A Sign Of Things To Come

I'm a member of a private message with people from all over the world. One day, someone from Australia posted some signs they have that we here in the US probably would not understand. She was right; we had no idea what they meant.

Then I posted PED XING and asked her what it referred to. We're used to the "Pedestrian Crossing" abbreviation and the fact that 18 letters don't fit too well on a small sign.

There's a warning about the RXR sign, "Railroad Crossing." It's regarding beating a train to the crossing and goes like this: "If you win, you win; if you lose, you lose; if it's a tie, you lose."

There's a big difference between the British and US meaning of the No Passing sign. Over here, it means "Don't overtake the car ahead of you." For the Brits, it means, "Don't go past this sign."

Road Legally Closed is, as far as I know, a Connecticut sort of thing and I'm not sure it's still used. You're riding along and there's this big sign off to one side with "Road Legally Closed" and about five or six lines of smaller print giving a reference to the law and how the state assumes no liability. Nobody pays it any attention.

In these super-sensitive days when it's dangerous to be hanging around little ones, a sign that instructs us to Watch Children certainly seems to be an invitation to trouble.

I've seen several cemeteries with entrance and exit roads; sure enough, you're driving by a field full of tombstones and there's a sign telling you Do Not Enter.

In Connecticut, some years ago, a couple on I-95 passed a man who was frantically waving his arms at about 2:00 in the morning. The driver hit the brakes, then kept going; he had disregarded a “sign” that the Interstate’s bridge had collapsed and they flew over the edge into Kingdom Come.