I Sigh the Signs...
Nope, this isn't about our knack for making up the quirky signs. Rather, I found myself a bit irked one night while watching to the news. If memory serves me right, the story was about how we've practically rearranged and bastardized the standard descriptions for road signs. The feature showed flawed city, town and barangay street signs. They were recklessly designed, poorly researched and misuse of public resources. All that and the government agency tasked to do it right doesn't seem to care that they've somehow screwed up.
The top boss at the LTO was first to admit (God bless his soul) that our road signs are flawed and are in dire need of an overhaul. He sounds like a straight-arrow, maybe there's hope? It has to come from him rightly so because it's his agency that releases our driver's licenses. Thinking about it, wasn't there a section in the driver's license exam that deals with familiarity with street signs? Other than that, didn't driving schools teach students how to read street signs as part of their course? What happens when a new driver can't distinguish the signs he's learned from school and from the "real" world? Nagtatanong lang po.
Speaking of top bosses, at the end of the news feature, the reporter had a word with the general manager of the MMDA. He asked why they were so intent on using a pink color scheme for most of their signs and why, as a government agency, aren't they conforming to international standards. I think he quipped something like, "Eh, sino ba nakaaalam nun dito sa atin?". Do road semantics and politics mix? Sir, this isn't what I'm paying my taxes for. I shrug and roll my eyes.
The top boss at the LTO was first to admit (God bless his soul) that our road signs are flawed and are in dire need of an overhaul. He sounds like a straight-arrow, maybe there's hope? It has to come from him rightly so because it's his agency that releases our driver's licenses. Thinking about it, wasn't there a section in the driver's license exam that deals with familiarity with street signs? Other than that, didn't driving schools teach students how to read street signs as part of their course? What happens when a new driver can't distinguish the signs he's learned from school and from the "real" world? Nagtatanong lang po.
Speaking of top bosses, at the end of the news feature, the reporter had a word with the general manager of the MMDA. He asked why they were so intent on using a pink color scheme for most of their signs and why, as a government agency, aren't they conforming to international standards. I think he quipped something like, "Eh, sino ba nakaaalam nun dito sa atin?". Do road semantics and politics mix? Sir, this isn't what I'm paying my taxes for. I shrug and roll my eyes.
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