I cannot read these signs correctly at first go. I am forever wondering who set fire to the lane. Am I alone?
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The Edge of the American West 
47 comments
August 27, 2009 at 2:08 pm
kevin
No, no, you’re not alone. This has always driven me absolutely crazy. “Crossing School”? “Down Slow”? WTF?
Given that we’re taught in driver’s ed not to watch the road right in front of us but keep our eyes on the horizon, this encouragement to keep your eyes on the asphalt right over your hood is a little schizophrenic of them.
August 27, 2009 at 2:28 pm
mr earl
You are so not alone. It’s like having the movie credits scroll the wrong way.
August 27, 2009 at 2:32 pm
silbey
Annoying certainly it’s.
August 27, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Robert
There is the Ogden Nash poem:
Cross children walk,
Happy children run.
August 27, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Standpipe Bridgeplate
There is no Dana. ONLY BUS.
August 27, 2009 at 2:55 pm
eric
So the question clearly is, why do they do this? Is there some study that shows most everyone (not the fine readers of EotAW) understands this intuitively?
August 27, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Standpipe Bridgeplate
Even the experts are stumped.
August 27, 2009 at 3:03 pm
kid bitzer
there are a couple of contexts in which words are revealed to a driver this way.
one is when they are only visible with your headlights; your headlights make the nearest word visible first.
another is when you there is an unbroken string of cars ahead of you, and the words are revealed only as the last car moves ahead.
there too, the words are revealed in the order of nearest first.
i’m not sure those contexts are so common as to control the order.
but perhaps the thought is that in the other cases, the words are revealed simultaneously, and then people can cope.
August 27, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Standpipe Bridgeplate
Why, I remember reading that Language Log article when it was first posted. In blog years, I’m dead.
August 27, 2009 at 3:24 pm
eric
Does Language Log not have comments?
August 27, 2009 at 3:37 pm
eric
there are a couple of contexts in which words are revealed to a driver this way
… neither of which occurs on a bike path …
August 27, 2009 at 4:15 pm
kid bitzer
hah! everyone knows that the bikes at u.c. davis cover the paths as thickly as locust-swarms in kansas. you can’t see the ground ahead of you.
August 27, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Kieran
We were so all over this before EOTW became the new etc etc.
August 27, 2009 at 4:18 pm
dana
That doesn’t count.
August 27, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Josh
there are a couple of contexts in which words are revealed to a driver this way.
That doesn’t rhyme very well.
… Burma Shave.
August 27, 2009 at 4:23 pm
eric
We were so all over this before EOTW became the new etc etc.
But what have you done for us lately, Kieran.
August 27, 2009 at 4:23 pm
andrew
”
101
NB
”
said:
today
saw
I
sign
A
It took me a while to figure out “NB” meant “north bound.”
August 27, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Kieran
But what have you done for us lately, Kieran.
Not a stroke, sadly, not a stroke.
August 27, 2009 at 4:27 pm
eric
And what I wonder goes in the “etc etc”.
August 27, 2009 at 4:35 pm
ben
Does Language Log not have comments?
It is up to the discretion of the poster.
August 27, 2009 at 4:36 pm
ben
And what I wonder goes in the “etc etc”.
I guess “Crooked Timber”?
August 27, 2009 at 5:07 pm
AaLD
It took me a while to figure out “NB” meant “north bound.”
I thought you were driving through New Brunswick. (Do they have a hwy 101 there?)
August 27, 2009 at 5:31 pm
bitchphd
PK recently asked me the same question. And I gave him the same answer everyone’s giving here: yeah, it drives me crazy too.
August 27, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Yoda
What the problem is, I see not.
August 27, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Adam
Then there is what I always read as “Automatic Caution Door,” and monogrammed items equally “out of order.”
Who did decide this stuff? Less linear people?
August 27, 2009 at 5:55 pm
AaLD
Didn’t they teach all this stuff in Xing School?
August 27, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Ahistoricality
It’s more or less the same confustion you get when you learn a sinic Asian language, one of the ones which are traditionally written vertically from right to left (though all of them can be written horizontally, left to right, now), and so when you see vertical writing in English, it’s almost always left-to-right, which is, I’m afraid, backwards.
August 27, 2009 at 6:05 pm
AaLD
which is, I’m afraid, backwards.
Only if you’re a lefty.
August 27, 2009 at 6:46 pm
kevin
Maybe “bikes your walk” is one of those bits of old-school slang like “Bob’s your uncle”?
August 27, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Jason B.
Only if you’re a lefty.
Hey! Watch it. You impugning lefties? I’ll have to yank out your spine and floss with it. With my left hand. Between my widely-spaced teeth.
Okay, let’s just forget this thought experiment.
August 27, 2009 at 8:43 pm
DaKooch
When I first moved to the Sacto area some years ago and was confused by the “Ahead Stop” on some of the recently suburbanized roads I was told by a long time resident that it was so you could read it in the dreaded Tule fog. I’ve never experienced the phenomena in that area, but have down in the Delta and it seems quite plausible.
August 28, 2009 at 2:19 am
ajay
I rather like driving in the US and seeing signs at junctions that say not “GIVE WAY” but the rather more colourfully mediaeval “YIELD”.
August 28, 2009 at 5:50 am
Russell60
Up here in Vermont, we have construction trucks that pull out in front of us, with prominently placed signs hanging over their rear, saying, in large letters, “CONSTRUCTION VEHICLE–DO NOT FOLLOW.”
August 28, 2009 at 6:34 am
JPool
ajay,
It’s because we all want to imagine ourselves as US Senators. “I yield the intersection to the senior car from Massachusetts.”
In American English, “give way” unfortunately either sounds like Cookie Monster talk or, more directly, suggests collapsing.
August 28, 2009 at 7:36 am
Doctor Science
I love the French “Vous N’avez Pas La Priorité”. They don’t give you *orders*, they just explain the situation — obedience is up to you.
August 28, 2009 at 9:13 am
AaLD
Hey! Watch it. You impugning lefties?
No – I’m married to one, so I know better than that.
August 28, 2009 at 9:26 am
rea
It took me a while to figure out why all those vehicles had “ecnalubma” written on front of them, too.
August 28, 2009 at 9:31 am
Davis X. Machina
“Didn’t they teach all this stuff in Xing School?”
Ped Xing, not Yao Ming, may be the most famous Chinese man in America.
August 28, 2009 at 10:53 am
pain perdu
My pet peeve: “Right Lane Exit Only”. Its meaning is ambiguous: it could be “the lane is ending and you must exit”, or “if you exit here, there will be no entrance ramp to get back on”. I have seen it used for both situations. What’s wrong with “right lane must exit” for the first meaning?
August 28, 2009 at 10:58 am
AaLD
My pet peeve: “Right Lane Exit Only”. Its meaning is ambiguous: it could be “the lane is ending and you must exit”, or “if you exit here, there will be no entrance ramp to get back on”.
A metaphor for life itself?
August 28, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Urban Garlic
I find them annoying also, but also largely amusing.
My favorite is “AHEAD STOP”, which I figure must be the opposite of a head start.
August 28, 2009 at 2:29 pm
elizardbreath
Ooh, my bike path tells me “Peds to Yield”, which I understand to mean that I can plow right through them. If they wanted me to yield, they’d print it the other way up.
I have, somewhat egotistically, wondered if this is a reading speed issue. A fast reader sees the whole phrase at once, and reads it top to bottom. Maybe these signs are designed for a slower reader, who’s expected to take it them in one.word.at.a.time.
August 28, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Vance
Fair enough, eliz, until one tries to account for the reversal of the word order. I always imagine an old car with giant rust-holes in the floor, so the words appear one at a time between the driver’s feet.
August 28, 2009 at 3:29 pm
dana
My guess is that the words are in reverse order for low visibility and night driving. Still, running around the house insisting “bikes your walk!” is good for a few laughs.
August 29, 2009 at 8:22 am
politicalfootball
A metaphor for life itself?
Similarly, there is an electronic sign near my home that, regardless of traffic, always says “Expect Delays.”
August 30, 2009 at 11:26 am
dance
Does the “Expect Delays” sign ever *create* delays? I’m often annoyed at the electronic signs that take 2 screens to say something they could have fit into one screen, thus creating a slowdown as people cruise to catch the second screen.
I read “Wrong Way” upside down yesterday, and briefly panicked before sorting it.
September 2, 2009 at 2:33 pm
petescully
It took me ages to get it when I first came to the US. Well not ages, but a minute or so, plus several months of making jokes about who Xing Ped might be.