Why is this country so full of road signs? The brightly colored signs are screaming at you from all sides, but how many tell you something that is really useful. Maybe half.
A while ago, on my way to the editorial office, I was stopped in the village of De Kwakel.
Open window.
say good morning.
And in the meantime, think very hard about what could be wrong. Too hard? Through red? Broken lamp? Expired APK? No, nothing to think of. Alcohol control maybe? At a quarter to nine in the morning?
The agent starts a chat and asks where I am on my way. ‘To Hoofddorp’, I say, ‘to work.’ And when I think that now that blower comes out, the conversation takes a different turn: ‘You can’t drive here at all.’ Short circuit in my head. I drive this road several times a week, it’s just a two-way street, I have a normal passenger car. How? “This road is closed in the direction you were driving between 07:30 and 9:00 am,” the officer said. My eyes roll out of my head, I don’t understand. “Is that new?” I ask. No, says the agent, that has been the case for years. ‘Is there a road sign for that?’, I ask? That indeed turns out to be the case. For years in fact, and I’ve never seen it.
I get my print handed out and is sent back, so I can see with my own eyes that there is indeed a sign that clearly states that no cars are allowed in here from Monday to Friday from 7.30 am to 9 am. Must be against cut-through traffic and to be honest: that’s why I drive there.
My objection to the officer is dismissed as unfounded, as I do not deny that I committed the offense. My arguments that the sign is in a place where as a driver you should focus your eyes on the crossing traffic of a service road, on the cyclists who can come from two sides and the car traffic in front, behind and to the right of you is put aside, Unfortunately.
I’ll take the loss, but since that day I’ve started paying more attention to road signs. Not necessarily on what’s on it, but how many there are sometimes on a small surface and how little they sometimes add to logical thinking. Such a sign has also cost money, must also be kept clean (and sometimes put upright) and if we do not place signs, it saves taxpayers money. For example, if you come off the Meent in Rotterdam and enter the Coolsingel, the last sign you see on the Meent is ‘end 30 km/h’ and the first you see on the Coolsingel, both left and right: 30 km /h. In my view, all completely unnecessary, unless you want to defend that you should be able to drive 50 km/h at the intersection itself.
But in the unconscious you know that the country is full of signs that are simply there and that is at the expense of the attention of signs that are important. How many could we take away? I think half.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl