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No more "Use Yah Blinkah?"

According to Business Insider, the federal government is attempting to ban any use of humor on electronic highway notice boards.

The US Federal Highway Administration has ordered all 50 states to stop putting messages on electronic signs that "are intended to be humorous," reference pop culture, or could overall "adversely affect respect for the sign."

We must, after all, respect the sign.

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Comments

What a shame. It's nice to have some humor in our day, plus people will share pictures of the funny ones and help spread the message.

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banned electronic billboards, which are way more of a distraction.

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Banning the cutesy phrases is the right move. Not everyone is aware of the jokes and they lose meaning if people start questioning if there's some unimportant local reference they don't get.

There are 1000 other places for MassDOT to be playful. Leave the overhead signs for boring text but import messages. (They should be blank unless there's an urgent message to disperse.)

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I'm fine with banning any intentionally distracting signage, especially if it prompts motorists to pull out their phones to take photos or video instead of watching where they're going.

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Back in the 1970s, a radio jingle group called TM Productions put together a nice jingle for radio stations to do their weekly testing of the Emergency Broadcast System (predecessor to the Emergency Alert System of today - link: WHEN Syracuse EBS jingle), full of early 1970s Moog synthesizer and four-part harmony goodness.

The FCC took a listen to this, and stated that EBS tests could not be sung or joked about, no matter how light-hearted or catchy it was, so TM Productions had the stations pull the jingle off the airwaves and the test alerts had to be read seriously.

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I remember that jingle from my childhood! Somehow was able to sing along despite not having heard it since I was about 6. Thank you for this!

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This tune sounds like an Electric Company production.

The episodes with Morgan Freeman as Easy Reader were the best.

Top to Bottom...left to right...reading stuff is outta sight.

https://youtu.be/NjEuZB2U8aQ

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this alert was not broadcast.

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All emergencies are local. Washington is usually the last to know what's going on, and is ill-equipped to alert anyone.

The system is a Cold War relic, originally meant to warn of incoming bombers or missiles. But even in that, it would fail. A missile launched from Siberia or China only takes thirty minutes to reach a target in the United States, and one launched from a submarine might get here in ten minutes. That's not enough time to alert anyone, particularly as Washington bureaucrats would first have to decide it was a real attack and not a flock of geese or the planet Venus.

How far would you get in 30 minutes if you, and everyone else in greater Boston, heard RIGHT NOW that missiles were inbound? Maybe half a mile on clogged highways.

EAS is a waste of money. There's only one practical scenario in which taking over every cable system and radio and TV station in the country would be useful: a coup.

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Probably on a bike, but that would only get me about as far as Lexington, Waltham, or Newton.

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Since moving to Florida two years ago I have heard this tone twice, actually followed up by useful information. Down here we hear them when there is a tornado coming our way (for example.)

Boston is in a part of the world not really impacted by critical weather emergencies, but in parts of the world where they do happen, this alert system is actually useful.

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I wasn't watching TV or listening to the radio at the time, so I don't know if they were also broadcast.

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I listen to broadcast radio stations at work and they broadcast critical weather warnings through EAS. The last one I remember hearing was in the fall, maybe during that little tornado outbreak we had in mid-September.

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I'm not going to die in a traffic jam on Route 6. I'd rather die at home.

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ducking and covering. People make fun of that, but it would absolutely save lives in a several mile wide annulus around the worst of the blast.

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I'm afraid that I'm going to be a wet blanket and side with the feds, too. For a couple of reasons.

The first is that these are Federal roads, specifically interstate roadways. If you don't get the local joke, then you miss the message. (Kind of like Logan Armpit is an international airport, but Massport has only recently realized that it should be signed as if people not from here are arriving on the planes).

The second is that a lot of drivers are working with relatively low literacy levels and many did not learn English as a first language. Even educated people who are still working on their English language skills have to translate things in their head - and inside jokes and slang don't translate very well.

These reasons have little to do with being formal and serious - they have a lot to do with effective communication for mass consumption.

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to know the process used here. Who in the federal government thought about focusing on this, how many people were involved in collecting "humorous" signs from across the country, and how many meetings did it take?

Perhaps they had data that supported them? I don't know.

I could think that someone who didn't understand "use yah blinkah" perhaps shouldn't be on the road. I know not everyone is fluent in English but, in that case, they won't understand the serious messages either.

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If first saw that sign while driving I'd probably just think there was a technical failure of the sign.

Maybe if those signs weren't broken so often the joke would be more obvious.

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The government has a manual (of course!) defining what can and cannot be displayed on highway signs. It's only 1100 pages...

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People sitting at desks in Washington with nothing to do, who decide that jokes on signs are a serious threat to the public welfare. Fsck 'em.

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People interested in effective communication.

I'm sure your job is necessary though.

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If Magoo was cap’n of the ship, Magoo would have every sign say “Magoo sez hello to yoo”. Magoo.

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To change people's behavior you have to speak to them using their language. It's like music in church. Music is magic and getting people in the pews to sing gives them enjoyment and embeds a certain message. This ruling is like telling the church that all they can do is recite dry bible tracts because g-d has no sense of humor.

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No organ or any other musical instrument. No singing anything but the Psalms. No celebrating Christmas or Easter.

It's a wonder they didn't leave New England a country of atheists.

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Before regulating attempts at humor, I'd like to see the government, and MASS DOT in particular, do better at the multi-page messages that are probably pretty important but that you only see part of because you're driving and your view is probably being blocked part of the time by some high-profile vehicle so you get EXIT 39 CLOSED and then it starts to flicker to the actual dates and times when it will be closed but by then you're past it.

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... you're probably driving the speed limit, and slowing everybody down.

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...the refresh time is slow, and your view is mostly blocked by box trucks.

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... and not caring if people who can't follow basic rules perceive themselves as too special to drive safely think they are being delayed

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