord is fighting this nanny state ban.
One of our members lives not far from me (Darlington) and gives me a lift to these meetings. A week gone Sunday we were winding our merry way to the meeting and, bored I suppose, I started reading the many signs en route I thought, WTF? Yep, there was that sign saying xxx number of drivers were killed on that particular piece of road. Every roundabout we came to had the ‘obligatory’ sign signalling “turn left for the car boot sale or garden centre” etc. As a matter of fact, every roundabout that had grass was obscured by the daftest of signs.
One sign I didn’t see though was “turn right for your tobacco products!” It’s against the law, don’t you know.
I suppose it’s a sign of the times eh…lolol.
BigYin – It is many many years since I last drove in the UK [come to think of it, 41 years? Jayzus how time flies!] but it sounds like the two countries are very similar. Of course a lot of these signs are the Nanny State in action again – ‘mind your speed’, ‘speed kills’, ‘wear your seatbelt’ and shite like that.
I wonder just how many people see a sign saying ‘X people killed last year’ and immediately stop the car in case they are next? Hah!
Amen.
I especially like having to stop at the rent-a-stoplight (after passing six warning signs that the stoplight was ahead/300m/200m/100m/imminent) while the boys in yellow spend two days putting up yet another one. We live in one of the remotest areas there is, but some stretches of our roads look like Vegas without the neon, there are so many signs on both sides.
With so many people out of work, it would be lovely if a few good men could be hired to take the signs all down. Of course for every man taking down a sign, there needs to be another fellow to supervise him, and another fellow to turn the STOP/SLOW sign at the oncoming cars, then another fellow to hold the shovel, and finally a youngest one to make tea for them all before they start, halfway through, and when they’ve finished. That’s how it works, right?
I was just comtemplating the issue of road signage myself.
Was dropping a passenger off in Phibsboro yesterday, en rout from Ardee to Wexford. There were so many “Yes” and “No” posters around the city centre, it was next to impossible to see or follow the (in themselves hideous and ridiculous) new-fangled Junction signage that has sprouted up around the fair inner city…
I gave up, and kept heading south until I reached the countryside…
It’s a sign of the times.
Susan – Don’t be giving the Gubmint ideas. They’ll have us all out digging up things, like they used to in the Famine times.
Francis – One of the huge pleasures of this holiday is missing the worst of the electioneering posters. They drive me mad. Not only are they a blight on the landscape, I doubt that they would sway anyone except for the seriously deranged.
TT – Yes. *yawn*
Yeh we’re mad freaky for signs here. Mostly advertising and road signs but some that warn ‘speed camera ahead’ which is rather nice of them!