Gene Hawkins
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
There was no coordinated effort to manage the movement of vehicles, whether it be through road construction, a connected network of roadways, highways, traffic control devices.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
The vehicles back then would not be used to travel long distances anyway. As the ability to travel longer distances increased, they created these trail systems, which were typically run by trail associations.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
I've seen pictures of stop signs that looked like coffins, signs with skull and crossbones on them.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
The State Highway Department people recognized we need to do a better job of providing a consistent, uniform system of traffic control devices.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
The MUTCD gets into issues such as the design of the signs. Typically, we'll give some indication on when or how to use the device.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
There's regulatory signs which tell you what to do. It expresses the law, like a stop sign or speed limit. There are warning signs, and those are yellow diamond signs, which warn you of a potential hazard, like a curve in the road or a pedestrian crossing. And then there are guide signs which give directions.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
The spacing between the letters in the highway alphabet is much greater than the spacing between letters on a printed page for reading.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
If you know what city name or street name you're looking for, you could recognize that it was on a sign even before you could read it when it's mixed case. For example, my name, Hawkins, the H sticks up and the K sticks up. The word English... The E sticks up, the G descends, and the L sticks up.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
So if you're looking for the city Hawkins or the road English, you have a shape that you're expecting to see, and you can see that shape from further away than you can actually read the letters. And that was recognized as a real advantage when the traffic is moving at 70 miles an hour.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
If it's an overhead sign, it's 20 inches for a capital letter. So the letter is almost two feet tall. The general rule is the space between lines of text is going to be equal to the height of the line of text. So it's very easy to have a freeway sign that may only have three or four lines of copy that could end up being 10 feet tall.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Most of the sign sheeting made in the United States is what's called microprismatic sheeting. Essentially, if you look at a bicycle reflector, it looks like a series of ridges inside, and it is a similar structure in microprismatic sheeting, just really, really, really small.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
In most states, they contract that with a business who goes out and collects money from those businesses that want to put a logo. And sometimes they have to do a lottery. Sometimes it's a bidding process.