Colonial Pedestrian Signals?

I've just made a startling discovery: the pedestrian signals in the United States appear to be relics of - or at the very least echo - the country's colonial past*.

Let's start with the "stop" sign, known locally as the "don't walk" signal. In most places on this increasingly standardised planet, this depicts a standing man in red. Here in the New World, although the universal danger or warning colour is retained, the man is replaced by a hand clearly making the classic Red Indian "how!" greeting sign normally used in western culture to indicate an order to stop.

The "go" sign, by contrast, features the globally typical "walking man", though here too there is a twist: he's not green, as is common elsewhere, but white.

Combine the two and you have what could be interpreted as: "Palefaces: You are free to move about as you please. Redskins: Hello. Stay where you are".

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* This does not apply to traffic lights, which conform to the usual red-green pattern.

When Red Means "Go"

In Michigan, and presumably many other states, there are a couple of very clever traffic regulations that really help to avoid jams and keep cars moving.

One of these is the rule that says that you are allowed to turn right at a red light (provided there is no-one hurtling towards you, that is). At certain junctions this also applies if you are turning left. This reduces the number of cars standing at the lights, and speeds up the flow of traffic when the light is green.

Another smart idea is what is known as the "Michigan U" or "Michigan left". Again to keep traffic flowing smoothly, you are not allowed to turn left at major crossings, but rather must turn right (i.e. into the near lane rather than potentially blocking the intersection). A few hundred yards further on, you then get an extra "u-turn" feeder lane on the left which helps get you in the opposite direction.


Last, but by no means least, there's the middle lane that you find on larger - though not major - roads. This is intended for those who wish to turn into driveways on the left, and again prevents the kind of bottlenecks you get in Europe as you stop and wait for a break in the oncoming traffic. The centre lane is also handy when you turn left into a busy road from a drive or side street, since you can already face in the right direction ready to feed into the "proper" lane when there's a gap.

Practical as it undoubtedly is, this last traffic solution is also by far the most dangerous of the three described, and one that should be used with utmost care because the middle lane is at the disposal of cars moving in either direction. I haven't seen any centre-lane head-on collisions yet, but I suspect they're probably relatively common.

Street Lights

Streets lights simply don't exist in the US.

It's bad enough having to walk along the road because of the lack of pavements (see Priorities), but it's downright dangerous negotiating - as I did this evening - even the short distance from the house to the local supermarket on a moonless night when you can't see your feet, let alone the omnipresent potholes (but that's another story).

Now I understand why everybody leaves the lights on outside their house. It's not to ward off burglars, but because they're fed up of hearing pedestrian Europeans breaking their ankles.

Blocks

"Where do you live?"
"14 Mile and Woodward."
"Really? My brother is over on 13 and Maple. We're at Quarton and Telegraph."

When I lived in Europe, I laughed at the idea that most American streets were built in a direct north-south or east-west line with major intersections at exactly one-mile intervals. Boring, I said. Unimaginative.

Now I understand that it makes finding your way around much, much easier than in sinuous Europe. And, as in the above example, you can tell people where you live - without revealing the exact address, I might add - by simply naming the two streets that intersect closest to you (for the record, we're off Inkster and Walnut Lake).

To make things even easier, many of the the east-west roads are often named after the distance in miles from the city centre.

Add to this the fact that many cars have an onboard compass indicating the direction (N, S, E, W) in which you are travelling, and you don't need an IQ of more than about 25 to find your way from A to B (though I bet there's probably someone out there wondering how far 8 Mile is from 12 Mile).

Sat-navs; who needs 'em?