One of the pleasures of living in America is how someone, somewhere, is trying to make your life easier. The locals here balance a notion of rugged individual freedom with a mass market consumerism that is focused on making the average life as easy as possible.
Frequently, ‘making your life as easy as possible’ equates with ‘not having to think.’ One of the ways this manifests itself is in signs. Stupid signs that tell you to do the most mindless things. In fact, sometimes the signs are so truly stupid that it requires thinking about them to ignore their message (thus reasserting our individualism?).
To me, the ultimate example of this are the Icon Parking signs. The image below is taken from the parking lot in my office in the old Port Authority building:
As you enter the well-lit, one lane, whitewashed tunnel to descend into the bowels of the parking lot, you are greeted with no fewer than 11 signs. 10 of them consists of the alternating slogans “pull ahead” and “drive slow”. Recall that you are in a narrow tunnel. By definition it affords no action other than driving ahead. Does one need to be told to drive slow? Presumably the driver has rounded a corner before and therefore can gauge the appropriate speed for turning?
I have no idea (and I’ve never parked there as I don’t drive to work; perhaps it is a truly treacherous corner and cows people in to attempting to reverse), but I can’t help thinking that’s there’s a larger message in the signs…