this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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It does?!
With the wide circle that would normally be red it means no bikes beyond this point in Europe and most of the world
well, that's very counterintuitive for someone from south america. I'd read it as a sign to communicate the presence of bikes to car drivers.
Warning/Attention signs have a triangle shape:
Poor design. If you were colour blind, that sign would be very confusing. It needs a line through it.
For example, these signs all mean not to do something, and anyone should be able to figure that out:
Everybody from Europe would get the (un?)intended meaning of the sign in the cartoon (biking prohibited) and it's black and white. It just needs to be taught once.
No it wouldn't. That border shape only exists in red for prohibitions. Even if you were colour blind you could see the border. There is no other sign you could mix it up with.
The strikethrough is in use for a different purpose, to cancel a previous sign (i.e. end of the bike lane).
There is a reason it's red though, so it stands out. You might not have the time/attention available to clock if the sign has a circle around it if you're color blind. You see a circle sign with a bike. You have to look extra hard to see there's another (possibly faint to you) circle on the sign.
That said, I'm not colorblind and forget exactly how that works so maybe the circle actually looks black to them or something.
Why would color blind people struggle with this sign? There are no similar looking signs which mean something different.
The closest one would be this one:
And any color blind person is able to distinguish those two easily.
I see how it can be confusing for someone not used to it but for anyone who grew up in a country where this is the default it is perfectly understandable.
Accessibility needs to be universal. There may not be other signs like that in a particular city or country, but the rest of the world uses a line through "do not" signs.
Even a child could understand what it means, compared to different random coloured edge markings. And that's exactly the point.
your defaultism is showing. In fact most of the world uses a white sign with red border to mean a prohibition.
and in fact children need to be taught what traffic signs mean all over the world, they don't magically know it
That's crazy.
Like, this sign means maximum speed limit, not "don't go 20"...
To me, it's illogical.
Like, how on earth would the right be better than the left in explaining that bikes are not allowed?
The use of a red border needs to be consistent, if it were to mean prohibition. Yet, it's not 🧐
The thick line on the left covers up part of the bike, making the sign overall harder to read.
Also, the red border on the 20 does make sense, as it's a speed prohibition on going over 20.
Are your "do not enter" signs just the word ENTER, but with a red circle border? 😂 I'm kidding.
Vienna convention signs are usually avoiding conveying information via text. Other than stop sign, for historic reasons I guess. Text might be present, but it's usually supplementary to the sign itself, and doesn't do anything by its own.
Our "do not enter" looks like this
See a line through the sign! /s
But in all seriousness, road signs need to be consistent and convey very quickly what the message is to a road user. If someone has to decipher that a red ring means "do not", except for speed limits, then consistency is lost.
The problem I have with signs here in North America, is that they are largely just ignored 😫
Nobody has to decipher anything. Everyone is taught from childhood about the most important signs, everyone grasps basic rules and exceptions, and when you learn how to drive, you learn and memorize more obscure sings, and then you just know them, no deciphering needed. It's the same both in America and in the rest of the world.
You seem to think that American signs are intuitive and not require learning, but that's not true, it's just you're familiar with them, you know the rules and so it's easy for you.
Well, I'm in the USA. I'm just here to defend UK road signage
Those are pictograms, they aren't "logical", it's a language, it can't follow a logic. It's like me saying that "road sign" is an illogical name, we all know it's Verkehrsschild.
All language and meaning is rooted in culture - including pictograms.
What would lead to the highest rate of adoption would be universality - both in use and in meaning, which, unfortunately isn't there yet.
Some european countries use the "crossed out" version on all prohibition signs (circular, black on white with a red outline, and the rest only on directional arrows. No state doesn't use them, thus failing the secind aspect of universality (consistency).
In general, a red circle means "no", regardless of it being crossed out. Swapping the red outline for black (and adding in the cross for good measure) suddenly makes the sign mean "now yes".
Blue signs (obligation) sometimes carry stronger instructions than red ones, and often times the same (e.g. "no tirning left" or "you can only go right" mean the same).
Some places, for readability's sake make the cross made of multiple thinner lines with empty space, showing the pictogram underneath.
However, what you showed is in fact poor design, as opposed to what you're calling poor design yourself.
Most people aren't colorblind in that they don't see any color (just shades of grey), most, in fact, do see some colors.
Wanting to be fully inclusive, we have three main categories of signs to cover (currently used under the Vienna convention). These are: Obligatory signs (red on blue, no outline), Prohibitory signs (black on white, red outline) and End of prohibition (black on white, black outline, crossed out).
These signs can be fully distinguished by someone truly colorblind - the first group of signs has no outline, the second does, and the third is additionally crossed out.
Sure, the second and 3rd categories could've been swapped out (red being additionally crossed out and black not).
However, the Vienna convention was written in the late sixties, pretty much at the apex of black-and-white photography. So, on a b&w photo, a red sign wouldn't be red. It being crossed out (and black), someone not colorblind would probably jump to the conclusion that, crossed out, it wasn't important. The outline gives some additional contrast on a light background, carrying a resound meaning - "yes" or "no".
That's why this style was chosen. It's a vestage of a bygone era, but in context it makes sense. And, with "true" color blindness being kind of like a black-and-white camera, the current arrangement is in fact probably the best for colorblind people.
Additionally, when rolling down a highway past the sign you glanced at only for a split second, the red cross would only serve to obscure the pictogram. The pictogram being whole aids in legibility. If it's the end of the prohibition, it not being as clear seems to be the better alternative.
We go through all the trouble of making signage without language barriers and still can't communicate, it's ridiculous. I would 100% misunderstand European signs in a quick moment even knowing what they should mean, because I have to unlearn 40 years of sign instinct.
Yet you can understand a red light, even without a strike through. Europeans just consistently transferred the principle. A crossed out sign means the regulation ends there, which is extremely intuitive.
same for Europeans in America, we would think all your bike lanes are forbidden for bikes
You have clearly never been to my part of America. There are no bike lanes.
Oh good point about color blindess. I never thought about that.