I tend to look far down the road and I always see it as “LANE BIKE”
This one almost works read either way.
I read top to bottom also. We have occasional road writing that has one word really large in order to emphasize it.
A very common one:
Go
CHILDREN
Slow
It’s supposed to be read, “CHILDREN! Go Slow.”
I read it, “Go Children Slow”, which probably isn’t a good idea if I’m driving down the road towards them. LOL
I always laugh at the sign below. If you don’t want punctuation on your sign, I’m reading it as written.
I understand “Slow children”, I went to school with some, but what kind of horses are “caution horses”?
This does:
S A T O R
A R E P O
T E N E T
O P E R A
R O T A S
(Loosely understood to mean: Do not tailgate at night when drunk.)
Rick? Rick Grimes? I thought you were dead.
I had to look that up, never saw the show. I read the don’t dead open inside subreddit, though, which I think is based on the show’s use.
Could we NOT get into the STAR WARS opening scrawls? Well, if you really need to, OK.
We prefer to call it uniformity and consistency. It’s been that way long enough that changing it could boggle people.
When I was in elementary school, I wondered what XING was and why schools were doing it.
True. For a bunch of signs, when a new one is installed, it’s a pictographic one. But the older, text signs don’t need to be replaced until there’s a maintenance reason to do so. We’re slowly getting more pictographic.
I’m all in favor of having signs with pictograms combined with text. I see signs from time to time with pictograms only that I don’t understand. (Often at hiking trailheads at public parks.) I don’t think anyone should be held responsible to understand pictograph-only signs.
Pictograph signs are helpful for several reasons, mainly as a way to convey internationally-recognizable messages to people who may not know the local language. That helps make them understandable to more people who might not understand the words alone.
But the words should be there, and be legally controlling, not the strange little pictures.
Anecdata: I once hiked up a trail, only to be met by a ranger on horseback who was stopping people and shooing them away, saying the trail was closed. He told me I should have seen the sign at the trailhead saying it was closed, but I hadn’t noticed any such thing.
When I got back to the trailhead, I took a closer look. There was a sign with about six pictographs, none of which I would have recognized as saying “trail closed”. One seemed to show a hiker with a backpack, overlaid with the universal “NO” symbol. I had taken this to mean “No backpacking” (meaning no camping out on the trail).
That’s why words are needed too.
ETA: It doesn’t help that the pictographs commonly used in the United States aren’t all international standard. What about the big “P” with the red slashed circle over it? It means “No Parking”, but how many other languages have words for Parking that begin with P?
What does an international No Parking sign look like? Poking around on Google Images, I’m noticing that this one turns up a lot, with or without the words:
I disagree, but as that is not the topic of this thread I’m only going to say that all of Europe manages with text only for adding detail. And that your suggested international parking sign is the European sign for no motor vehicles, except motorcycles. The sign across 90+ % of Europe is:
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinclipart.com%2Fpicdir%2Fmiddle%2F59-590879_sweden-road-sign-c35-european-no-parking-signs.png&f=1&nofb=1
A genuine source of confusion in signage (I have been caught out by it) is that in continental Europe a prohibition is indicated by a red circle, without a diagonal line. So a picture of a person walking, surrounded by a red circle, indicates that you are not allowed to walk here (e.g. up the ramp of a parking garage). To me, it means the opposite: this is where pedestrians are supposed to walk.
Another convention that caused me serious confusion until I figured it out: in Spain and France a horizontal placename direction sign pointing left means “continue straight on this road”.
We had more “DEER XING” signs.
“Martha, what’s “deer zing” mean?”
“That’s not “zing”, that means “crossing”. The x is an abbreviation.”
“Then why don’t they use a t. That’s more like a cross.”
“Because then it would look like “deer ting”, and people would be all “look out! there’s deer ting in the streets! Don’t get any on your shoes!””
I was just thinking that! (I reasoned that they could use a + mark for a cross)
I was on a bike path and had just seen a new one:
XING
DWY
OK, I’ll bite, DWY is…?
Driving While Yodeling 
DWY = driveway
I tried to Google that and got nowhere. I’m not familiar with “Driveway Crossing.”
It’s rare. Most driveways are obvious.