Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Stop Signs

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writers Isaac Cabe and Kandice Martellaro for a look at why stop signs are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Stop signs. Known for being red. Famous for being signs. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why stop signs are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. My guests today are Isaac Kabe and Candice Martellaro. Isaac Kabe is a former colleague of mine at the former workplace Crack.com. That place did some, call them interesting decisions in 2020, impacting both of us. Isaac has moved on to become an independent comedy writer. He is also

an airplane pilot, a holder of a degree in Russian language and literature, just all kinds of different things that will be very interesting on this episode. And then Candice Martellaro is a pal of mine from Sketch Comedy in LA at venues like the Pack Theater. She's an amazing comedy writer with credits such as the very funny TV show Stan Against Evil on IFC. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Chicory peoples. Acknowledge Isaac recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and Keech peoples. Acknowledge Isaac recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and Keech peoples. Acknowledge Candace recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva

and Keech and Chumash and Fernandinho-Taraviam peoples. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about stop signs. Stop signs are ubiquitous in many countries, including the United States. There's a few countries, mainly in Europe, where you do not really see them. And so for you folks in Europe, this is more of a voyage of discovery this week. You get to find out about the four-way stop signals that the rest of the world has. In America, they are red, they are octagon-shaped, and they say the word stop on them. It turns out there is fascinating history and design and local stories that make those signs the title of the podcast. So please sit back or do more of like a rolling sitting because there's nobody else around.

You know what I mean? Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Isaac Cabe and Candice Martellaro. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Isaac, Candice, it's so good to have you. And I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Either of you can start. But how do you feel about America's favorite sign, the stop sign?

I'm an avid fan. I feel pretty good about stop signs. I always feel good when I come to a four-way stop and all sides have a stop sign. I know we're going to be okay. We're going to make it through. Yeah. One way or another. It is. I'm realizing I have not been at a... Occasionally, it's one of those intersections where it's like, it's only three ways and watch out for to the left of you because there's no route. That happens once in a while and I'm pretty upset. Yeah. And two ways I really don't understand. It's always the busy road that doesn't have the stop signs. So you're just stuck trying to like frogger your

way across like a busy intersection. I'm like, why isn't this just a four-way stop? Everything would be easier. There should be all the stop signs. Well, I think I've had kind of the opposite experience where I've had the privilege, I guess, of living in a bunch of towns as an adult where they've kind of done away with stop signs altogether and installed roundabouts. And I've got like two or three of those around my neighborhood right now where I went to college. They had on the north side of campus, like three different sets of roundabouts kind of all in a row that I mean, I went to a pretty big division one college, and they had a lot of game day traffic to direct on football games and stuff.

I mean, that was kind of their thing was, they just had roundabouts going all over the place. I actually checked a map before we started recording and they've got even more now kind of across the street at one of the hotels nearby that people stay at. There's a series of hotels connected by a roundabout. They've really gone all in on that too. Wow. Isaac, where did you go to college in Europe? Burn. Gotcha. Take that. Oh, yeah. Funny you should mention that, because the mayor of my college town is now the secretary of transportation. So, Pete Buttigieg, look for roundabouts across America. Yes. That's right. That's right. You are an alum of Notre Dame. Right. I wasn't going to say it. You said it. This is a lot of insight into the Biden administration now. Now I know what's going to happen. Yeah.

I think most of those were there before Pete, but Mayor Pete definitely installed a couple on his watch. I'm good with roundabouts. It's just the only problem for me is I think they're funny and I just keep going like for fun just around and around. Oh, that's perfect. I think roundabouts are a good thing, generally. But what's happened here, I live in Pasadena, California now, and there's a few roundabouts in my area where they've installed stop signs at the roundabouts, and that confuses a lot of people.

No one knows quite what to do with that. Yeah, but now I'm sold against roundabouts. No, I don't want them. I don't like them. I just want a basic four-way stop with stop signs. Roundabout with stop signs is literally the worst of both worlds. It's the worst of both parts of the world put together. Yeah, at that point it's decorative.

Who wants a decorative roundabout? Not a fan. And I think we're also all familiar with stop signs. As I'll say in the intro, there are a few places in particular Europe where they're less common because they have so many roundabouts. But I think this is a show for the whole world, not just the United States. And in order to get into it, on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics in a segment called, I Write Down Stats. Then I Look Up Some More, because there's always going to be more stats. And that was submitted by Brian. We have a new name for this segment every week.

Please make them as silly and wacky as possible. Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. Alex, that was everything I hoped it would be. You don't understand. I've been looking forward to like, what's the thing going to be? And what's he going to look like when he does it? Because I haven't seen it. I've only heard it.

And I'm so excited. It lived up to the hype. Absolutely did. That made me feel deep down like I understood stats entirely. I mean, that's how you get through a stats class

in college is it knocks you down but you just keep getting back up again. There's more stats to look up all the time. I feel some people need encouragement

to get through statistics. Maybe clip this out, stats teachers. You know, take it. I don't care. It's yours. Yeah. Play it at the beginning of every class. We're all stealing it. I don't care. It's yours. Yeah. Play it at the beginning of

every class. We're all stealing it from Chumbawumba. So, yeah. You guys are great. We got a few numbers here about stop signs. And I feel like I can just skip over eight sides. We all know. But the first number here is three. And three is

the general number of mechanical steps involved in making the sign part of a stop sign. And we'll link to a video from Insider.com where they see this done at the New York City Department of Transportation. They have a sign making shop in each borough and they went to the one in Queens and you can like see it done. I think I do want to see that process because how much more complicated can it be other than a straight metal punch? Yeah. Yeah. There's got to be something else that goes into it. Yeah, it turns out the first step is take a piece of aluminum, cut an octagon out of it.

That's first. Great. Yeah. And then the second step is they have a machine that adds a whole sheet of white reflective sheeting. So that just goes over it and then somebody cuts the edges off. So now you have a white octagon. And then the third step is this huge machine that it kind of looks like a giant silkscreen t-shirt machine, if you've seen one of those where there's sort of a paddle you press down, but it's one of those that they fill with a gallon of red ink and they put the entire red layer of the sign on for the third part. That's pretty cool.

It's so much more involved than I ever would have thought, but it makes sense. Like the letters are reflective, but the red pops like it. I've never given stop signs this much thought, but yeah, like that all makes sense. I have to wonder, is this a multi-purpose factory? I mean, that feels like a lot of real estate in New York City just to be making stop signs. Yeah. Because it's not like you're ordering stop signs on the regular. I feel like you put one in the ground and they're there for a long time. You're not just constantly.

Who is reordering more and more stop signs all the time? Isaac, that is an amazing segue. The next number here is 10 to 12 years, which is apparently the approximate lifespan of a New York City stop sign. They said, they say in the video, they talked to the executive director of operations for NYC Department of Transportation, John Jurgelite. he says, quote, stop signs are what we call our best seller. And they say that they either get knocked down in a traffic accident or vandalized in a way where the city feels it's too vandalized. And so they actually take them down like every decade or so. They do, huh? Well, I'll be I had no idea. If I was going to wager like a bet, I think I probably would have guessed around. I actually probably would have guessed probably shorter. I probably would have guessed like five years.

Just because like even just living in like a residential area, you see stop signs get kind of degraded pretty quick. Or like kids vandalize them and shave off letters so it says something stupid or whatever or put stickers on them. So I'm not super shocked at that statistic that kind of tracks in my mind. Yeah. And it's both, both reasons are definitely human driven. I think, I think it's that thing, Isaac, you said, if it was just in the elements, it could last like forever, basically. But it's, it's people either running it over or we can link to galleries you can find on

the internet of like people who added words to a stop sign to do jokes like stop in the name of love and stuff. You know, it's out there. You can find it. Before you break my other traffic signs. Yeah. Right. The cops try like stop graffiti. But it is graffiti.

And then, you know, they feel it is graffiti. Yeah, they feel like it is. Or you always have, I feel like everyone has that one klepto friend that always had to steal a stop sign. I know I had that friend in college where it was like, why do you have this? What do you

need a stop sign in your bedroom for? It's like, no, it's cool. I stole it. I'm like, yeah, but now people are going to get in a car accident. Why was this necessary? Man, one klepto friend is very real. Holy cow, Candace. Yeah, that's a there's always somebody you're like, that guy is just taking stuff wherever we go. Okay. I remember one friend that stole a stop sign. Also, like there was someone that had home construction being done and there was a cone on their porch. And he just like without even blinking, just took a hard left turn, went up and took the cone and continued on. Wow.

I was just like, why are you like this? What are you going to do with that? Hopefully stop somebody. Yes. It's just a big old alert. Like there's a hole I know about and I'm in a hurry. That's what's going on. It's my responsibility.

I did a hole. I don't want to talk about it. I did a hole. So I guess what, if stop signs are their best sellers, can I buy them as a civilian? Is this kind of like trophies where I don't need to be awarded one? I can just go buy one? That, I believe the answer is no. But toward the end of the show, maybe it's yes.

Maybe it's yes. It's a little foreshadowing. Because this sign shop in New York, they, I think, designed the video for people who are interested in every other kind of sign. Because they mostly talk about what goes into custom making each new street sign. And like, this exit goes here kind of signs that are specific. And then in one point of the video, they're like, and this is stop signs. And I was like, yes, notes, notes, notes. I was very excited about that.

But most of their work is like a team of artisans making every new street sign for New York City. Oh, man. I love that. Art a modern stop sign with the latest design. It's actually two chunks for a very good design reason. Does it have to do with the vandalism? It has more to do with the accidents, like people running them over. Because the source here is a great book called The 99% Invisible City by Roman Mars and Kurt Kolstad. It's obviously coming from the great podcast 99% Invisible. But it turns out that for stop signs, road signs, a lot of street lights, a lot of utility poles,

instead of just making one pole that's a big piece of metal, they give it what's called a slip base, where it's two poles together with like a connector plate with bolts that break apart very easily. And so the idea is if a car hits the sign, instead of the post like resisting and causing trouble, it just breaks away very easily. So a lot of stop signs secretly have this like great pole design under the ground. That is clever. This is probably a dumb question. under the ground. That is clever. This is probably a dumb question. Have either of you ever ran over a stop sign? Who sent you? Who sent you? Who's after me? No, I have not done that, but that's a good question. Same here. I have not. I've been very lucky in my stop sign experiences. very lucky in my stop sign experiences. I can, I actually do have like one distinct memory of driving around with a friend in high school. That was my closest call with a stop sign where

I'm driving with a few friends and like the driver is 16 or 17 and the rest of us are 14 or 15. And so he goes kind of through a stop sign. And one of the other, you know, high school freshmen with me goes, Hey, Greg, you just kind of like rolled that stop sign, dude. And Greg turns to the rest of us without missing a beat. And he goes, it was stop shingle. And I, I think about that every time I see those roundabouts plus stop signs in my neighborhood. every time I see those roundabouts plus stop signs in my neighborhood. And yeah, it's, it's stop-tional. Stop-tional.

I am, I've never ran over the sign itself. That's some rad stuff to say to your friends, folks. Take that home. Stop-tional. Just, yeah, the fact that he came up with it that like on the cuff or off the cuff. I mean, I've never ran over a stop sign, but I have, this is really embarrassing, but I had this like in the pocket for this podcast. When I was 16, I was going over to my boyfriend's house and I just learned to drive. I had a cool new car, like these cool seat covers, the whole thing. And I got to a stop sign, I stopped.

cool seat covers, the whole thing. And I got to a stop sign. I stopped. And then for whatever reason, I decided to like pick up my purse off the floor as I started going with the wheel turns. And I looked up and I was on the sidewalk driving into a fence. Like just, it was, it's to date, probably the dumbest thing. I mean, luckily I was going like, I was idling. I didn't even have my foot on the gas, but I don't know what was going through my head, but I, luckily there wasn't any damage to the fence. There was a minor amount of damage to the front of my car, but I like, it still haunts me forever. Like, thank God no one was walking on that sidewalk right then. Um, it could have been horrible, but that's the closest I've ever come to running over a stop sign. And you were idling.

So you were like turning without looking, but also moving at what, like three, four miles per hour or something. If even, like it was just, the car was nonchalantly. And it's just, as soon as I looked up, it was just, the fence was in front of my car and it just like bumped the fence like lightly. And it was like traumatic. Yeah. Anything like that can be traumatic for a teenager. Oh yeah. I yeah i mean i drove i didn't even go to my boyfriend's house i turned around i went right home and told my parents what i did and like i was mortified oh gosh yeah do you think that stop signs kind of lull us into a false sense of security sometimes i mean when we're

at a stop sign, how often do you get rear-ended? You know, because someone wasn't paying attention, they, you know, didn't even see you. And we just feel like, oh, we're safe because we're stopped. And that kind of comes up with texting while driving or, you know, just any of that kind of stuff. And I don't know, We're not necessarily safer at stop signs. Yeah. Are we? No. No.

I think that's a really good point of it is a false. Like, it's like the George Carlin joke about traffic lights of like, I thought surely it was for resting. You drive a little, you stop a little. Yeah. Like, yeah. Right. It's like a highway oasis. ah i can pause i can stretch my legs exactly and it's like no you still have to be alert and paying attention just because you're

not moving yeah yeah if you stretch your legs you could take your foot off the pedals and that's a bad idea so i've heard yeah there's also a last number here is two, back to the number two. That is the general number of options for the words on a stop sign in every country. And some countries like the US is kind of just one option. But we'll link to a great story from, it's the Atlantic and City Lab doing this article, but they talk about how in 1968, the United Nations created a new convention on road signs and signals. 64 countries agreed to it. And the guidelines say that a stop sign can be an octagon or a circle, but it needs to have a red ground bearing the word stop in English or in the language of that country.

So in most places, they have the option of either do we do our language for stop, or do we do the kind of internationally recognized English word stop? Because also, like, stop signs are a little bit of an American thing versus Europe or versus some other places. So also in some places, it's like, well, it should be a red octagon that says stop because it's one of these American signs. Like that makes sense. Yeah.

I also studied Russian in college for, you know, the entire time I was there and I'm looking it up right now on my phone to see what a Russian stop sign looks like. And it's just white with black letters. And the word sounds the same. It's just white with black letters and um the word sounds the same it's just stop but when you when you look at the sign it just looks like stone um or like katan because it's a c a t and o and then like a pi sign they use cyrillic yeah like i know that it sounds like stop but that's only because i know what the letters look like. So I can see why that would be difficult for somebody else, just like an English-speaking visitor.

I really like that the real Russian word for stop is what I would try to claim it as if I was pretending to speak Russian. Stop! That's what I would say if I was pretending because i don't know it and it's great we have different uses for the word stop here in the u.s anyway like we we have a bus stop right but over in russia it would be an остановka um like that's your your train stop you know your остановka oh interesting so it's and it's a different word that kind of makes more sense because it is it isn't like when we think stop we think abrupt end what you're doing yeah where like a halt yes exactly where as you know if you're waiting at a designated stop just a place

to wait for a bus to come to a halt but nonetheless it's still a different that kind of makes more sense like that should be a different word yeah that's a good point like yeah like like a bus stop almost sounds like a barrier to prevent buses from entering yeah we've erected a bus stop we keep buses keep rolling through it's the worst we gotta we've gotta stop these buses you gotta stop these buses like that wall in game of thrones or something like we must maintain the bus stop against the buses. It's just like a larger version of that fence that you ran into. Yes. And I'm picturing the buses just sort of doing what my car did.

Just like a bump and just sort of tapping it. Yeah, exactly. Like, we stopped it. It's fine. No one got hurt. There's also, there's one interesting case with this word on the sign. And I sent you guys a picture of a stop sign from Quebec because I don't speak French, but according to CTV News in 2008, the Quebec Provincial Transport Department and a French

dictionary both say that the word stop is like French enough. Like they borrowed it from English and they use it. And so it's common. But some places in Quebec have a bilingual stop sign with stop and array, which is French for stop. And then some places just have stop because everyone knows it. And then some places are like now putting in signs that just have array because they want to like emphasize the French language. And so there's a, it's sort of a flashpoint in Quebec, uh, what to put on the stop signs. I think that's a great thing. Let's, let's have more of Canada be more French. I think

that's great. It's cool. Yeah. Let's send that down to the Midwest too. Yeah. Let's put, put some of those up next to mayor Pete's roundabouts.abouts yeah it's the words and the shapes are pretty universal but like i think the red is what kind of makes it stand out like everyone knows red is bad red means stop or at least that's what we're taught when we're we're very little to the point where like you'll see stop signs on you know things that you're just not supposed to touch you know people use it as like oh don't touch the oven you know don't touch you know, things that you're just not supposed to touch, you know, people use it as like, oh, don't touch the oven, you know, don't touch, you know, in a store, don't go sit on this bed, put a stop sign next to it.

Yeah. Because it's a display model. Yeah. Wow. Instead of like just some sort of custom caution sign, they using something that everyone already knows is going to stop people. Yeah. And if you, and if you went ahead and did the thing, you could not use the excuse of like, well, I

don't drive. They'd be like, yeah, but everybody knows. Like, cut it out. It's not a driving specific skill to understand this. Yeah. But this does immediately make me want to go to an antique store and start touching things I'm not supposed to. And then when they ask me what I'm doing, be like, I don't drive.

I don't know. I don't drive. This didn't apply to me. I don't drive. I don't know. This didn't apply to me. I don't drive. Well, we have three big takeaways for this episode and let's get into them, especially about the history and the Americanness of the stop sign. Takeaway number one. The inventor of the stop sign is an American who never learned to drive. We know like a specific person who's credited with the invention of the stop sign. And he was like a rich New York City guy who never bothered to learn cars, even though he did not die until 1945.

Just didn't bother. In keeping with the great New York tradition of nobody learning how to drive and then moving someplace else and then complaining that they don't have a driver's license. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that's always like at least 1% of the entire population of LA is just a New Yorker who wants to tell you how they never learned this. Like, oh my gosh, I just can't. I just can't. It's like, okay, but like we all figured it out.

Just can't. I don't know. So yes, I'm going to drive you everywhere. That's the, that's the interaction we're having. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Definitely had a couple of friends in college who were from New York and didn't have driver's

licenses and they would show up to bars and expect to be let in without an ID on the basis of I'm just from New York. Like, that's just like, come on, man. Like if you got to bring your passport bring your passport but like have have some id like moma membership card got it and just no you can't it's still a bar i'm sorry yeah i i do know people that don't have driver's licenses that still have an id like you still go get one yeah you still go get one yeah You still go get one. Yeah. Yeah. It would bother me that these were friends of mine who weren't even from

Manhattan or Brooklyn or Queens or anything. They were from Westchester or Scarsdale or White Plains. They could have a driver's license. Right. They just didn't. I like the idea of thinking you can just get into a bar like no no i'm from

new york oh i see come on in like what why didn't you say so why didn't you say so i'll let you in for one new york story then one tale of that city i dream of like Like this really wistful bouncer. Wistful bouncer. These bouncers in northern Indiana do not care where you're from. Yeah. Well, our main source for this takeaway is the New York Times Magazine. It's a great article by Hillary Greenbaum

and Dana Rubinstein. They set the scene by saying that, quote, in the early automobile age, American streets existed in a Hobbesian, drive-or-be-plastered state of anarchy. Aside from the occasional road markers letting riders on horseback know how far they were from the next city, there was no road or street signage at all. And they also describe a situation where there was no system for cleaning or sweeping streets, no lane lines and no divisions between road space for cars, bicycles, horses, pedestrians. They just laid out a road and then people used it however they wanted to, kind of into the late 1800s.

That was just roads in America. That's kind of impressive in its own way because you just had to be so trusting of the thousands and thousands of strangers who could just cross anywhere. There's no – like, ooh. It kind of reminds me of like – I mean this isn't quite the same thing, but if you've ever lived in a town where like it snows really, really hard to the point where you can't see lanes on the highway and it's just like being in a slot car where it's like we're making our own rules. Like we're hoping for the best. Yeah. Again, then once in a while you realize you're on the wrong side of the road and you're like, well, I'll just fix that.

Like, cause it's, cause nobody's coming and it's not clear yet. And you're like, oh, wait a minute. No, it starts over here. Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it.

Yeah. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yes. yet and you're like oh wait a minute no it starts over here okay got it got it got it yeah yes exactly exactly yes yeah that was the roads all of the time well because we can talk about the person here the the credited inventor of the stop sign is william phelps eno and william phelps eno was born in 1858 in new york city died 1945 far as I can tell, he got to invent the stop sign because he came from money and power. He was one of six kids of a multimillionaire real estate developer. And they sent him to Yale. He was a member of Skull and Bones. And then in the turn of the century, he just decided to get excited about traffic systems. And he wrote a 1900 article called Reforming Our Street Traffic

Urgently Needed for something called Rider and Driver Magazine, where among many reforms he proposed placing signs to stop at intersections. And according to Joshua Schack, who is CEO of the Eno Transportation Foundation, because this guy endowed a transportation foundation that's still around. This guy said, quote, that was a new concept and really did introduce the idea that you had to watch out for other people, end quote. And then Eno went on to write eight books on traffic that were translated into four languages. He helped develop New York City's first ever traffic code in 1903 and then consulted in London and Paris. I think this was just a rich guy who knew all the other powerful people and thought of having people stop at intersections.

That was how he invented it. Can we get those books in a box set and ship them off to Mayor Pete? Not that he's coming back to South Bend anytime soon, but could be a good read. Yeah, get him off that French roundabout idea. Get him on an American idea. Yeah, for reals. Yeah. Just this attitude, like this one specific thing I didn't know I would learn about Mayor Pete today.

It's just really funny. I really don't know how many of those roundabouts were his specific idea, but he had to have approved them. Yeah, he didn't change it. He didn't change it. And this guy, like,

it took a little time for stuff to get set up, but according to the New York Times Magazine, he became a key figure in an American traffic control awakening. And then starting in 1911, a Michigan road got the first recorded center line in American history, 1911. And then Cleveland put up a traffic signal in 1915 and Detroit in 1915 installed the first stop sign. It was a two by two foot rectangular sheet of metal, black lettering stop on a white background, just like a rectangle that says stop on it. And that was the first stop sign was apparently in Detroit, Motor City.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense for Detroit and Michigan and, you know, the Midwest in general to be on the forefront of traffic innovations, too. I mean, if you're making cars, you got to make the stuff that goes with them, too, right? Yeah. If I was a carmaker, I would have been like, I should have thought of all this traffic law stuff because people will want to buy a car if it's safe. But I'm just making these. I'm just throwing them into this like Hot Wheels track and people probably aren't into it. That's America is just one giant Hot Wheels track and people probably aren't into it. That's America is just

one giant Hot Wheels track with a bunch of intersections. It's true. That is kind of what we are, especially when it snows and you can't see the lanes. It's just a Hot Wheels track. When it snows and I'm nervous about the big loop-de-loop that I always do,

yeah, man, it's the worst. I can't take it. Oh, man, it's the worst. I can't take it. Oh, man. All right. Off of that, we're going to a short break, followed by the big takeaways. See you in a I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye

from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more

is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. I think we can go into the next takeaway here. Takeaway number two. Next takeaway here.

Takeaway number two. Stop signs are red and are octagon-shaped for separate reasons, and the octagon reason is a really weird logical leap about geometry. I know that was a lot all at once, but the red and the octagon happen separately, and the octagon is because one group had a very specific decision about the logic of signs to make them that way. I can understand red because it's a bright color and we use bright colors all the time in traffic. We use yellow reflective vests and orange traffic cones and it would make sense to just have red stop signs, right? But the octagon, it's not the most identifiable shape. Like if I'm having little children put pegs into holes, we're starting with the basics. We're going

triangle, square, circle. The octagons is some first grade material. Yeah. And why eight sides? Like it, I don't know. That's, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I was thinking about it other than the modern rise of mixed martial arts fighting where they fight in an octagon. I can't think of other octagons like in public life besides the stop sign. It's such a specific choice. Yeah. being octagons also? I mean, is that part of the, like an intimidation factor type thing? Like when you're ready to tap out,

you've got to be ready to stop in an octagon. Like, I don't watch any MMA. I don't know these things. I Googled it because that is legitimately what I thought. I thought it was like an aggressive snap sign thing. And it's apparently it's because there's not quite any corners you can get stuck in. Right? Like there's corners, but there's always kind of a way out of them is the idea. That's what they say.

That makes sense. So it's a safety thing, sort of. Right, right. If you're boxing, it's a boxing ring, but it's a square. Yeah. And you can go to your corner. But that doesn't exist the same way in an octagon, I guess. And I think they want to be novel.

It's a whole. Yeah. If you're a mixed martial arts fighter, write let us know don't don't hurt me also don't hurt me don't hurt me maybe i didn't need to say that but i will uh don't do it um please but uh so the yeah we'll start with the octagon origin. So what happened is, and this is, we've got a few sources, New York Times Magazine, also Mental Floss, and a great article by Kurt Kolstad from 99% Invisible. The first proposal for octagon-shaped stop signs was made in 1923. And it came from a group called the Mississippi Valley Association of State Highway Departments. So this was like, it's like the Mississippi River Valley, like it's a bunch of middle of the United States state level highway departments.

And New York Times Magazine, quote, the association developed an influential set of recommendations about street sign shapes whose impact is still felt today, end quote. whose impact is still felt today, end quote. And so the thing is, they picked an octagon, and the reason was, quote, it was based on a simple, albeit not exactly intuitive idea. The more sides a sign has, the higher the danger level it invokes. By the engineer's reckoning,

the circle has an infinite number of sides. That screamed danger and was recommended for railroad crossings. And the octagon with its eight sides was used to denote the second highest level. End quote. I have never, ever thought about them that way. I don't know about you two, but that's where they got this. Not even a little. If I saw a sign that was a dodecagon i would just be very confused like and i assumed that maybe the reason they didn't go with that was that it's too complicated to manufacture like i'm thinking back to that little store up in new

york that's punching out signs and most of their signs are probably squares or like a yield sign with a triangle sort of situation. But you got to make whole new molds for like a dodecahedron. That's the other thing. A shape could be more than eight sides. I don't know why they think eight is the clear, almost the upper limit. You can just do 10 or 12 or whatever. It's not that much harder.

It's very true. 12 or whatever. It's not that much harder. I guess my thought when you first started talking about that shape is like, well, but it, it, it, it's expansive. Like it feels like it could go, it's just big. Um, so like that kind of makes sense. And cause my immediate thought was like, well, why not a circle though? That could be even bigger. But, um, the railroad crossing thing makes total sense. But yeah, I could see an octagon.

It's like the spread of like it's big, covers a lot of area. That's true. That actually makes more sense than what these guys thought of. I like that. Candice, you should have been in charge of this. That adds up. Yeah. I should go back in time and invest my interest into streets and safety and rules.

Yeah. Candice, I just looked it up. I thought of something that might be a little bit more dangerous than a railroad crossing, and it looks like the nuclear danger sign is also a circle. Oh, yes. So it seems like the logic continues to apply there. It's a circle, but it's divided into six where it's got like that three blade fan sort of thing going on.

It's funny because when I think of circles, I think it's like round and like loving, like a smiley face, not like danger. It's kind of funny. That's the other place I trip on this 1923 logic is that to me a circle is not infinity sides it's just one very approachable side like it's the least sides you know yeah it's very chill to me so i don't know where they got this very friendly to me yeah there you go if they wanted it to be an infinite danger sign we have an infinity Yeah. Like it's a sideways figure eight. Yeah, I'm trying to make it with my finger,

which I don't know why I'm doing this at all. Only you guys can see what I'm doing. And it doesn't work. I had the same thought. I dressed up for today. I wore a bright red shirt on purpose and now I'm realizing no one's going to see it. That's true.

You look very dashing for me and Alex. But yeah. Oh, well. Yeah. I'm in a cop uniform. It just feels right. I don't know. That's just what I want to do for the loss.

Let the record state that he's wearing a Duke t-shirt and so it's basically the same thing. That's a good point. basically the same thing. That's a great Duke joke. The other thing about this meeting, the New York Times Magazine talked to Gene Hawkins, who is a professor of civil engineering at Texas A&M University and apparently the preeminent expert on the history of the stop sign. That's what they say. And his explanation is, quote, you have to realize this was done by engineers and engineers can be overly analytical, end quote. So he blames them for being nerds. Oh, they love geometry so much they concocted this rationale for signs that we're all just stuck with now because it made sense to

them, and that became stop signs worldwide, pretty much. So the other thing we have here is the red coloring, and the red does not come out of this 1923 meeting. The thing with red is it meant stop long before we had stop signs, but also the technology hadn't caught up yet. According to Mental Floss, the red means stop custom dates back to Britain in 1841 is the earliest recorded thing. A man named Henry Booth from the Liverpool and Manchester Railway suggested red to indicate danger on railroads. And then London adopted that for its traffic lights, and then that kind of spread to the US. So the red is almost kind of a British trope that we've adopted. That's kind of the one non-American part of the stop sign. I mean, when I think about Britain, I think about red.

I mean, you've got the redcoats who came over to fight the Revolutionary War against us and lost. That guy who you just mentioned was from, you know, you said Manchester and Liverpool. I mean, Manchester United, red and gold, and then Liverpool, also very red. guy who you just mentioned was from you know you said manchester and liverpool i mean manchester united red and gold and then liverpool also very red you know that's red is everywhere with the brits i suppose yeah the lobster backs picking our signs cut it out get out of here i'm a son of liberty or whatever i don't know i'm mad about the revolution. Son of a... And so they wanted to use red for things that mean stop. And we have another large American meeting here.

This is 1924, one year after that Mississippi Valley state transit thing. This was the first national conference on street and highway safety in the U.S. And it was assembled by the Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover. And Secretary Hoover directed them to come up with a bunch of decisions for national U.S. signage. And they said that for all signs and signals, luminous and non-luminous, green should indicate go, yellow should indicate caution, and red should indicate stop. The thing that happened is this conference said, okay, red means stop in the U.S., here you go. And then everyone who handles signs said, red paint fades really fast.

Like, if we do that, the signs are going to wear out, like, immediately, and we'll have to replace them all the time. And so when 1935 came along and they did like an update on what's called the manual on uniform traffic control devices, they said stop signs should be yellow because that still means caution and the paint lasts a lot longer. So make them yellow. That does make a lot of sense. And I sent you guys a picture of a world war ii era stop sign and it's

yellow it's it's it's a yellow sign that says stop in black letters it's wasn't there something at some point where they they discovered that we see orange and yellow as like that's the first color that like the cones in our eyes can recognize and so like it you you get that fraction of a second um where you can identify what that sign is a little bit faster, you know, just helps with your reaction times. Yeah. That's interesting. That rings a bell. Yeah. There's definitely optics stuff with all these colors that they, they could make something out of if they wanted to. I wish we had made these rules when we knew optics, it was just guys making stuff up when we came up with all of it. I like the look of the yellow stop sign better. For some reason, something about it seems more

official. Yeah. I think the word has to be on there for help purposes because there's got to be people who are colorblind, right? Or at least like red, green colorblind. I wonder what they see. Oh, I guess bold letters and the shape. I should have looked into that. Yeah. I don't know what their experience is, but the word on the octagon that must help. Yeah, exactly. Because like I'm a pilot and when I go take my aviation medical exam every year, I have to identify in a vision test, like, can I see the numbers inside these circles of color and make sure that I'm not colorblind because red and green are used so heavily at airports. Like on my Instagram right now, there's a video

of me updating my nighttime currency. And you can see the red marks the displaced threshold of the runway where I'm not supposed to land. And then there's a green part where you can see like, oh, I am supposed to land. Like that's where the edge of the runway starts is at the green. And if you can't see those colors, then you're in a lot of trouble. But that's with lights. So, you know, I don't know what people are doing without that. Because also we can get to basically they finally made stop signs red. According to Mental Floss, quote, the state of California was the first to figure out that porcelain enamel would resist fading

and erected red stop signs across the state. And then this was added to the 1954 manual on uniform traffic control devices. So for less than 70 years, we've had red stop signs in the US. That's also long enough where I'm sure colorblind people have figured out how to deal with them because we haven't made it more accessible for them in a long time. No. Yeah, they're just stuck. And if anyone was going to have stop signs that resisted fading, it would have to be California. Like everything out here is pastel colored within a year of being painted.

Yeah, right. And from here we can get into the last takeaway of the main episode. Takeaway number three. takeaway of the main episode. Takeaway number three. As far as I can tell, there are a few ways any American can go ahead and put up a stop sign. So obviously I'm hedging that you're not allowed to do this, but it's a couple different quick stories here of like specific ways people just went ahead and put up stop signs and got away with it. Like it's just how it works. So there's, there's a few types. That's, I think it's very fun.

Just like for your own private use, like you can't just stick one in your yard. Is that what they're talking about? So the, the first category here is what I call blue stop signs. Cause most of them are blue. I sent you guys a picture of a Hawaiian one. But this all comes from the amazing Kurt Kolstad, who says that blue stop signs have become a common move by American property owners and private enterprises, where if you have a lot of property with some kind of road element to it, it is considered legal to put up your own stop sign if it looks different enough from the official red kind. And in most cases,

people have just signed off on, it's an octagon, it says stop on it, but it's bright blue. Okay, you're not impersonating the city transit department, whatever else. So then people who just want people to stop at or near their property on a roadway for a car, they just make a blue stop sign. And it's especially common in Hawaii because of all the tourists and all the big property there. If there were ever a stoptional sign, that's the one. Yes, absolutely. Truly stoptional, yeah. Now that I know this, I just want to put up blue stop signs periodically in my parking lot of like my apartment complex.

Because I can. Just put it up on a pillar or something. Yeah. Yeah. Go for it. Now that I know. That really happens a lot. That's my new activity.

Yeah. Especially like stores with big parking lots or something. They'll be like, I just want a stop sign here and do it. Yeah. I just choose to do it. That's so funny. I had no idea you could just do that. That's smart of them. it. That's so funny. I had no idea you could just do that. That's smart of them.

Yeah. That's amazing. And also, and Kolstad talks about an idea where like, in theory, it looks like a less official stop sign, but in practice, people almost stop at it more because they're like confused. Yeah. And they're like, well, uh? And so you stop your car.

And then by the time you figure out it's a nonsense stop sign, you keep going. But you already stopped. Like they already won. They already won. It did its job. It did exactly what it was supposed to. Yeah, that's all they wanted and you did it. Yeah. Psychological warfare in a stop sign. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Len, the next story type here is what I feel is a micro phenomenon in the suburbs of Chicago, my home region, Chicagoland. Because there's a couple stories here of Chicago suburbs where the police added extra signs to a real stop sign because they felt like it. And the police aren't technically in charge of doing this. It's more of a like state law transit department sort of activity. The police don't build stop signs. But in Park Ridge, Illinois in 2006, the department added a second sign that says stop means stop on the like on the pole below the main stop sign because they were just frustrated with people going through stop signs wrong in their town.

See, I wouldn't interpret that as having come from any sort of official agency. I would see that kind of thing planted below a real stop sign. And my first thought would be, Oh, that came from like some local community, community advocacy group. That's,

I was just going to say, I was like, someone's mom put that. someone's mom put that there. Yeah, someone's mom put that there. Some HOA president that no one listens to has just taken matters into her own hands. Just some rich Aurora, Illinois, suburban mom, like going to town. It looks the same to me as like when you pull into a neighborhood and sometimes there's in the shape of a stop sign, there's a sign that says drive as if your children live here.

Yeah, yeah. It looks like that to me, yeah. Yeah, and that skirts the law because it looks different enough from the real one, but it also slows you down. You're like, huh? The confusion tactic is nationwide. People are just fooling with each other. Yeah, it just keeps coming up. Nationwide. People are just fooling with each other.

Yeah. It just keeps coming up. And so NPR interviewed a police officer in Park Ridge, Illinois, about this. And they asked him, does this increase compliance? And he claimed that the department sent officers in unmarked cars to monitor the second signs they put places. And they just seemed to think it worked good, that more people were doing a full stop. They don't have data or anything. And we'll link to the website parkridge.us, the city website for Park Ridge, which still talks about this thing. So I think it's still up. I don't know if anyone has seen it or can go, but that's at least one town in around Chicago where the cops just increased the messaging on the stop signs. There are two more examples here. One is in 2008, Oak Lawn, Illinois, another suburb, tried extra signs of in the name

of love, and also and smell the roses, like further additional signage below the stop sign. And in Oak Lawn, the Illinois Department of Transportation told them it violated the law and needed to be taken back down. Like IDOT told the cops, cut it out. And then in 2015, Hanover Park, Illinois put up, like, it's a stop sign. And then the additional sign is an up arrow. And then the text, this is a stop sign. And Deputy Police Chief Mike Menno said the goal was to, quote, try something different and raise the awareness level of motorists. But also the Illinois Department of Transportation gave them a warning and said it could trigger a funding cut from the Federal Highway Administration

if they continued to do this. That's amazing. So suburban Chicago police are like at war with the state and country over how stop signs should work. It's great. What an use of time and energy. Yeah. Urban Chicago police are like at war with the state and country over how stop signs should work. It's great. What an use of time and energy. Yeah.

Because someone had to pay for those things. Like it was already coming out of their budget. It kind of feels like one of those things you spend extra money on at the end of the year. Just so that you know, so that it looks like you're filling out the rest of your budget. Right. But you didn't really need to use that. Now I look at Illinois State police like someone's mom like just putting up extra signs to make their point like yeah is if illinois police were yeah i mean you you already kind of think of the illinois police as like basically being the guys from home alone like it it's not, that's most people's,

I think first recognition of Illinois police, either that or like corrupt and violent. So it's funny to see them getting involved in something that's like so ridiculous and petty as stop signs. Man, they definitely have those two public perceptions of either horrible things. The Chicago police department is doing or the Chicago police Chicago Police Department watching the Blues Brothers get away with stuff and not be able to do anything about it. It's definitely those two vibes.

The last story here, last story is from a town called Cranston, Rhode Island. And it's a short story mainly because it is still a mystery. We don't know exactly what happened. But what we do know, I had to learn this about Rhode Island. It's basically city of Providence, biggest city, and then it's suburbs and then small towns. That's Rhode Island. Cranston is the biggest suburb by population. It's the second biggest city in all of Rhode Island. in all of Rhode Island, human population around 80,000. And then the stop sign population in 2011 was 2,595. But the thing is, and this is an amazing Jalopnik story from February 2011 by Kyle Van Hemert,

quote, at some point in recent years, a ghost in the urban planning machine put up 652 rogue stop signs in Cranston, Rhode Island. So they just sort of realized at some point that more than a quarter of the stop signs in the town were not put up by the town at all. And they don't know why. Wow. We still don't know who did it. They still don't know why wow we still don't know who did it were there uh they still don't know

i mean you i feel like they can go figure that out like you can narrow it down a little there are probably only so many people with access to this stuff yeah but yeah i don't know now that i'm thinking about it rhode island that's only a couple states away from New York. Wouldn't be too much of a day drive to go get yourself down to Queens. Oh, yeah. Rob the stop sign factory. Bring them on back to Rhode Island. Rob the stop sign factory. Just the most needlessly elaborate crime with no payoff.

with no payoff. That's the funniest thing. What a weird crime and prank to play on everyone of like, I'm just going to make you stop in places you don't need to for a few seconds. Like, what? The lagging inefficiency is going to bring down the entire state of Rhode Island. This is silly, but Isaac, as you were describing the theft,

I thought of the movie scene, which is that somebody sees them taking the signs and they say stop thief and the thief says exactly and then keeps going that's that's the scene that's what happens in the movie exactly uh they're a stop thief that's it and scene sunglasses boom drive away but it is it's like it is a lot of putting up hundreds of stop signs like you said candace just to alter the traffic in cranston rhode island it's not clear why apparently the city found out that there were some mystery stop signs in 2010 And then they spent six months realizing that hundreds of them were just not official. The city also started using the official term undocumented stop signs to describe

the signs. I know. And then the city sent a group of city workers around indexing all 2,595 signs, checking them against a map of the 1,903 official stop signs. And in the process, they discovered some of the stop signs had been there for decades. So this is also like an incredibly long running scheme that has been going on for probably like most of somebody's life, whoever did it. Yeah. I mean, this is, I'm thinking about 600 plus stop signs. I don't know, even if I had like a big old sprinter van, I don't think I could fit 650 stop signs in there. And that's before we get the dual breakaway poles to go in. Right, right. Ooh, this is a very labor intensiveintensive process so not only have we robbed

the stop sign factory we've got to have robbed a pole factory or something we've got to keep a like a big old sprinter van on retention like just to kind of get on out there and man you keep going and then as we talked about earlier these things last 10 or 12 years because they keep getting run into and vandalized and everything. So they've probably replaced more than a few over the years. This is – Oh, my God. I'm real in the weeds on this Rhode Island stop sign. Yeah.

This is a lot. I hadn't even thought of the number of signs under counts, how much work they did replacing some of them over time they could have done yeah what a thousand signs over i don't know who knows nobody knows oh yeah it's just a thing well you mentioned about like the documenting so for one thing according to jalopnik author kyle van hemert quote local judges had to start to dismiss tickets written for running stop signs, because they didn't know which ones were actual legal stop signs. But so the city took this very seriously, as you can see. And from there, they formed a committee to judge each stop signs merits for staying up or going down. The city also estimated that about a third of the signs

might have been official, and just somebody forgot to record them in like the log of city signs, but that still leaves hundreds of rogue ones. Yeah. And so they made a final decision that of the 652 undocumented stop signs, 580 would stay up. So almost all of them stayed and this person fundamentally changed the traffic patterns of Cranston, Rhode Island, just by deciding to do it. What a lawful, chaotic situation for that person to create. This is the street signage bandit, but like the reverse, because they're not stealing, they're giving. It's like a Robin Hood situation. Robin, stop.

Yeah. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Isaac Cabe and Candice Martellaro for rolling through the stop sign of knowledge with me. On the road to... I'm abandoning this metaphor. It doesn't really make sense. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode.

This week's bonus topic is the strangest preparations for the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics. We will explain what that has to do with stop signs and why it's called 2020. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than two dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring stop signs with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. One more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the inventor of the stop sign is an American who never learned to drive.

Takeaway number two, stop signs are red and are octagon shaped for separate reasons, and the octagon reasons are a weird logical leap about geometry. And takeaway number three, as far as I can tell, there are a few ways any American can go ahead and put up a stop sign. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. Isaac Cabe is at NotFunnyIsaac on Twitter, at NotFunnyIsaac on Instagram. Candice Martellaro is at Candice Mart on Twitter, at Candice underscore Martellaro underscore on Instagram. And that is Candice with a K in both cases. Direct links for all those are in the episode links. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A great article in the New York Times

magazine. It's called The Stop Sign Wasn't Always Red. It's by Hilary Greenbaum and Dana Rubinstein. A great book titled The 99% Invisible City. And that book is by Roman Mars and Kurt Kolstad. Obviously, that is from the great podcast 99% Invisible. And then an amazing story from Jalopnik by Kyle Van Hemert, all about the enduring stop sign mystery that is Cranston, Rhode Island. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun.

And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show, like always. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more Secretly Incredibly Fascinating.

So how about that? Talk to you then.