ZM's Fletch, Vaughan & Hayley - Fletch, Vaughan & Hayley's Fact of the Day (of the Week!) - Road Signs Week!

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

In this episode Vaughan saw a sign, and it opened up his eyes, he saw the sign! (It's Road Sign Week Baby!)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The ZM Podcast Network. Play ZM's Fletch, Vaughn and Hayley. Hello and welcome to Fact of the Day of the Week. In this episode, Vaughn directs us through the narrow lanes of road sign history. It's time for... Fact of the Day, Day, Day, Day, day. Today's fact of the day. And the fact of the day theme for the week is road signs.

What drew this into your brain space? I found one. The fact that I'm giving you today was my introduction. And then I found found one other one and I was like, I reckon I can find three more. Okay. So, today's fact of the day and the first fact of the day on Roadside Week is there are no stop signs in Paris. What?

There are no stop signs in Paris. Are they just a giveaway nation? They're a yield, they're a giveaway nation. No stop signs in Paris. I've never been to the Gare Paris. I've never been to the Gare Paris. Oh my God, you simply must. Have you driven there?

I've never driven on the roads, no. Have you been driven? Been driven? Been driven, yeah. Chaotic? Chaotic, yeah. We got into a crash

as soon as we got there. It's like well known. I'm reading this article. It's well known for its chaotic driving yet no one thinks a stop sign's gonna be the, any stop sign's gonna be the answer any stop sign's gonna be the answer

because that's just gonna cause more traffic. Yeah, and they've got that famous, what's that, around the Arc de Triomphe where you just drive and you just gun it. Yes, the free-for-all

that is the perifer-fer-nerk? That's it. That one, that's it. Perifer-fer-nerk. That's actually what Hitler said when he invaded Paris. He's like,

get me the perifer-fer-nerk. That's the one around theer. That's actually what Hitler said when he invaded Paris. He's like, get me the perferer. That's the one around the Arc de Triomphe. That's the crazy roundabout. I think it is. Or there is a crazy roundabout. I remember that. And then there's the utter chaos of the... French.

Oh, my God. E-T-O-I-L-E. Etoile. Etoile. E-T-O-I-L-E. Etoile. Etoile. Etoile. Etoile. Oh, et ois.

Et ois. Et ois. Et ois roundabout. I apologise to our French. Don't you dare apologise to them. Don't you dare apologise to them. They owe us. What do they owe us? So many apologies.

Rainbow Warrior. Wow. Atomic testing in the South Pacific. Yeah, okay. Fair call. You're right up there. One. Two.

And baguettes. Too crusty on the outside. Too crusty. Too crusty on the outside. Man, they dry out quick. Yeah. Stale before you know it. Fair call.

Okay, yeah, no. They owe us. Don't you apologise to them. I'm anti the French now. So, yeah, the whole... I'm not saying it'm anti the French. It's a strong stance. Because now you're anti the entire EU, basically.

No, no, I'm not. You're pro. Very pro-Italy. I'm pro. Yeah, I love Italy. I love Europe. Yeah, pro. And they've brought us a USB-C charger.

Yes. They forced that upon Apple, didn't they, just recently? Yeah, they did. They said, do it. Do it. So, not a single stop sign. Not a stop sign. Not a stop sign.

Now, there was one lonely stop sign at the end of a construction facility driveway going into the Croissant Esbogre in the 16th arrondissement. Again, I apologise to our French listeners. But it got removed sometime between 2012 and 2014 by someone who was not an official council worker, planner or anything.

Someone was just like, took it down and the council was like, great, it's down now. Great. Great. We just give way. Thank God we didn't deal with that. I mean, let's be honest. Most people just roll over a stop anyway, don't they?

Oh, absolutely. You're not meant to. Roll me through. You're not meant to. You're meant to come for a complete stop. I know. I think the only time people do that is when it's their driver's test. Yeah, absolutely. You're not meant to. You're not meant to. You're meant to come for a complete stop. I know. I think the only time people do that is when it's their driver's test.

Now, while Paris has a very high rate of accidents on their roads, it's actually well behind in road fatalities because of the speed limit throughout Paris. Right. Road fatalities are one third of London and a quarter of Rome.

Goodness. Oh. So they're saying we third of London and a quarter of Rome. Goodness. Oh. So they're saying we don't need the stop sign. We just need people to go slow and people like going slow. So there's going to be accidents, but they're not going to be fatal. So today's fact of the day and the first fact in road sign week, there are no stop signs in Paris. Play.

Sid Eames, Fletch Vaughan and Hayley. Well, it's road sign week here at Fact of the Day. Every day it's a fact about road signs. Yesterday, Paris has no stop signs. And today, I'm delving into the history of the stop sign. Wow. Because you think about it. When there were horses and carts, there was no need for stop signs.

We just went... Just kind of moved. Everything was kind of moving at a pace where you just turn. Yeah, and then the automobile came along. Yeah. Oh, goodness. Well, the first ever stop sign was created by a Detroit police sergeant, Harry Jackson.

He was working at a traffic guard at a busy- The home of the automobile. Home of the automobile, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of the big American car manufacturers were based in Detroit. One of the cross streets had a particularly low visibility turn entering the intersection. And he would have to slow people down and hold back the traffic from entering that street. But he had to keep an eye on that.

He had to keep an eye on it. He was doing everything. So one day he's like, I'm going to make a sign. Now he thought, a square sign's not going to stand out enough. So all he did was he cut the corners off. It's a hexagon. Huh? It's a hexagon.. It's hexagon. Yeah? It's hexagon.

It's an octagon. What? Hexagon six. Three. So four corners of a thing and then you cut. You're so dumb. I knew that. Octagon, octagon.

You thought it was a hexagon. You dipshit. I was like, yeah. Took a square piece of plywood, cut off the corners and wrote stop over the set. Painted it white and wrote stop in black. Oh my lord. And then he said painted it white and wrote stop in black. Oh, my Lord. And he said, it's worked so well. Yeah.

Like, I can kind of like leave that bit to that bit and people will stop and then they'll look and then they'll go. Wow. Yeah. And he told other fellow officers about it and they said, I might want to. So then they were adopted all across the state.

Black lettering on a white background and were 61 centimetres by 61 centimetres. Big. Wow. Do you know when they became red? Is that in your fact? So they became red later in the piece. I'm imagining at night that wasn't easy to read.

Yeah, I imagine. The octagon was generally adopted because he made it because he wanted it to look different to square signs, which there were square signs around with just like place names and street names and like different directions on them. So he made them octagon. But then they said it works perfectly because no other sign's that shape. And even at nighttime, before reflective paints,

you would see the shape of the sign and know that that was going to be a stop sign. Wow. So yellow originally got chosen from 1924 to 1954. It was either in red or black, but it was always on yellow. And then they changed it in 1954. They put a white stop on a red background. Okay. Okay.

And it's actually universally accepted that it's white writing on a red background. Okay. Okay. And it's actually universally accepted that it's white writing on a red background. Oh. Except for in Nigeria, where it is yellow writing on a red background, but octagon. Because they ran out of red paint, didn't they? Yeah. No, no, they ran out of white. Well, they wouldn't have run out of white paint because they just started with a white background. But it's yellow on red.

Right. But where, have a guess, what part of the world are stop signs circular, not octagonal? Nepal. No. I like that though. New Zealand.

No. I don't know. I just thought it was going to be a rogue answer. Our ones are octagons as well, aren't they? Our ones are octagons as well. I knew that. I just sort of thought it may be a rogue answer. I know that's got eight sides and I know that it's...

Round. Is it somewhere in Europe? Pacific Islands. Is it? Tonga, it's circular with a triangle on the inside. Why are they doing that? It's real different. Why are they doing that?

Gosh, they're odd, aren't they? In Vanuatu, it's also circular with a white stop on a red background. And in Japan, it's a triangle. But everywhere else in the world. But no, but that's a good way. Yeah, I know. Oh, Japan. Oh, Japan.

What are you up to? Well, maybe we'll delve. Maybe we can delve tomorrow into a little bit more of what's Japan got going on. Well, it's road sign week here at Fact of the Day. I'm loving road sign week. It's road sign week. We're learning. We're learning things.

So today's fact of the day is the first ever stop sign was invented by a police sergeant in Detroit when he wanted to stop people flying into an intersection too quick and causing accidents. Today's fact of the day, continuing Road Signs week. I'm loving it, by the way. I had some fun last night. I've got the rest of the facts for the rest of the week. Oh. I did a deep dive into road signs.

Good. There's some real, like, oh, man, I got in the, I got in the, I got, weeds or reeds? Reeds. I got in the reeds. Does that mean I'm, like, bogging myself down? Is that the origin of that? Like, I'm getting in the, getting amongst the reeds. Like, I'm really getting in there.

It's sort of swampy, isn't it, the reeds? Swampy. Reeds famously only grow in a very moist place. Swampy, are you looking up the origins of the saying? Well, I really got into it and I really learnt a lot about road signs, New Zealand road signs and stuff. It's in the weeds. Sorry, I put you crook there.

So I'm not getting amongst it. Getting into the deep, dark parts? I don't know. Again, not really sure on that. Fletch is just looking blankly at his screen. It's more if you get into a situation that you can't get out of. So I wouldn't say that's your strength. I've always thought it was like you were getting

you were doing a bit of a deep dive. Get into the weeds. No, I'm just saying you're doing some thorough research. It might be like a golf sort of a situation. You're in the weeds. Well, I learnt a lot about it, but this one really tickled my fancy because it's very unusual. Okay.

In 1999, Progressive Insurance had a television ad air during the Super Bowl. Okay. And I just had to make sure that other thing that I was listening to before was paused. Olivia Rodrigo. He can't stop. I was listening to Olivia Rodrigo over the years. In the ad breaks, when we play a song, he just puts Olivia Rodrigo and He can't stop. I was listening to Olivia Rodrigo over the years. In the ad breaks, when we play a song, he just puts Olivia Rodrigo and puts his headphones on.

I'm a hip, happening, funky 19-year-old girl. Hey, no one was questioning that, bro. Thank you. And they had an ad in 1999. Remember that. Where they're showing a garage door going up and the silhouette of E.T. Okay.

Now, E.T., the movie came out in 1982, so 17 years after E.T. came out. Intelligent life in auto insurance. Be progressive. Oh, I missed that. Listen. Intelligent life in auto insurance. Be progressive.

Call 1-800-AUTO-PRO for savings that are out of this world. And remember... It is called one of the greatest misses in advertising. They paid for it during Super Bowl. It cost them a fortune. They paid a fortune to use E.T.

who at this stage was 17 years out of date. That would be the equivalent of us using a hot movie from 2006. White Chicks. Autonomous classic. Autonomous classic. White Chicks. You know, one for the ages.

But they went further. Progressive then said, we have printed thousands and thousands and thousands of signs of a road sign quality with a road sign graphics ET holding up his finger. Remember how his finger lit up in the movie? Yeah.

Saying, buckle up. What's that got to do with the price of food? The ad aired very little and that printed thousands and thousands of these signs. Buckle up. Because we're car insurance. Makes no sense.

You're insuring the car. Doesn't matter if the driver's wearing a seatbelt or not. Huge miss in the advertising industry. Connecticut, the state in America was like, we'll have some. And the people were like, well, that's great because no one else has ordered any. So you can have 4,000. And the state of Connecticut had 4,000 road signs with E.T. wearing a seatbelt, holding up his finger,

saying buckle up. Now these were put up around Connecticut because Connecticut was like, well, it's a road safety sign and we didn't have to pay for it and we'll just put them over the ones we've already got encouraging road safety signs. And then they just stayed up. Now throughout Connecticut,

there are still hundreds and hundreds of these signs up, understop signs. From 1999. From 1999. A lot of them have lost their colour. Yeah, I would bet. A lot of them are looking very aged, but they're all around. Some of them still have progressive on them. Some of them have had progressive peeled off because after a while,

apparently people were like, we don't need this advertising at all. But we still love the idea of ET from 1982 telling people to buckle up. And people in Connecticut who now weren't around when it happened are like, why has this happened? And they're still around. People have catalogued a whole lot of photos of them. So today's road sign fact of the day, if you were ever driving through Connecticut

and you see what looks like ET wearing a seatbelt saying buckle up, you are not wrong, my friends. It was a horrific miss from the advertising department of Progressive Insurance in 1999. Play ZM's Fletch Vodden Ailey. Play ZM. Today we go to Hawaii.

Aloha. Aloha to you all. So today's fact of the day Is in Hawaii there is a road sign That says at the Mauna Kea Observatory on the road To and from beware of invisible Cows You gotta watch out for them you just don't

You can't see them can you You gotta beware of these invisible cows What are the invisible cows I've driven in Hawaii I I never saw this sign. Did you drive to the Mauna Kea volcano? Is this on the main island, on Honolulu? I think so. I've never been to the motherland.

Haven't you? What, where Jason Momoa's from? No, I'm 1% Hawaiian, thank you. Oh, right, okay. And Jason. Yeah. She would have said I've never been to the daddy land if she was specifically talking about the fact that Jason Bar-Miles

grew up there. Well, I'll take you back in history to the 1790s where a British officer gave King Kamehameha III, oh no, King Kamehameha, one of the earlier kings, a gift of cattle. Oh, lovely. And King Kamehameha, one of the earlier kings, a gift of cattle. Oh, lovely. And King Kamehameha said, oh, those are good eating, but you've only given us a few. So what we're going to do is we're going to increase this population size.

And I'll do that by just releasing them into this environment of which there has never had an animal of this nature in it before. Right. Okay. And I will impose the death penalty on anyone who touches those animals. Good Lord. So as we can well speak to on our own Pacific Island, when you release a creature into the environment and it's not used to being there, it can absolutely go ham and the numbers can fly.

So over the next 40 years, numbers of the cows got to the point where they were destroying a lot of Hawaii. Okay. So they said, well, we're going to have to wrangle them. So they trained up, some people came from California and trained up what they called Hawaiian cowboys, paneolos. And then they would control and domesticate the cows, put up some fences, took them a little while, but they still had, you'll remember he gave them a few cattle,

so it started off as a five. By 1848, there was 35,000 of them roaming. Wow. That's a lot. Yeah. And they have to continue to eradicate them and take them out. However, due to the eradication and the ones that could escape were smaller, they've kind of evolved.

The smaller cattle survived, so they would pass on those genes to the next lot of being smaller. So eventually, over time, these have become smaller creatures. Cute. Cute. And also the ones that survived were also dark, dark in colour. So the ones that remain are a smaller, darker creature, which when they congregate and sit down on the hot asphalt roads

at the end of the day to absorb the heat off the road, you just can't see them when you're driving. Hence, invisible cows. Invisible cows. Hence, the local legend of invisible cows, because people would be driving and be like, what the hell was that? And then they get out and they've hit a cow And they're like, I didn't see it

And then, you know, people would be like Well, it was invisible, I couldn't see it And now that I've injured it It lost its power to camouflage itself Yeah, it's all red So they put up road signs It's all red and covered in guts Now I see it Yeah, its ins all red. So they put up road signs saying... It's all red and covered in guts. Now I see it. Yeah.

Its insides are on the outside now. I don't know if your Mazda 3 would even dent a cow, to be honest. No, it would be dented. It would just hit a wall. It would stove in the front. Yeah. Wow, okay. So they put up a sign saying, beware of invisible cows, and all the tourists would ask, like, what's the deal

with the invisible cows? So much so that the observatory now sells stickers that says, beware of invisible cows, which is a copy of the road sign. Oh, wow. So today's fact of the day is the local legend of the invisible cows led to road signs being put up in Hawaii, warning people to drive carefully due to invisible cows. Today's fact of the Day and the final

fact of the day in Roadside Week. Do you know, I just have to say Vaughan, I'm just loving these themed weeks. You're doing such a good job. Thanks, Hayley. Thanks. You're also here. That's important. No, I wasn't giving that

compliment in order to get one in return, actually. That was just for you. But if you were, that was not a compliment. But if you were to say something nice, that's important. No, I wasn't giving that compliment in order to get one in return, actually. That was just for you. But if you were, that was not a compliment. But if you were to say something nice, that was not it. That I'm here. No, I appreciate your passion for Fact of the Day. I do. Often afterwards you'll say, that's very interesting. Whereas Fletch has become complacent with

my love and unappreciative of it. Well, I just need high standards and a lot of the time they're not met. I do not toe-talk all that sentiment, thank you. I think you do a great job. You come up with five fricking facts about road signs. Work harder to impress me daily. Carry on, Vaughan.

Here we go. So today's fact of the Day takes us to India, to the area of Darjeeling, which you may know from the 2007 Wes Anderson film, The Darjeeling Limited. Not one of his most popular, but I love it. Express or limited? Limited. Express.

Limited. They are on a train, which is why I had to Google it as well because I thought it was the Express, but it wasn't. It was The Darjeeling Limited, which was in India on a train. Now, that's correct. It is the same area of India, but it is the road beside that very famous railway that we want to talk about, because it has some of the most interesting road signs in the world.

It's a very unpaved, often unpaved, mountainous and remote road. But the road signs on it have become a tourist attraction. Okay. Because they're all a little bit quirky. And by the way, they didn't start out meaning to be like, hey, we're quirky. They wanted them to be ones that the locals would read, and they're a little bit longer, to keep them alert. Right. Because that is driving. For example, some of the road signs says, after whiskey, driving is risky.

Not wrong. Yeah, and they often got a lot of spelling mistakes in them as well. Be cautious, life is precious. Precious spelt very incorrectly. The I, the O, and the U in the last part of precious all muddled up. Some of the other ones, and traditionally these were road signs painted on concrete or rock. So that kind of tells you how long they've been around and how old they are. And often marked with the elevation at the site of the sign and how far down the road you are.

A cat has nine lives. You only have one. Use it wisely. That's beautiful. Actually, put that on a t-shirt. Please tell me they've got a make it click one. Do they ever make it click? They do have multiple ones about I'm using your seatbelt. Donate blood in the blood bank, not on this road. Oh! Ruthless.

That's... Don't watch her behind. Keep safety in mind. Okay. So don't perv. Don't go her behind. Keep safety in mind. Okay. So don't perv. Don't go looking around having a perv at a tush. Yeah, keep watching the car in front of you so you don't make any mistakes. Yeah, actually, that's very heteronormative.

It is. That the man's driving and he's looking at a woman. Woman perv too. We do. Don't they? All the time. The rule of the road is a paradox. Quiet.

Keep to the left and you are always right. Well, that's good. What about don't be a dick, make it click? That'd be a good make it click. Yeah. That would be a good one, but they don't have any. Are these signs all in English? Yes.

Yeah, because otherwise the rhymes wouldn't work. Yeah. Are they for tourists? Well, no, not originally. A lot of the people, because you've got to remember, India was a British colony. Yes. For many, many, many years.

So while people spoke a whole bunch of different languages, primarily the written language they were taught in schools would have been English. I will say I hate the colonisation of India from the British, but I loved the aesthetic. Oh, yeah, like Bangalore Polo Club. You know, all those sort of

like, everyone's in like white cottons and there's always these bars. But they've got a bit of like... Beautiful purglars purgolas outside. Often with a mosquito net. The hats. Terrible what they did to the country. That was where gin and tonic

was invented, right? Yeah, it was. What is that thing in gin? Wait, so now we're pro-colonisation? Not juniper. No, it's in the tonic. What's in the tonic?

Juniper berries. Quinine. Quin-quin something. Quinine. Quinine was a mosquito repellent so you drink gin and tonic to keep the mosquitoes away. Wow.

That's actually why you never get bitten, Hayley. We're not trying to. That's great. Yeah, that's great. Some of the more controversial signs on the road, enjoy your ride, don't commit suicide, which obviously

has been taken down. Life is short, don't make it shorter, and lots of them. So if you're ever in the area, in the high country of Darjeeling, keep an eye out for the road signs, because they are quirky and interesting. Fact of the day, day, day, day,

day. I just realised I did the whole show with my headphones on backwards. Well, that means the show's backwards then, isn't it? We're going to have to play this in reverse. Well, should we speak in reverse and hopefully they'll work out the other way? Give us a review.