ENRAGEMENT:Unintelligent transport systems (UTS)

What darned presumption! How do they know we were patient? Why the heck should we be patient?

The dunderheads who write these signs might hope we were patient, but actually a lot of us got most IMpatient and irritable, at the backups caused by that lane drop, especially as it turned out there wasn’t any work in progress anyway, just some guys who put out the orange cones hours early because they had nothing better to do, or forgot to take ‘em away before heading off to the bar at 3pm. In those circumstances abject apologies are a minimum requirement, hopefully supplemented by an 800 number to claim compensation for lost time.

“Thank you for your patience” etc just adds insult to injury.

We propose all such signs be immediately replaced by stern stuff like: “APOLOGIES FOR AWFUL ROAD GANG” and “BE ASSURED. THEY WILL BE FIRED.”

And then there are those fatuous invocations to drivers to “Stay alert” – as if we might otherwise think a little doze at the wheel was quite OK.

“Just shut-up, stoopid sign-writers,” is surely the normal reaction of sentient humans to such condescending fatuities.

Maryland’s State Highway Administration takes the art of stupid signing to unusual heights with some bozo’s idea of amusing rhyme. They have a whole set of signs for different types of construction sites, all featuring a cartoon character of a worker with hardhat and shovel silhouetted above, spouting stuff like:

• Taking a Stride

To Better Your Ride

• We’re breaking New Ground

To Get You Around

• Some Growing Pains

To Get More Lanes

• We’re Paving the Way

To Reduce Your Delay

• We’re Making it Wider (HOV lane)

For You and Your Rider

• This Road’s Growing

To Keep You Going

• We’re Improving

To Keep You Moving

But there’s worse to come. Aiding and abetting the proliferation of silly road signs is the US Government’s support for Intelligent Transport Systems and Advanced Traveler Information Systems under whose ponderous titles there is lotsah Uncle Sam loot available for hightech multicolored reprogrammable signage. Now of course it is well-intentioned, and many of our best and brightest friends are involved in these worthy endeavors. The idea is great. Inform motorists. Let them know of backups ahead. Suggest alternate routes. Warn them of dangerous fog etc. All kinds of amazing changeable message signs are now being installed all over the country.

But the director of one ‘traffic management center’ supervising such signs told us the terrible truth. Operating them is a “royal pain in the butt,” he said. Because the phone is always ringing with someone noting that the signs aren’t saying anything and asking that their worthy cause be given a plug.

“The most demanding part of this job is not the traffic congestion, or the smashes, or the ramp meters, but saying No, No, No to people who want to use the variable message signs, and doing it nicely so you don’t lose your job because you got some high official’s wife offside when you knocked her back on a charity ad.”

We fear that not all such fancy-sign managers are of such steel wrought. We’ve noticed preaching signs urging motorists not to ‘drink and drive’ to ‘buckle up’ and to ‘take transit.’ It is only a matter of time, we fear, before the Maryland cartoon character, Mr Hardhat appears in animated form wielding that shovel energetically in moving color LEDs over the roadway. ITS could also allow them to interrupt our car radio, or mobile phone conversation to give us an audio rendering in syruppy tones of Mr Hardhat’s

execrable rhymes.

Ah, but there’s hope in this technology too. Maybe they’ll be able to develop an interactive system to convey instant motorist feedback to the traffic management center? Now that would be fun.