December 21, 2013

Traffic signs for the colour blind and other short stories

Filed under: Automobiles,Bicycles,General by Branko Collin @ 1:19 pm

A couple of short stories today.

cars-no-entry-new-2012-branko-collin cars-no-entry-old-branko-collin1. Starting October 2012 transportation infrastructure operators in the Netherlands were allowed to use new traffic signs that have been optimised for colour blind people.

The new signs were given white lines to increase contrast between red and blue elements and to increase contrast of signs with a red border when viewed against a green background, the Dutch government said. Infrastructure operators (‘wegbeheerders’ in Dutch) are free to determine if and when they will replace the old signs. The Netherlands isn’t the first country to introduce road signs for people with deficient vision, I found examples on Flickr of similarly adapted signs in Italy and France.

2. Orangemaster and I attended the opening of the Dutch Rail Lost&Found pop-up store we wrote about earlier. We kind of rushed through it, so I did not get many photos (there is one below), but The Post Online’s photographer spent some more time there.

3. In the 1970s, the Netherlands were rapidly on their way to becoming a car sick country. Mark Wagenbuur has created several videos about how protesters managed to turn this development around. His most recent video explores how school children helped raise awareness for their particular plight in the densely populated Pijp neighbourhood in Amsterdam.

ns-lost-found-popup-branko-collin

Tags: , , , , , , ,

February 22, 2013

Nonsensical road signs in Noord Brabant

Filed under: Automobiles,Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 7:29 pm

In a country with so many traffic rules and regulations, many of which involve bikes, some set of road signs are so weird you won’t find them in theory books on learning how to drive.

Some of the ones in and around Eindhoven are easy to understand even if you don’t read Dutch, but for the rest:

No. 12: A bike path where bikes are allowed.
No. 20: A bus lane where bikes are allowed, a dangerous place to cycle.
No. 23: Probably the shortest bike path in the country.
No. 24: Neighbourhood being built, forbidden for construction vehicles.

(Link: www.ed.nl, Photo by Photocapy, some rights reserved)

Tags: , ,