Comments by "Science in Engineering" (@matsv201) on "American Reacts to Why US Signs Are Different Than Everyone Else's" video.

  1. The Vienna convention really just picked and choose from signs that was already common. Sweden had a fairly deep investigation into signs already back in the 1930-tys and focus on warning signs that was deamd the most important. They found out that large simple monocromatic symbols was the fastest for the driver to absorb. It have nothing to do with the ability for people to read. When this was done in the 1930-tys nobody was thinking about people coming from other countries to drive. You couldn´t even drive to Sweden in the 1930-tys, because of water (now there are car ferries and bridges) The thinking was the shorter amount of time the driver look at the sign, the more time they could look on more important stuff... like the road. It was also found that black and white was actually not the colors that was the best to see. They test multiple different colors and it turned out that red, yellow and black was the colors that people cold sea easester far away There was also more rules implemented. That there was only alowed 2 (legal) road signs (stuff like names not included) on the same pillar. And also that there would have to be a minimum of 50 meters between pairs of signs. At the early days only warning and forbidden signs was a thing. They are all orange/yellow/black. Speed signs didn´t exist back then. When Vienna convent happens this was confused about being about snow (it even says its the reason on English Wikipedia), that was never the case. Its about the human eye. Yellow is easier to see than white. By the time of Vienna convent the warning and ban signs was copped by most countries in northern Europe, but but most of them chaining to orange-white-black probobly to mach other signs. While priority signs comes from other countries like UK and if i don´t remember wrong the information signs is from Netherlands. So the Convention is really a mix and match from different countries. Its worth saying that while Sweden ratified it back in the 60-tys. And some signs like the stop sign was pretty much already in place at that time. Most of the other signs was not change until the mid 90tys when entering the EU (really more signs added than change). Still to this date there are a few special signs like priority road that still is not to standard. It also worth saying that while no ban or warning signs have full word text, some have shorts (typically parking ban that have a day short), well.. apart from STOP, also some road information signs does have full word text. So main thing, the lack of text have nothing to do with understanding, it have to do with speed
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  2. Don´t you have sensors on the light in the US? At least where i live, a common practice is that in a crossing when nobody is around, all the lights are read, and when a car is approaching the crossing, the light turn green for that car just in time so it don´t have to slow down. If two cars come a computer try to figure out what signs can be turned green with out interference, the same for a pedestrian.
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