at first i thought this was a joke about running everyone over with a car lmao
this post was submitted on 06 May 2026
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No, the road is closed. It's the street that's open.
What do you mean, "I plowed directly into the crowd?" It's their fault for jaywalking, it said the road was open!
/s if it wasn't obvious
Perhaps using a different sign would leave a less negative impression
Instead of saying the road is closed to cars, you say the street is open only to pedestrians.
The picture is seemingly from North America, so I'm not sure if a similar sign exists over there.
Real life examples from Europe, where a "closed" road is showed as a positive message.
Italy:
Denmark:
If I were driving I would take this to mean crosswalk or watch for kids due to having seen similar signs.
I think it would be great to gain a new meaning however when posted in the middle of the road.
The sign I posted follows the 1967 Vienna Convention on road signs.
Afaik the US is not signatory to that treaty, but they probably have different signs with similar meaning
Perhaps something like this, based on the US bike lane sign?
Unfortunately, that's limited to a single language, not international friendly. Having language at all makes it take longer to process too, but that's not as much of an issue in this case.
That seems to be the standard in the US though. I'm only following what they already do over there.
Sadly, I don't think you can have a wordless sign here that isn't negative. The option is a "no cars" symbol. I don't know how you'd do "pedestrians only" symbolicly.
Literally the image at the top of this comment chain?
Circular white on blue signs are "order" signs. Whatever they don't show is implicitly forbidden, without needing a red circle "forbiddance" sign.
America doesn't follow the Vienna Convention on Road Signs, so a blue circular sign would be essentially meaningless over there. People have never seen it before and won't know what it represents.
Edit: As another example, this seems to be the sign for a bikelane or bikepath in the US
Canada does seemingly have an "order" sign, but theirs is a white circle with a green border
I think that’s perfect.
its round, so its obligatory, not just a warning
No they didn't - road signs are generally for vehicles unless otherwise specified.
That's the criticism in this picture. The sign is vehicle-centric where it should be explicitely pedestrian-centric.
Jfc I don’t think that road sign is trying to oppress anyone.
The road sign is technically correct, but it looks at the situation as "car by default".
It reinforces the idea that in order to accommodate pedestrian friendly places, we must punish drivers by restricting them from going where they would otherwise be allowed to go. It assumes that cars are allowed to go anywhere, unless explicitely stated otherwise.
The way you communicate ideas is important if you want to get people on board, so maybe it is better to say the road is "open to pedestrians only", rather than "closed to cars"
The road sign is indeed defaulting to cars because that's what roads are made for
In current-day America that is indeed the case.
This thread is arguing that maybe that should not be the case, and is proposing alternative solutions that would be less car-brained.
Such a "open to pedestrians only" sign already exists and is commonly used in Europe. Why can't such a sign exist in America?
It’s really not that complicated. Roads are for cars in the US. We don’t want cars going through that craft fair right there, therefore the road is closed.
This is crap
You want to let cars onto the road full of people?!
The sign is addressing cars and for cars it's closed but from a human perspective, it's open
I know, I was just having a bit of fun with wordplay
Well do better next time and you won't disappoint all the people you are reply to and those who agree with them
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Better than “self-driving” cars.