Feds to Highway Signs: You Have Two Years to Stop Being Funny
wsj.com
wsj.com
A generic "OBEY POSTED TRAFFIC SIGNS," while readable by 79% of the population, is barely going to mentally register for nearly all of them.
By comparison, a sign that only 40% of drivers understand the pop culture reference to might be more effective overall if they think about it for the next week.
And at least for all the examples in the article, even if you don't get a culture reference, the gist of the message is still understandable. Don't DUI, don't use your cell phone, etc.
A much worse sin for those message boards is when they use multiple pages to convey something. "ROAD CLOSURE FROM SEPT 16 UNTIL" <4 second delay> ... Well, I guess I'll never know.
Windows 11: * :( ... We're just collecting some error info ... * You might want to plug in your PC.
You're a highway sign that when activated should convey important information unambiguously in an authoritative way.
And you're my computer and I need our relationship to be formal. I'm your boss.
The inappropriateness of that aside, concealing a public sign message in humor is discriminatory to those who do not have English as a first language. To do so with pop culture references, there might even be a case for discrimination against national origin, which is in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Not to mention it goes against the enormous amount of research and engineering that has gone into making those signs and typefaces legible and reliable.
It's not the same thing as Ad Council television adverts.