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Remember the Five Man Electrical Band?

No, neither do I, though I had their sole hit, the 1971 song Signs, on a compilation CD in the 1980s.

It was a bit freaky, hippy, happy, clappy. However, those not-quite-rhyming lyrics (”sign, sign, everywhere a sign, blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind”) did tend to add a supporting chorus to my suspicion that there were just too many bloody panels with instructions on them.

And now there are even more.

Recently, it was time to do some calculations.

I went to a suburban shopping district and counted 19 road signs clustered around the first intersection. These 19 signs were aimed at drivers travelling in my direction (about 15 were aimed at those coming the other way).

I walked another 30 metres or so and found a further 20 signs, plus a set of traffic lights. Then I counted out 16 more signs in the 50 metres after that.

I’m prepared to admit I may have missed one or two but I was scared of being run over by a motorist doing likewise. And I may have even doubled up (how do you judge a three-panel sign if there is some duplication among the messages?).

Still, in broad terms, there were 55 road information messages in about 100 metres. Even when travelling at 40km/h you are left with just nine seconds to read as many of them as you judge necessary.

It’s not like they were the only things to take in. In the same space were copious advertisements and signs plastered on buildings, billboards and bus shelters and even moving ads on cars, trucks and buses.

There were also lines on the road in every direction and speed humps, plus pedestrians and motorists meandering everywhere (only a few of them between phone calls).

In the book Traffic, Tom Vanderbilt relays that the average driver must process 1340 pieces of information every minute. Where I did my research, drivers could probably meet their quota in 30 seconds and have the rest of the minute off.

There is a school of thought suggesting signs persuade drivers that as long as they obey them, they can’t come to harm. In other words, when confronted with signs, drivers follow them rather than interact with the environment. The late Hans Monderman probably came as close to being famous as any Dutch traffic engineer in history. His argument and this is paraphrasing an English summation of what I assume was Dutch was that labelling everything that might be dangerous doesn’t necessarily make anything safer.

The distillation of this idea was to be found in Monderman’s “shared spaces”. Also known as naked roads, these were (and indeed are) areas used by vehicles and pedestrians but stripped of all banners, lights, kerbs, traffic-calming devices, pedestrian crossings and lane markings.

Despite the fears of some, the accident rate in shared spaces tended to be lower than in unshared ones. Drivers and pedestrians became very careful and aware.

In a shared space, people need to make eye contact to work out what others are likely to do. It is much harder to run someone down, barge into a queue or do anything else selfish once you’ve made eye contact with a fellow human being.

In this spirit, it’s said that people in convertibles with the roof down drive more carefully. They are on show and more exposed to the direct judgment of others.

And, as we all know, a driver behind tinted glass tends to behave like whatever the polite and printable word for arsehole is.

Of course, the main problem with instigating any naked roads in this country is simple: how do you fine motorists when you haven’t defined 55 types of wrong every 100 metres?

Are you a fan of shared spaces? Are some traffic signs simply unnecessary? What are your pet peeves?

Tony Davis