UN Global Road Safety Week continues, and there may be no more important part of road safety than the STOP sign.
Those bright red octagon-shaped signs are part of how we keep vehicles out of each other’s way – though in the early days, they weren’t red.
And originally, they didn’t have eight sides: the first American stop sign was square when it went up in Detroit, Michigan about 1915.
As other places put up their own stop signs, they used their own designs, until the American Association of State Highway Officials decided to meet in 1922 to pick one standard look for stop signs, to keep drivers from getting confused.
They settled on an eight sided sign with only one word – STOP – written on the front.
It was clear, it was direct, it was noticeable.
And it was yellow!
Bright yellow stop signs with black letters!
And that was actually kind of confusing itself, because stoplights had already been using red as the color to signify it was time to stay put.
But at that time, the red dyes available to signmakers all faded over time.
They figured it was better to have a yellow sign that would actually stay visible than a red one that would eventually disappear.
Fortunately the fading problem faded away, with the development of a long-lasting red enamel.
In 1954, the authorities did away with the yellow signs and said all stop signs should be red with white lettering.
At least in the United States: there’s actually another design used in some parts of the world that consists of a red triangle, similar to the YIELD sign in the US, with the word STOP written in black, all of it inside a red circle, usually with a white background.
So keep your eye out for that one when you’re on the roads too.
In July of last year, Leonardo the tortoise went missing from his home in Ulverston, Cumbria, England.
His owner asked people in town to keep their eyes out for the wayward pet, and sure enough, last month a dog walker spotted him and made sure he got home.
After nine months on his own, Leonardo the tortoise had traveled about a mile.
Stop Signs Used to Be Yellow—More Recently Than You Think (Readers Digest)
Tortoise missing for months found a mile from home (BBC)
Make a stop at our Patreon page and back this show today
Photo by arbyreed via Flickr/Creative Commons