road signs

When I was a little kid, I used to believe that "Pedestrians" were another race of people and I was confused as to why they would be segregated from the rest of us, as my lessons at school taught me that all races were equal.. Seeing signs all over the place that read "Pedestrians Only" or "Yield for Pedestrians", or "Watch for Pedestrians" continued to confuse me. What was so special about pedestrians? What was wrong with them? Why couldn't they walk with the rest of us? It wasn't for a year or so that I realized what a pedestrian really was. =)

Carolyn

I used to think that the "lane merge ahead" sign was someone trying to paint the number 11 who just could NOT get it right. I also thought we took this Route 11 everywhere we went.

Lauren

Divided Highway signs used to look like the front half of a men's dress shoe-print. I thought that it was a cautionary sign for pedestrians who might have been walking along the median that they would have to step down into traffic (the arrows).

Anon

On the way to Queenstown there are sign that read "Caution Road Slumps Ahead" and near Alexandra "Caution Hill Slumps Ahead". As a child I go very worried about this imagining slumps as being some big slug like creature that would "slump" out and get you if you weren't cautious and that there were two breeds of them. Only in NZ huh?

Lauren

i used to think that the road sign "dangerous" was actually "dang-er-roos" a kind of bouncy marsupial

owen cash

When I was little, I used to believe that deer could only cross the road at the deer crossing signs.

Shellie

I used to think that the sand bags used to hold down motorway road-works signs down were plucked chickens ready for the workers dinner.

Squire

I used to believe that at "Dead Ends" like on the road that people had died at the ends of them so whenever we'd go down a dead end road i would freak out.lmao...

Kayla

I was almost ten years old before I realized that the "Do Not Pass" signs on highways meant something altogether different. For years, I just assumed that everyone on the road was a terrible scofflaw, a belief reinforced by the way my father always slowed down and tried to be inconspicuous when a police car appeared.

Tom

I used to think that the road signs that read: "NO SHOULDER" meant you couldn't hang your shoulder out of the car window while driving in the area. It seemed perfectly logical to me.

Jooweea

I used to believe that the road signs that said "do not drive on shoulder" meant not to drive while leaning your shoulder on the car door.

manda

My youngest daughter was a precocious reader. She learned to read various road signs long before she went off to kindergarten.

Every day I would drive the other children to school across the Lake Washington Floating Bridge, my youngest would read aloud all the road signs. There used to be a sign in the middle of the bridge that said "draw bridge.'' For a long long time she was convinced that this was an exhortation, and that she was supposed to bring along a pencil and tablet so she could stop and draw the bridge.

Martha's mom

when i was young and continuing to see the pedestrian crossing sign on the way home from church/school/whatever, I wondered why they got their own cross-walk sign, because our church members didn't have their own cross-walk signs, especially in front of everyone elses homes and schools. (Thinking that Pedestrian was Presbyterian (sp?))

Super Secret Sally

As a child, I grasped the notion of stop signs indicating that you should stop. However, I was confused as to how you know when to go again. Of course, my older sis gave me the answer: once you've been stopped for a while, a little man scurries out from the bushes and runs off with the stop sign, indictating that you can go.
But of course, I'd never seen the "little stop sign man", and so I assumed my mom was continuing through the stop signs illegally. So, every time she did it, I would lecture her about how we should have waited for the "little stop sign man" to come from the bushes. She was baffled, of course, and probably considered for a while that my mental health might have been somewhat less than ideal. Later, when I confronted my sister about her lie, she denied having ever said it...... thanks, sis.

Still confused about road signs

On Australian roads (don't know about other countries), roads have a zigzag line painted for a few metres before a pedestrian crossing, so driver's are aware that it's coming up. When I first saw one, I thought the cars and other road vehicles all had to follow that line and go zigzagging along the road.

Anon

I used to think the "no stopping sign" used to be a "no shopping sign" and I asked my dad how would people survive?

I was about 4 and a half years old.

Josh

I used to think that signs that said "Do Not Pass" on roads meant that you weren't allowed to drive past that point. I was always so worried that my mom would get pulled over.

Stupid

The handicap parking signs were a great mystery to me when I was young. The parking spots were always near the door, and I could never interpret the symbol. I concluded that these were special spots for people who had to use the restroom, because it looked like a person sitting on a toilet and it was so close to the entrance.

Sam

I grew up in New Jersey, so naturally there were a lot of highways. We would travel to see our relatives a lot, and since all of the highways looked the same, I could never figure out how my parents knew where to go. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the green signs on the highway said things like: "This Way to Grandma's House", so my parents wouldn't get lost.

Marna

I used to believe a mile was the distance between telephone poles.

Allegra