Less signs, less accidents

Less signs, less accidents: "Roads Gone Wild is a piece in Wired from December 2004 that a reader just brought to my attention. I love it. Here’s why:

Hans Monderman is a traffic engineer who hates traffic signs. Oh, he can put up with the well-placed speed limit placard or a dangerous curve warning on a major highway, but Monderman considers most signs to be not only annoying but downright dangerous. To him, they are an admission of failure, a sign - literally - that a road designer somewhere hasn’t done his job. “The trouble with traffic engineers is that when there’s a problem with a road, they always try to add something,” Monderman says. “To my mind, it’s much better to remove things.” "

Signal vs. Noise is a great blog about well thought design, and although it is the blog of 37 Signals, a software company, they appriciate design in all of its forms. For some reason, I really liked this piece, talking about the designers of roads. Who ever really thought of traffic as a medium of art? Well, when you read this, you can see how one would think that way. I enjoy finding something that I don't normally find interesting turned on a new corner to suddenly become interesting from a context I can grok and appriciate.