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phoog
phoog
09:10
@littleadv "mostly exclusionary/discriminatory, unsurprisingly": has this been documented? I always attributed it to the US's size and the relatively small number of widely spoken languages in North America (three) and -- perhaps more importantly -- scripts (one). Spanish and French speakers are more likely to be able to read "bridge" than "мост" after all.
But mostly size. And also the resistance to change that we seem to have inherited from our English roots, also seen in the resistance to the metric system.
@littleadv also, the walk/don't walk signs were not the only ones where the pictorial change stuck -- pedestrian crossing signs are another. I haven't seen a "ped xing" sign in years.
@JackAidley only four signs were chosen in 1909. In 1909 only very rich people could own cars, and, being very rich, they could also afford to travel around Europe. If you look at that 1909 document it's difficult to imagine any reason other than language diversity for adopting those signs, and the rest of the document deals with other matters concerning cross-border automobile traffic.
@littleadv wouldn't most well-to-do minorities in the US speak English at least well enough to be able to learn the meaning of stock phrases such as "sharp curve ahead"? Those with limited English would mostly be recent immigrants, who would mostly be economic migrants with limited means. But they too would learn English.
I agree that English-language signs are a barrier; I just find the cross-border temporary visitor the more compelling reason for language-free signs, and the relative lack of these in the US the more compelling reason for the slow adoption of pictograms.
@littleadv I find Wiktionary's etymology more convincing, which has it a Germanic word related to the noun "stop" as in a doorstop: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stop#Etymology_1
@WGroleau indeed, but "stop" is widely recognized. Still, this is the reason for using a unique shape and color for the sign. You know what it means regardless of the word written on it or the script in which the word is written. Or even, indeed, if it has a pictogram of a hand on it.
@RonJohn I think the point isn't that some people don't have the right but that the right is made available unequally. Unequal provision of education is more pernicious than not providing it at all because it's not as simple to establish that people are being deprived of something. Even within a single municipality, the quality of public school education can vary from one school district to another.
@user46971 I find this analysis more convincing, but I wouldn't put it in terms of "time and money" vs. "convenience for a few foreigners" -- there is also the safety issue of foreigners not understanding the signs, which is probably fairly small. Against this you also have the time required for what number -- over two hundred million? -- of US drivers to learn the new signage system and the safety impact of that, which would be negative at least in the short term.
@littleadv ok, which period in US road sign design do you contend was motivated by exclusionary considerations? Again, I don't deny that it has this effect, but I'm not aware of a specific intent -- unlike Robert Moses's urban and suburban planning. Is it something along those lines? Is it similarly documented?
 
7 hours later…
littleadv
littleadv
17:10
@phoog historically in the US actual literacy has little to do with the literacy tests and requirements. It is also not true to say that this large country is uniformly english-speaking. Remember that just about 150 years ago large parts of it were parts of Mexico and Spanish is still widely spoken in Southern US.
So when people in power need to decide on the rules, and they have a tradition and pattern of deciding on rules that would be harder for minorities to comply with, why wouldn't we think that this is one of the examples? You're saying "don't assume mal intent", but I don't need to assume. Jim Crow laws show that mal intent was there. Some of them used literacy as a tool against minorities too, and they were enacted at the same time.
Back to today, many argued "well, now it's not a problem, so why change", and the answer to that is that noone is asking to change. The question was about roots, not about now.
 
1 hour later…
user46971
user46971
18:19
@littleadv: The Jim Crow "literacy" tests were often designed with trick questions to ensure that nobody could actually pass them.

US road signs contain straightforward driver-relevant information like "do not pass", "no stopping any time", "road narrows", "hill", or "draw bridge". Yes, you do need to have basic English literacy to read the signs. But that doesn't constitute a deliberately-exclusionary literacy test.

But what you are claiming is that:

* At the time the signs were designed, there was a significant number of people in the US who were either illiterate or non-English spea…
 
2 hours later…
littleadv
littleadv
19:51
@user46971 you're presenting the exact argument Jim Crow supporters presented. "It's straight forward", "It's simple". While that may seem true to you and now, that's not the point. The point is that 100 years ago "to have basic English literacy" was in fact a high bar, may even be higher than digging out some gold nuggets and becoming rich.
The point I'm making is that it was unnecessary bar, and giving that it was non-trivial and unnecessary - in my view shows malicious intent. I didn't state it as a fact in my answer, mind you.
user46971
user46971
20:07
@littleadv: You seem to be assuming that the educational "bar" for English text-based signs is inherently higher than that for non-text-based signs. I'm not sure I agree with that.

*If* you can read English, then when you see a sign that says "no stopping any time", you don't stop. OTOH, if you see a circular sign with a blue background and big red X on it, you'd have no clue what it means *unless you have explicitly been taught* that it prohibits stopping.
phoog
phoog
20:39
@user46971 not everyone who drives owns the car they're driving. There were lots of black chauffeurs in the south. And black people who kept chauffeurs' caps in their own cars in case they were stopped by the police.
I'm not convinced that initial designs were made to suppress minorities -- they were made before people even thought of pictorial signs. You want to warn people of a sharp curve, you put up a sign saying "sharp curve ahead." But I have no doubt that people capitalized on the need for literacy to drive as a way of suppressing minorities and the poor.
This debate would be easy to resolve by looking at some driver's license tests from the Jim Crow era and perhaps comparing those from Jim Crow states with those of other states. I don't suppose these are readily available on the internet, however.

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