transport: road signs

When I was five or six and my family was driving I used to pay careful attention to all the road signs (I had just learned how to read). Once we came to a sign that said 'Do not pass' and I got really scared because I thought it was illegal to go past those signs. I believed this until I was about nine.

One day when I was riding with my mother, I asked her what the "Do Not Pass" sign meant. She told me it was for blind people.

I figured that if a blind person was driving, their passenger would have to tell them that they had to stop because of the sign.

The Children Crossing signs in my town had a silhouette of two children walking over the letters XING. I thought there was an actual word xing you pronounced as "zing".
It meant something like reservation or game preserve.

I thought that til I was about twelve.

When I was younger, I used to believe that the road sign depicting the motorway in the UK was in fact a monster, with the bridge forming the arms, and the road beneath it making the head and legs. I was always relieved when we got of the motorway, because the sign had a line through it, so there were no more monsters.

My dad always told me that the signs in the mountains that said "Falling Rock" were named after an old Indian Chief in the area. Since we travelled a lot in the Western states, I sure thought that Indian Chief got around as much as we did!

When I was little driving in the car I would see the "crossover" signs for miles at a time, I always thought it was a really big city whitm like a million billion people that was somewhere sorta to the left of wherever I was

I was 18 when I moved to New York City from Nebraska. I was standing at a corner in Mid-Town, waiting for the light to change, when I noticed a sign above -- "No Standing". I thought, my god, I can't even stand here!!!! Took me a while to figure out that "no standing" meant that cars could not sit there and idle while waiting, not that I could not stand there. I was most amused at myself when I finally figured it out.

I used to believe that the "Wrong Way, Go Back" signs on a freeway were put there by 'Bunyips' - mythical Yeti type monsters which are said to reside in Australian billabongs.

When I was younger and saw the road signs stating "Pass With Care" I always read it as Press With Care and thought it were only those time you could leave tire tracks on the road.

I used to beleive that the red and green stoplights at each intersection had seceret cameras built in and the people watching from the cameras would wait until the other side was being very polight, and then changed the light to green.

I used to think "No outlet" signs meant there was no electricity on that road and that the people were trapped there forever.

i used to believe that the signs of slippy roads meant that there were some lost handbags and that you should return them to the sign so that they could be picked up by thier owners. i found out latter it meant 'slippy roads'

I remember when I was riding in the car with my parents on a cold night, I was about 2 at the time. I always asked my mother what all the signs meant, and she normally told the truth. But when we got to an intersection and stopped, and, as usual, I asked her what the sign meant. She told me "It says, 'Don't stop here or aliens will come and take you away to mars.'" I believed her, and started kicking and screaming at my dad to keep going. I kept on crying and yelling every time we stopped at that sign until I learned to read two years later, when I learned that the sign said something like "No thru trucks." I still get a bit paraniod every time I stop there, for some odd reason.

I used to think that the sign that said "do not pass" meant that it was forbidden to go past that point in the road. I thought my mom was breaking the law.

My wife for years after we were married believed that the "Frontage Road" on a road sign was the longest road. She always wondered how they were able to keep it as one road. (:-)

when i was a kid i thought that there were people in the traffic lights and they would shine flashlights out the correct whole at the same time