Distracting Miss Daisy

British born Duke psychologist John Staddon has an essay in the July/August Atlantic Monthly which makes the argument that the American love for traffic signs of all shapes, colors and sizes is ineffective at best and downright counterproductive in many cases. Ditto for many speed limits.

Staddon, the James B Duke Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and professor of Biology and Neurobiology, is not merely an anarchist. He has made his career out of studying adaptive behavior -- how animals and humans change what they've been doing in response to a new stimulus. So, between that and learning to drive on the wrong side -- and in North Carolina no less -- he's got some bona fides on the topic. "Collectively, the forests of signs along American roadways, and the multitude of rules to look out for, are quite deadly," he says.

What, Staddon asks reasonably, is the point of all these ridiculous signs that aren't even in the roadway, where the driver's eyes really should be focused? He writes:

Consider the stop sign. It seems innocuous enough; we do need to stop from time to time. But think about how the signs are actually set up and used. For one thing, there’s the placement of the signs—off to the side of the road, often amid trees, parked cars, and other road signs; rarely right in front of the driver, where he or she should be looking.

Then there’s the sheer number of them. They sit at almost every intersection in most American neighborhoods. In some, every intersection seems to have a four-way stop. Stop signs are costly to drivers and bad for the environment: stop/start driving uses more gas, and vehicles pollute most when starting up from rest. More to the point, however, the overabundance of stop signs teaches drivers to be less observant of cross traffic and to exercise less judgment when driving—instead, they look for signs and drive according to what the signs tell them to do.

American drivers have become so reliant on being told what to do at every curve and intersection that they seem to lose the ability to make their own decisions, he argues.

At the very least, he says, let's consider more roundabouts instead of four-way stops, and markings in the pavement, not on a stick off to the side.

It's fascinating, provocative stuff. ...Does the Secretary of Transportation need to be American by birth?!

SEE ALSO - July 8, 2008 - Signs blamed for highway crash http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/washington/AP-Bus-Wreck-NTSB.html