The sign as such is not very unusual, but the setting is. A friend of mine has a cousin, who’s in charge of road and street maintenance on the island of Gotland in the Baltic, and gave said cousin an “elk crossing” (for the merkins: an elk in Europe is what you call a moose) sign as a birthday present to put up in his garden. The problem is that Gotland is the only Swedish region lacking the critters.
Not a offical sign but a strange and quite sick one is Sniper at Work which can be seen on the side of several roads in Northern Ireland. I can’t remember how many but a good few British soldiers were killed by a Republican sniper over the years of the troubles. The sniper (if indeed there is only one as per the myth :rolleyes: ) has never been caught ASAIK. The signs have had a “ON HOLD” sticker put over the “At Work” area of the sign since the IRA called a ceasefire
i saw a sign that scarred the crap out of me in south carolina: “speeding in construction zone punishable by up to 30 days in jail”
holy shit! i was just there on business, and was not prepared to spend 30 days there! i just thought how horrible that would be, to be stuck in a southern jail with nothing to eat but heavily deep-fried food and sweet tea!
i let the guy i was there with do all the driving that trip! (which allowed me to drink more;)
While vacationing in France I saw a few signs that puzzled me.
One there was a diamond shaped sign that was white with a gold diamond in the center. These were all over the place. Occasionally the same with a red slash over it appeared so that was a ‘no gold diamond’ zone.
There was another sign that was really strange. It appeared to be a burning truck or car. There were other signs that had a cartoon of a front view of a truck. This sign had the wheels and grill and then flames. I guess your car may blow up there or something.
I also noticed some strange signs with numbers on them. I don’t think they were speed limit signs as everybody drove about 20 kph faster then those signs. I did figure out that the sign with the 130 on it ment ‘move you slow ass over before you cause an accident’.
The sign here http://www.icbc.com/Road_Safety/roadsafety_tips_daily_disaster.html
is pretty strange. Most people in BC don’t know what it means, since everyone here comes from someone else.
It’s a yellow and black pyramid, and a little sign underneath says Disaster Response Route.
Apparently, everyone is supposed to stay off the highway when the earth cracks open and dumps us into the Pacific.
More traffic signs are available here http://www.icbc.com/Licensing/rsd_ch03.pdf
In New York:
Don’t Even THINK of Parking Here!
I’ve got a photograph of a street sign in Durham, England which reads HUMPED ZEBRA CROSSING. (Yes, I do know what it means, but it’s much more fun to picture herds of humped zebra stampeding across the road.)
I live in a quiet residential neighborhood, mostly single family dwellings and townhomes, in the middle of the city. No traffic lights within the neighborhood, just two and four-way stops. Most of the Stop signs also have signs that say “No Turns 7 PM - 7 AM.”
The reason they’re present has long since ceased to be, and I’ll wager many of my neighbors can’t fathom their purpose.
Seen in the BC interior on the side of a “highway”:
Do Not Exit Vehicle. Head Lice Area
Seen at the side of the road in Ancaster, Ontario for years and years, in one particular spot, with no other explanation: a red and white yin / yang type swirl with the word TECHNOCRACY written in a rectangle beneath.
Posted next to a garage door in an alley in Rome, Italy (in italian, but my wife translated for me after she stopped laughing):
Keep the Doorway Clear and Don’t Piss
I used to live in one of Seattle’s very-low-income neighborhoods, and there were signs everywhere that said–
Warning: Illegal Activity Prohibited in This Area.
Two additions:
The SWAN XING signs at Iowa State. The university’s manmade lake is home to two swans; my freshman year, a new pair of trumpeter swans had just been moved to Ames. Since the lake was not fenced in, the swans had free range, and could often be seen by the student union, the campanile, and once trying to tear the mud flaps off of a Volvo. The trumpeters were sent someplace else in Iowa after a few years, but the next pair didn’t last more than a few months as they ‘misbehaved’.
My friend has a sign from Iowa City; apparently sometime in the seventies, the city passed a declaration proclaiming itself ‘nuclear free’ and put up some large signs with an exploding mushroom cloud and the words NUCLEAR FREE ZONE underneath.
SPEED
LIMIT
19
This doesn’t do it justice as to how bizzare seeing an ODD NUMBER in a speed limit sign looks.
This was on a sharp curve on an otherwise straight (and fast) road with many trees around. There were many accidents on this curve.
I’m guessing California uses (or used) unusual numbers for particularly dangerous areas, but limits them (to retain their shock value). It worked for me–I slowed to 18.
Not a road sign, like the rest here, but the funniest sign has to be the one at the bottom of Coke machines.
The one where they show the hand getting mangled in the gears. I don’t know why it’s funny…but it is! 
Barbarian: Can we have your lane control/intersection turn directing signs here? Please? We need them very, very badly. Oh, and you nifty different shaped traffic lights, too.
glilly: When I saw this thread the first thing I thought of was the sign in Torrance that warns: “Curve: 27 MPH.”
My own favourite sign (I’ve seen it twice now) is the one that warns: “STEEL PLATES AHEAD.” The first time I saw it all I could think of was someone with a steel plate in their head…
I saw a water heater once that had the warning stick figure guy throwing up his arms, engulfed in flames because the water heater exploded or something like that.
Bridge of the Gods
One Way (Next sign down on the pole)
Wrong Way (Next sign)
Zebra, those white-and-yellow diamonds are a European standard sign. It means that traffic on the road so marked has the right of way throughout that zone, even when entering traffic would normally have the right of way.
I’ve never seen the flaming vehicle signs. Could they be a crude attempt to warn that your engine might overheat? I mean, of course an overheated engine doesn’t actually burst into flames, but the tire tracks of a car on a slippery road don’t actually cross either and there are tons of those signs around.
In San Francisco I saw, and photographed, a few good ones.
On the Embarcadero, a street running along the curved waterfront, was this notice:
EMBARCADERO CONSTRUCTION
PLEASE ADHERE TO SIGNS AND FLAGMAN
On an Oriental restaurant at the corner of Columbus and North Point, near The Cannery:
FRIED ICE CREAM!
It’s so good, it’s patented!
Served here, and nowhere else in the world!
At Fort Point, the Civil War-era fortress under the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge:
Sign 1; Hazardous area–stay off!
Sign 2, right next to it: Wheelchair symbol.
Does that mean people who use wheelchairs may climb the cliff?
The client I’m currently working for has stickers all over their front doors with a picture of a handgun with a big red “X” through them. Really? In a country where you’re not allowed to carry handguns, they think this sticker is necessary?