I’m just going to leave this right here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=am9C80ItWMQ

@MCLegoboy said:
"No blue? That Parking Sign must be breaking the law!

Seriously though, what does the no blue one mean?"

According to the interwebs, in Iceland that means that parking is prohibited.

@bealegopro said:
"I would like to have a Road Signs battle pack. Or a Greenery battle pack. Or an Animal battle pack.

Oh wait, there is Xtra to supply our battle packs! Oh wait, there is no more Xtra.

It was great while it lasted."

Wait, what? What happened?

@Randomness:
Well, that’s about the worst job of message conveyance in road signs that I’ve ever seen. If road signs was a pass/fail class, that would earn banishment from further attempts to retake the class, if not outright expulsion.

@Blondie_Wan:
They just kinda went away. When’s the last time you saw a new one announced? When’s the last time you saw one on sale? I think they got replaced with the VIP polybags, because of the timing, but have heard nothing to corroborate that theory.

Most people don’t realize these are actually Legoland Space signs.

@Tupperfan said:
"Anyone remembers how these signs used to snap near the base (old Lego was really good at snapping, now it's mostly just dark red and reddish brown parts doing that) so that you had to reinforce them with a 1x2 jumper plate and a 1x1 round brick, and see how they'd hold?

Good times..."

Neither my brother's signs nor mine ever had that issue, with several years separating manufacture.

The goat set of parking sign sets

Who else used a round 1x1 brick as base for their signs when they broke off. I even used the round signs (when broken off) as pizza shovel

After yesterday with my first ever set, this is another of my early sets.

I have most of them intact, only one or two snapped at the base. I only used to attach them to road baseplate, so less clutch power.

This part is more representative of the no parking signs that are seen in Canada and the US -

Road Sign with Post, Round with No Parking Pattern, Type 1 Base
Item No: bb0140pb02c01

I know it’s fashionable to comment on every one of these parts packs that “I wish Lego still made these,” but my 80s kid brain would’ve melted if pick a brick existed back then. Especially the ability to buy a 100 swords and shields at once. Sometimes we overlook the benefits of progress.

@TheOtherMike said:
"I saw the sign
And it opened up my eyes
I saw the sign"
Yeah, Ace of Base. Didn't know anyone I'm the US had ever heard of them. Sweden really has/had some awesome bands.

@saltytbone said:
"I know it’s fashionable to comment on every one of these parts packs that “I wish Lego still made these,” but my 80s kid brain would’ve melted if pick a brick existed back then. Especially the ability to buy a 100 swords and shields at once. Sometimes we overlook the benefits of progress. "

Around the time of lights and sound and the monorails there was a catalogue that allowed you to order separate Lego parts. Not sure how expensive that was as I was just a kid flipping through the pages fantasizing about things I could build.

We did have the signs pack to liven up our small layout. I think an empty grey base plate was used just the give the parking sign a purpose.

A higher text-based quotient for signs makes more sense in a monolingual context like the US, while a higher number of symbols in somewhere with a higher diversity of languages like Europe probably helps there too.

These were before my time, but I've ended up with one of those fire hydrant signs and while it HASN'T snapped, I can definitely tell how it MIGHT: LEGO has come a long way learning how to anticipate weak points and reinforce bricks to avoid this (not perfect, even now, but you can still tell they do more to engineer against it).

I never had any of these signs, but my brother and I had a Basic set (I've still got the bucket, and at least some of the parts) that had a flag with the same pole. It's still intact to this day.

@saltytbone: When I was a kid in the '80s, I used to dream of a catalog that you could order individual parts out of. I never saw the one @Feroz mentions; it may not even have been available in the U.S. Of course, today's greatly expanded parts palette means that a printed catalog just wouldn't work now; thank heaven for the Internet.

@AustinPowers: I'd definitely heard of them, but I had no idea until I read your comment that they were from Sweden.

And the sign said
"Long-haired freaky people
Need not apply"
So I tucked my hair up under my hat
And I went in to ask him why
He said, "You look like a fine upstandin' young man
I think you'll do"
So I took off my hat and said, "Imagine that
Huh, me workin' for you"
Whoa
Sign, sign
Everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery
Breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that
Can't you read the sign?
And the sign said
"Anybody caught trespassin'
Will be shot on sight"
So I jumped on the fence and I yelled at the house
"Hey! What gives you the right
To put up a fence to keep me out
But to keep Mother Nature in?
If God was here, he'd tell you to your face
'Man, you're some kind of sinner'"
Sign, sign
Everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery
Breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that
Can't you read the sign?
Now, hey you, mister, can't you read?
You got to have a shirt and tie to get a seat
You can't even watch, no, you can't eat
You ain't supposed to be here
The sign said, "You've got to have a membership card
To get inside"
Uh
And the sign said
"Everybody welcome
Come in, kneel down and pray"
But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all
I didn't have a penny to pay
So I got me a pen and a paper
And I made up my own little sign
I said, "Thank you, Lord, for thinkin' 'bout me
I'm alive and doin' fine"
Woo!
Sign, sign
Everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery
Breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that
Can't you read the sign?
Sign, sign
Everywhere a sign

@Formendacil said:
"A higher text-based quotient for signs makes more sense in a monolingual context like the US, while a higher number of symbols in somewhere with a higher diversity of languages like Europe probably helps there too.

These were before my time, but I've ended up with one of those fire hydrant signs..."

That's not a fire hydrant sign, it's an intersection (priority) warning sign.

@Blondie_Wan said:
" @bealegopro said:
"I would like to have a Road Signs battle pack. Or a Greenery battle pack. Or an Animal battle pack.

Oh wait, there is Xtra to supply our battle packs! Oh wait, there is no more Xtra.

It was great while it lasted."

Wait, what? What happened?"

Seems to have been replaced by those VIP / Insiders polybags, altho not officially stated, the contents and purpose are somewhat similar, as expansions, with food, plant, and themed items.

60304: Road Plates is like the legacy of Xtra and road baseplates combined, and still better then Road Tape or Cardboard roads.

@Brickalili:
Go do an image search for “No Parking”. Pretty much every result you see will be from North America. The only result I found that included a European version had a wide variety of different No Parking signage in a collage, and I still didn’t even notice them right away.

One notable distinction is that pretty much every street sign you’ll see in the US has either a white background or white text/graphic on a colored background. This makes them show up a lot better in your headlights at night, plus they also stand out in broad daylight. The few exceptions I can think of pair yellow with black, which is still a high contrast color scheme. The red and blue pair are both pretty dark (even similar in tone), and don’t seem like they’d stand out during the day. At night, they can at least be made highly reflective.

@Ridgeheart:
The supreme advantage in doing your own thing is that you can do what makes the most sense, rather than what’s the most agreeable.

@WizardOfOss:
Canada, being on the other side of the largest undefended international border in the world, either takes their signage cues from the US, or develops them in conjunction with the US, since the vast majority of places Canadians are likely to drive outside of Canada are in the US (it’s a _long_ drive to Mexico).

US signs are designed to be intuitive, at least for people who can read English. Even if you’ve never heard of a particular sign, you can usually get the gist from the sign itself. In cases where graphics will suffice, that’s often all you get, since they’ll work in every language. In cases where graphics are not sufficient, they’re paired with text. Yes, this introduces a language barrier, but only for a small minority (and if they’ve congregated in a heavily urbanized area, many of those will not own a car, and instead rely on public transit).

@AustinPowers:
Ace of Base were a thing in the US for all of about two albums, after which people kinda forgot about them. It didn’t help that the entire first album sounded rather same-y, so most people never even bothered to try the second one. I haven’t listened to them in years myself, but I do have some Norwegian bands in my collection. I’m a huge fan of the Cocktail Slippers, and I really wish I could find more than just the last studio album from The Launderettes.

I had several of these packs, but unfortunately most of the signs broke over time, mostly because someone accidentally stepped on them. Bad luck that my LEGO layout back then was on the living room floor I guess.

@Ridgeheart said:
" @Formendacil said:
"A higher text-based quotient for signs makes more sense in a monolingual context like the US..."

Within the American United USA-States of American America (US) alone there may be 254 million almost-English speakers who agree with you, you've also got 43.2 million people who might prefer "Prohibido Aparcar", 2.9 million people who might prefer "Bù yunxu tíngche", 1.6 million who might prefer "Walang Paradahan", 1.4 million people who might prefer "Không dâu xe" and 1.3 million people who might prefer "Interdit de Stationner".

Monolingual? Are we sure about that?"

Call it a "MORE monolingual context," then--I think my basic point still stands (and was, for that matter, fairly obvious): the US is large enough and monolingual enough (and we're largely talking about signs that were developed decades ago--not that there were fewer non-English speakers so much as there was even less consideration for them). My point was not that the US is a monolingual monolith that could only have produced signs in English, but that the pressures to create symbols are going to be different there than Europe and that it makes total sense which of the two went more symbolic and which did not.

@DaBigE said:
" @Formendacil said:
"A higher text-based quotient for signs makes more sense in a monolingual context like the US, while a higher number of symbols in somewhere with a higher diversity of languages like Europe probably helps there too.

These were before my time, but I've ended up with one of those fire hydrant signs..."

That's not a fire hydrant sign, it's an intersection (priority) warning sign."

That makes so much more sense.

But the fact that it wasn't obvious to me as a North American perhaps illustrates something...

@Murdoch17: I need to listen to the song I quoted to get that piece of "self-righteous hippie smugness" (to quote Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs) out of my head.

@Ridgeheart said:
" Within the American United USA-States of American America (US) alone there may be 254 million almost-English speakers who agree with you, you've also got 43.2 million people who might prefer "Prohibido Aparcar", 2.9 million people who might prefer "Bù yunxu tíngche", 1.6 million who might prefer "Walang Paradahan", 1.4 million people who might prefer "Không dâu xe" and 1.3 million people who might prefer "Interdit de Stationner".

Monolingual? Are we sure about that?"

Aw, it’s cute that you can look up numbers and yet comprehend nothing about them. The numbers you quote are for primary language (i.e. what you speak at home), not only language. Many immigrants, especially older ones, never develop fluency, but their kids and grandkids who go to public school will grow up learning English (I even had a coworker who looks like he grew up in Mexico, speaks English with an American accent similar to mine, and didn’t learn Spanish at all until he took it as an elective in college). In many cases, they end up serving as de facto translators for their elderly relatives, allowing even those who don’t speak any English to navigate a society that’s based around it. In truth, 91.8% of the population speaks English fluently enough that they could use it exclusively outside the home.

English is also not the legal official language of the U.S. It’s just the default one. Where it makes sense, it’s entirely acceptable to supplement street signs with signs that convey the meaning in around 250 foreign and 177 indigenous languages besides English. That said, English is very much the default. Most things are English first, and others languages only as necessary.

That’s even assuming there’s a need to do so. As I’ve already said, many immigrant enclaves are in areas that are so urbanized that you don’t even need a car to get around. No car, no need to comprehend traffic signs.

@TheOtherMike said:
"I never had any of these signs, but my brother and I had a Basic set (I've still got the bucket, and at least some of the parts) that had a flag with the same pole. It's still intact to this day.

@saltytbone: When I was a kid in the '80s, I used to dream of a catalog that you could order individual parts out of. I never saw the one @Feroz mentions; it may not even have been available in the U.S. Of course, today's greatly expanded parts palette means that a printed catalog just wouldn't work now; thank heaven for the Internet.

@AustinPowers: I'd definitely heard of them, but I had no idea until I read your comment that they were from Sweden."

I was thinking of these. :-)

https://brickset.com/library/catalogues?query=%Service%

@PurpleDave said:
"US signs are designed to be intuitive, at least for people who can read English. Even if you’ve never heard of a particular sign, you can usually get the gist from the sign itself. In cases where graphics will suffice, that’s often all you get, since they’ll work in every language. In cases where graphics are not sufficient, they’re paired with text. Yes, this introduces a language barrier, but only for a small minority (and if they’ve congregated in a heavily urbanized area, many of those will not own a car, and instead rely on public transit)."
But that's the thing: road signs in most of the world are designed to be intuitive regardless of language. If you had some very basic traffic education that is, elementary school level. And sure, before someone is allowed to drive, better test that again.But I could go to, say, China or Japan, where I can't read a thing, but still understand most of the signs, or at least by the shape or color get the gist of it.

Of course some additional signs with text are unavoidable, usually for very specific stuff. But the less of those, the better. Reading text takes more time than just interpreting a shape and symbol.
And I truly hate it when they put up a text so long (and usually small) it makes me guess how on earth I should be able to read all that while going 130....

As for Ace of Base: one of the worst things to ever come out of Sweden, though not as bad as that crime against humanity called Abba...
(but to be fair: most europop from the 90s was absolute trash)

@WizardOfOss : I think part of the reason for the way things are in the US is the fact that they don't really have to learn how to drive. They more or less just fill out an application for a driving licence, pay a fee, and that's about it. Yes, there may be a short multiple choice test too, but that's still quite basic.

The concept that we in Europe have wherein we have to take a lot of mandatory driving lessons, learn all the signs, the rules etc., take both a written as well as a practical test (plus play thousands of Euro for the whole affair) is quite different to begin with. Lots of kids start saving money for their driving licence years in advance. Obtaining your driving licence is a huge thing here.

@WizardOfOss:
No, European convention is designed to be agreeable, not intuitive. You’ve got so many different nations trying to make sure they’re get some input that things often get turned around in ways that don’t make sense outside the e context of the committee who sets the rules.

Take exit signs, for instance. I understand European exit signs are green. And as I heard it, they’re green because someone on the committee mentioned that red is associated with danger, and the committee was concerned that red exit signs might warn people away from safety. In the US, you can find green exit signs, but they’re predominantly red. The reason why they’re red is that they checked to see which color light cuts through smoke the best during a fire. It’s red.

“No blue” and “No, seriously, no blue” are anything but intuitive. A blue dot does nothing to convey the idea of parking, in any language.

@AustinPowers:
You’re confusing renewing the license with obtaining it. To get one, you absolutely have to take a road test. And if you screw up, you may have to take remedial training.

@Feroz: Yup, those don't seem to have been available in the States.

We are well overdue a Sign Mech.

@PurpleDave , call it what you want, in the end it is all about A) making it the easiest to understand to the most people, and B) making it the quickest to interpret while driving. Like I mentioned before, elementary school kids will know the meaning of most signs. They can probably ride a bike before they can read.

And sure, some will take a bit of explanation to understand. Some things are simpler to convey in a basic symbol than others, and some are not at all. Indeed, the no parking sign might not be the best example. But people in most of the world outside of the US know the meaning of it, regardless of what language they speak or their literacy proficiency.

And it's not like the US doesn't use symbols at all. They do for lots of stuff, probably exactly because most are so universal. Look at the instrument panel of your car, it probably has lots of weird warning lights many of which make little sense without some context. Airports have symbols all over the place, for the simple reason that you can interpret those much more efficiently than reading all of the text that follows.

And to be fair, in Europe (and the rest of the world) there's still a lot that is exclusively explained in text. I mean, here in the Netherlands we love all kinds of exceptions that even if you understand Dutch perfectly well can be confusing as hell. Like different speed limits for different hours (which also requires people to understand 24h time.....which I recently found out isn't as obvious as I always thought it was), but then another exception for during rain. And apparently at some point new cars will be required to recognize traffic signs and beep if you go to fast....I wonder how well such systems will interpret those exceptions....

@WizardOfOss said:
"As for Ace of Base: one of the worst things to ever come out of Sweden, though not as bad as that crime against humanity called Abba...
(but to be fair: most europop from the 90s was absolute trash)"

How dare you insult ABBA! Also, they were from the '70's... not the '90s!

@Murdoch17 said:
"How dare you insult ABBA! Also, they were from the '70's... not the '90s!"
Oh sure. But:

"According to Article 29 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes "shall not be subject to any statute of limitations"."

And hey, the late 90s at least gave us the improved version: A-teens!

@WizardOfOss said:
" @Murdoch17 said:
"How dare you insult ABBA! Also, they were from the '70's... not the '90s!"
Oh sure. But:

"According to Article 29 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes "shall not be subject to any statute of limitations"."

And hey, the late 90s at least gave us the improved version: A-teens!"
Oh my god. A-teens? Better than the original?
Let's see if I can find the appropriate reaction...

Ah yes:
https://youtu.be/ahrBOvz1jzA?si=6apMBxsLv4KV8AMf

So you don't agree they are better at being absolutely terrible?

@AustinPowers said:
"I think part of the reason for the way things are in the US is the fact that they don't really have to learn how to drive. They more or less just fill out an application for a driving licence, pay a fee, and that's about it. Yes, there may be a short multiple choice test too, but that's still quite basic."
I'm not sure where you came up with this misconception. It comes out of thin air, and it's sufficiently absurd I would think it was satire if the rest of your comment weren't sincere-sounding. It's disappointing anyone could place credibility in it.

@Ridgeheart said:
"You'd kind of think that this level of abstraction would resonate with people who measure the world and their place in it in units of stone, brine and elbow."
I'll take the very useful rough length of a person's foot over the random result of a botched survey of a random fraction of a meridian between the North Pole and the Equator via Paris any day, thanks. I need to think about things scaled to human bodies all the time. I can't say I've ever once sat down and thought, "gee, I bet this number would be so much more practical if expressed in terms of a late-1700s surveying error along a line that's 22,184,686 times as long as I am." But you do you :).

@WizardOfOss
I might be biased by growing up with them, but I think the MUTCD design standards developed by US Federal Highway Administration are things of beauty. Symbols are generally very easy to understand, arrows are big and obvious, and where symbols would be incomprehensible, clear and concise text is used instead. Color and shape are standardized to convey meaning—red is a serious alert, yellow is a warning, green is guidance (matching traffic lights), blue is information, and orange is a temporary/construction. You can fully rely on this visual language.

In contrast, I find the Vienna Convention signs extremely unintuitive and often completely incomprehensible. People can learn them, but that doesn't make them inherently obvious. Those priority road signs? Prohibition signs where some have red slashes through them and some don't, and some non-prohibition signs look exactly the same? The list could go on and on.

The US attempted to move toward Vienna Convention symbols in the 1970s. The result was unsuccessful—Americans found the abstruse symbols baffling, and definitely not an improvement over the clear signs they had before. Considered safety hazards, the effort was quickly dropped.

@AllenSmith said:
"Color and shape are standardized to convey meaning—red is a serious alert, yellow is a warning, green is guidance (matching traffic lights), blue is information, and orange is a temporary/construction. You can fully rely on this visual language."
Now I'm wondering how something very common like a speed limit sign fits in that system. Why does it even need the text "speed limit" on? If they removed that text, could it ever be confused with another sign? If so, how is that a good design?

I'm not saying it's all bad, like a yellow square or a red bordered triangle, is one better than the other? Not to me. It's just the over-reliance on text that's just weird to probably any non-American. And sure, I can understand a change being very difficult. But imagine if the entire world would try to adopt the American system, would you think that would fare any better?

@Ridgeheart:
You’re probably unaware that half of all 2nd-Gen children of Spanish-speaking immigrants to the US don’t speak that language at all. If the half that do, many probably do so because their parents set the rules. Integration is often key to success here, and that means kids are better off learning English, whether or not they also learn their ancestral language(s). This is why, on the census results your numbers appear to have come from, only 8.2% of the population reported unable to speak English “very well” or better. You made it sound like at least three times that number were incapable of speaking it at all.

@WizardOfOss:
In Europe, it’s about making sure nobody else gets more favorable treatment, even if it means nothing makes sense without being trained to identify them. In the US, the signs are designed so you can decipher their meaning the first time you see them, since that’s may very well be when you’re driving past one. Absolutely it favors the English language, since that works for the overwhelming majority of the population (even the people who push for the end of pink-coding of girls’ toys don’t suggest we alternate languages for street signs to be fair and equitable).

@Murdoch17:
Hear, hear! ABBA has it bad enough just being ABBA without anyone pointing it out to them on a regular basis.

@WizardOfOss said:
" @AllenSmith said:
"Color and shape are standardized to convey meaning—red is a serious alert, yellow is a warning, green is guidance (matching traffic lights), blue is information, and orange is a temporary/construction. You can fully rely on this visual language."
Now I'm wondering how something very common like a speed limit sign fits in that system. Why does it even need the text "speed limit" on? If they removed that text, could it ever be confused with another sign? If so, how is that a good design?

I'm not saying it's all bad, like a yellow square or a red bordered triangle, is one better than the other? Not to me. It's just the over-reliance on text that's just weird to probably any non-American. And sure, I can understand a change being very difficult. But imagine if the entire world would try to adopt the American system, would you think that would fare any better?"

I forgot to enumerate regulatory signs, which are white rectangles. Speed limit signs are regulatory. The color and text emphasizes that the sign conveys a hard rule, in contrast to advisory speed signs, which are yellow (a mere warning) and display "mph" as a legend to double-emphasize that it's not a legal limit. The text also guarantees disambiguation from state route markers, the symbol of which is up to each state. The text is not actually necessary—there are no route markers which are ambiguous with speed limits, but the point when you're driving at speed is to make things easily recognizable, and speed limit signs are very much so. The design also extends to other speed markers, such as truck-only limits, which are always posted on the same post as the regular limit. But this ensures no ambiguity.

US signs are not perfect, but I do think MUTCD signage is objectively better than Vienna Convention signs. The Vienna convention uses similar visual language for contradictory concepts (such as red outlines for prohibitions, regulations, and warnings). I understand why words are undesirable in polyglot environments, but Vienna Convention symbols are just not at all easily decodable, and sometimes not decodable at all. (No parking sign, I'm looking at you!). MUTCD signs are heavily symbolic too, but the symbols aren't so inscrutable.

@AllenSmith:
You mentioned shape being standardized, but didn’t list examples like you did with colors. For those who aren’t familiar, are only used for stop signs, triangles are somewhat less urgent (yield and hazard signs), then circles, and finally rectangles. This is important coding for people who are colorblind or have dyslexia, since they can’t always see things the way they’re intended to be seen. I can’t imagine trying to decipher the “no blue” sign with an extreme form of colorblindness, since the most extreme form may make it look a uniform shade of grey.

@PurpleDave said:
"In the US, the signs are designed so you can decipher their meaning the first time you see them, since that’s may very well be when you’re driving past one."
Bingo. Being esoteric is not safe. If I'm driving in an unfamiliar place, I want a sign that tells me, completely unambiguously, what the issue is. That can a really obvious symbol*, a sign in English which almost everyone in the country can read, or it could be a bizarre symbol that nobody can figure out, no matter what language they speak. The first is best, but the second is safer than the third.

Also, you mentioned shape. Yes, also very important. But warning signs are diamonds, and there is only one circle in the entire US repertoire: the railroad crossing approach. I don't know why it got its own special shape. But there you go.

*The city of Portland, Oregon has a delightful warning sign with a pictogram of a bicycle falling over by getting the wheel stuck in train tracks. It's very obvious.

Euh, it's not only color, but also shape. A red outlined triangle is a warning, a red outlined circle is a prohibition. Similar with blue signs, circles are obligatory, squares are information. Even if you're colorblind or can't read, very easy to recognize at a glance.

And sure, there are a few exceptions, like the stop and yield signs. Which ironically are also used in the US.

The no parking sign is no problem BTW for people that are colorblind, as it's the only sign with a solid background. That said, some countries add a white P, can there be any confusion then?

And sure, some signs need training. Partaking in traffic requires training, as there are many rules beyond the signs. Which starts as a kid and gets formalized when getting a driving license. To me, a yellow sign with a speed in it would just look like a speed limit, unless it would actually say it's advisory. And why is a speed limit so similar to a road number it needs text to distinguish it? This all only makes sense after some basic training. Just like traffic signs anywhere else in the world.

And it's ironic that Dave mentions dyslexia.....I'd think for those the over-reliance on text over symbols would be the worst....