These traffic signs, to be specific - a notice to drivers that old geezers might be crossing the road. A government tsar for the elderly has called for them to be scrapped as “There is almost a subliminal message that older people are in some way physically or mentally sub-par. However, as there are more and more seeking work and I do not want to see their skills and talents go to waste. I want them to be taken seriously.”
If you were in charge of road signs, would you change the sign or get rid of them entirely?
I’m not a geezer yet, but parents and in-laws are all upper 70’s and above. Leave the signs alone. “Government Tsar” shouldn;t treat “elderly” as a derogatory word.
There’s a possible need to alert drivers to the type of hazard they might encounter - children may not be paying proper attention to traffic; elderly people may be crossing more slowly, or may have hearing or sight impairment; deer may appear from nowhere, etc.
But if you need to have a textual sign underneath saying ‘elderly people’, then the iconic representation of the elderly couple is redundant. this sign doesn’t require labelling “Deer”; this sign apparently doesn’t need to be labelled ‘Children’.
If we were trying for consistency, the elderly people sign either doesn’t require labelling, or it should be replaced with the generic hazard warning sign (an exclamation mark in a red triangle), and labelled ‘Elderly People’
I don’t fit the demographic, and would keep it the same. Facts are facts. I will fit the demographic within 10 years or so, and I think I’d still vote to leave the sign as is.
Just the words doesn’t indicate what the hazard of “elderly people” might be. Just the image may not be clear. Both together is more clear than either alone.
Redundancy is a good thing. Ask any engineer if they’d build a system with a 0% margin of error, for example. The visual sign is useful for those who do not read the language, and the textual sign is less likely to be stolen. Some people probably find each kind quicker to read too.
There are likely to be people here who move slowly and whose senses and reflexes aren’t all that great. Drivers should be aware of this situation and exercise extra caution. The signs are appropriate.
Some elderly people move very slowly and are less aware. Not all of them, but many. It makes sense to have signs warning people of this, and the alternative would be so absurdly PC that by the time you finished reading it you’d have run three old folks over. Leave the signs as they are.
And for pity’s sake, the UK government has czars too? I thought that particular brand of stupidity was limited to the US.
