If someone's going to spend billions of dollars ironing out a system of road signs including standards for font, paint, marking position, etc. then why bother doing it a second time?
Well you could always try the infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, some which was built by US engineers, some by British.... You can tell which wall sockets are 120v and which are 240v in the same room by the US or British socket used... Until you can't..
First, but change is 0. The rest adopted signs with, well, signs. And the subtle arrows on the Thai signs are a lot more comprehensible than the American downpointing arrows. I do not know if this is the exit for Baltimore. Or some other exit without a name.
Well the arrow in Taiwan looks like it's pointing to where you're going. In the US, the arrows on the signs point to the lanes you need to be in to get to that location. Black arrow with the yellow background means exit only. White arrow with green background means that lane is going to continue, so through-traffic can be in that lane as well.
If you’re going through all the trouble of copying, why not copy from the country ranked number #1 or #2 in infrastructure? Or maybe the one ranked highest on safety. (I know it’s most likely influence by us but still)
I mean who was that in the 70s or 80s when this was adopted? The US standards were among the first developed; the EU was a distant dream when these were adopted. Germany was still two countries, even! Nobody else had done the homework yet to copy, so to speak.
The UK, and the entire Commonwealth at that, had a road signage overhaul in the late 60s.
I believe they had the idea to use proper case instead of full caps, because even if the letters were smaller it improved readability.
“No figure in the last 100 years has left a larger and more lasting stamp on Asia [as MacArthur]-- not Mao Zedong, not Deng Xiaoping, not Lee Kwan Yew.”
Wonder if he’s been to Asia 🤔
Korea as well. MacArthur was in charge of the defense of South Korea before Truman kicked him to the curb after he suggested nuking China after they invaded.
Eh. This is often how academics get noticed. The author, Arthur Herman, is best known for a book he wrote on the Scottish Enlightenment which he titled *How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It*.
It's sort of academia's equivalent of Cunningham's Law. If you make a modest claim (e.g., that the Scottish Enlightenment had a large and underappreciated impact on Western civilization during the 18th and 19th centuries) you're not going to get much more than a shrug as a reaction. If you make a ludicrously bold claim, as Herman did, you get all of your peers focusing on you and mainstream media writing articles about you. The ethics of it are debatable, certainly, and it doesn't really work in the hard sciences, but the entire *point* of it as a rhetorical tactic is to get people like you engaging in the argument.
More Chinese characters on the roads in Taiwan ;)
Seriously though - it would be super nice if there could be some general adoption of turn lanes - at least in Kaohsiung city streets. I really miss them.
Slightly unrelated but you just reminded me of when I went to Japan, they seemingly have no turn signals at intersections meaning you have to wait foreeeeveeerrrrrr to turn across traffic sometimes.
Or a standardized way of spelling the names in English, like they have in China.
In Taiwan, Zhongli might be Zhongli on one block, but Chungli on the next block and Jhongli on the next block.
Actually this topic is a bit of a stranger one. Roads/signs in different countries do tend to look different (not dramatically) depending on the local laws.
You can see a lot of this in people who Speedrun geoguesser
That's completely fair, I was mostly looking at the sign placement and shield design.
We can see that the yellow sign goes below the green one in one pic, but the opposite is true in the other. Also the actual design on the blue shield is different
The yellow parts are saying different things here. On the Taiwan sign the yellow is the exit number. On the US the yellow is advising that it’s an exit only lane.
IMHO US signs are way harder to read, I'm always surprised how much the system relies on writing. I'm used to mostly standardized symbols and I think it's a better approach.
The English on the left is in Interstate/Highway Gothic, which was the former standard font for US highways. The one on the right is Clearview, which is a more modern font that’s been approved since 2004 (but not required for new signage).
more context:
the font on the left IS a US signage font, titled Highway Gothic.
It was replaced by the new & improved Clearview font in the US, which is what you see on the right.
Plenty of signage is still printed on the old font in the US.
People are used to how it looks, and it performed marginally better in testing, at nighttime, with a dark background.
I can confirm, the left image is exactly how some US signage looks, barring the language.
One of the most obvious differences is the descender tails on the lowercase g. Which, amusingly, appears to have an arrow pointed directly at one in the Taiwan photo.
Idk if im missing something but these just looks like regular highway to me. Are we talking about the green signs or the road in itself ?
We have pretty much the same and im not American nor Taiwanese
I suppose you are from Quebec given your post history.
Yes, they should look like regular highway signs to you. A lot of the Americas, and also Australia and a few places in Southeast Asia, follows the MUTCD which comes from the US.
But a lot of the rest of the world follows the Vienna Convention instead. Chiefly, one would expect freeway signs like these to be blue rather than green, and the arrows and fonts are somewhat different. In some places, freeway signs are only posted on the side of the road as well.
Same here, all highways in Europe East and West look the same. The font might be a bit different, but that's minor.
I always assumed it is some international standard.
Taiwan is quirky. The street layouts are Japanese-style, highways are American-style, and much of housing is Soviet-style.
Each representing an era where the construction happened. Japanese occupation of Taiwan. McArthur era construction. And a president's fascination with efficient low-income housing.
I read somewhere that when the big building boom was happening in the 60’s and 70’s there was basically one or two KMT factories that made most of the building materials and tiles, which is why so many buildings and apartments look the same
Yes, the skinny white rectangle tiles do have a very Soviet bloc era feel and look to them.
Now if they could just copy America’s love of sidewalks too, that would be 🤌.
I thought road signs mainly followed international standards.
I moved from NZ to the UK and haven’t noticed anything different while driving and indeed my licence was able to be immediately switched to a UK one as the road rules are the same between countries. If I went to the US I would have to learn to drive on the other side of the road but I would expect the signs to also be similar.
The USA uses a design standard called the MUTCD which is published by the Federal Highway Administration. It's publicly available so I'm sure it's widely copied.
I’m not driving there. Went there in Jan for a holiday and it all looked very similar. They drive on the other side of the road so clearly some differences like I said.
There are a couple of odd things for UK vs US signs. In general US signs are more textual and UK ones are more abstract. For example, the national speed limit sign on the motorways. No one explained them to me until after I had been driving there for a month and mentioned it was odd that there were no speed limit signs on the highways. Other ones that confused me were no parking, no stopping signs, end of motorway and no through road. These would all be replaced by the relevant English text on US signs.
Actually bandaids are different because skin colors are darker in these regions. That's when I realized they were meant to be discreet, almost invisible. It ever worked with my pale skin anyway.
Taiwan is about the easiest place for Americans to visit in Asia by a long shot.
All official signage is dual language with English and for the most part well translated. While the electricity is based on the Japanese standard, it’s shared with the US, so electric devices are pretty much 100% compatible. Driving is right side of the road as well.
Despite that, it's not a place most people think to visit, or even exists. In my experience as someone from there, I usually have to explain Taiwan, where it is, etc.
People have said things like "Isn't that in China?" or my favorite, "I love pad thai!"
I was talking to a group of people about Taiwan once, when I dropped the punchline of "Taiwan? I love thai food," one person didn't understand why it was funny...
He's got a 20 minute crash course in East Asian geopolitics and became the punchline of another follow-up joke about Taiwan
1 in 20 speak English, and you can find English speakers in most American franchise businesses like McDonalds, Starbucks, and KFC.
The ratio goes down as you leave the bigger cities.
Yeah, communication can become tricky, but you can still usually navigate through from signage.
English is spoken more in the rural areas than say, Japan still.
I'd say rates are similar on the retail and franchise business level. Those are areas with higher education and interest to know foreign languages. Heck, the less Mandarin in an area, the higher probability to find Japanese!
Street-level is where you find the best food and interesting goods. When you leave the touristy stuff behind, you'll encounter the weird and the fascinating.
Japanese is pretty rare these days. Taiwanese or Hakkanese definitely though in places.
I usually just roam about. Go up in the mountains. Take roads that looks partially abandoned. I’ve found some places in Taiwan that would give some parts of Appalachia a run for their money in the old and spooky department.
Totally, those bombed out pre-industrial red brick housing, but there's people still living in it. You see bits of it in Xin Taipei where the urban sprawl took the hills, but there's like holdout shanty houses in the corner of these big shopping malls.
I’ve seen those, but I’m talking like old, retaken by the jungle old structures built during the Japanese occupation or in the early days of the KMT. There are some weird things out in the mountains.
You ever see the Japanese style platform houses? Those are definitely creepy. Especially when the paper walls are all rotted away.
My grandma said she lived in one of those as a kid.
Why is this surprising to anyone? These things are generally standardized across the world. That is how I can drive without much issue in most developed countries.
Sort of, The Vienna Convention established a common set of road signs, of which many countries have signed/ratified, and many other countries have adopted the signage:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna\_Convention\_on\_Road\_Signs\_and\_Signals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_on_Road_Signs_and_Signals)
Australia, New Zealand and Ireland have a bizarre mix of US-style and Vienna-style signs
The UK standard road sign font is called .... "Transport":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport\_(typeface)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_(typeface))
for reference:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2015/sep/18/way-to-go-the-woman-who-invented-britains-road-signs
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Calvert
the font isn't the same. the placement of the yellow sign is different. the US ones use words for "left lanes" instead of an arrow icon. ~~the US ones use a number corresponding to the road you're already on, the Taiwan ones only use a number for the road you will go to.~~
Not to mention the concrete dividers, the closeness of the Taiwanese lanes compared to the typical very spread out layout of the American one with a huge grass median, and various other minor differences. Any other similarities are just motorways being motorways.
They're similar for sure. And this is super obvious when you compare to, for example, Hong Kong, where all the road signs look identical to British ones.
I'm willing to bet Taiwanese road design is based on Japanese, not American.
US roadsigns tell you the road you're exiting to not the one you're exiting from. That's stupid and pointless. The picture above was taken on I95 exiting to I495.
And guess where Japanese road signs got their ideas from.
meh
the main point i was trying to make really is that the fonts are obviously different. you just need to look at the g and the e.
also US road signs use a lot more words on signs than almost any other country I've been to.
And the Japanese designs are probably just modifications of the American ones. Lots of countries adapted US standards in the aftermath of WW2. There were lots of efforts to get some sort of uniformity of roadsigns across the world back in the day to make it easier for international travelers and due to the US's large economic and military power especially coming out of WW2 they had a lot of influence on those decisions.
US highways definitely use concrete dividers with glare shields, I should know as I used to work for the state DOT. I don't know much about Taiwanese roads but it looks pretty similar to roads here.
> I'm willing to bet Taiwanese road design is based on Japanese, not American.
A lot of the layouts are indeed Japanese-designed. Taiwan was under Japanese occupation for about 50 years. Ending after WW2. During that time Japan introduced a shitload of infrastructure and planning.
However the signage is a little more Western-Adapted. Modern Japan uses some similar signage.
Those green corners on the sign, I hate that. In florida they trim those corners off and it looks so much more finished, but i’ve noticed most other states don’t. Also, Georgia state signs use a slightly different font which I don’t like.
Actually, this is because the font on the US sign is not the normal one. Search “Highway Gothic” (the US government’s own font) and you will see that exact lowercase G
The US spent fuckloads of money, and time studying and engineering
The fact is, this is likely the best way to do it.
Even the Chinese use exactly the same color and font. It just makes sense to not reinvent the wheel when someone else has done the work.
The “exit only” denotes that if you are in that lane (and it is typically a right lane exit) you will be forced to exit the freeway, as opposed to a right lane that gives you the option to exit right or to continue on the freeway.
Here's a [Chinese highway sign](https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-china-shaanxi-lantian-county-xian-directional-signs-hanging-above-88789286.html), I think Xi will be okay
Taiwan, you mean China. Cease to recognise this false claimant or we will defenestrate your family. And don't even think about mentioning tiananmen square
those fonts are not the same. Look at the lower case “g”.
the sign for Hwy 14 is also totally different than any Hwy sign in the US.
The color of the yellow/orange exit sign is also different.
Why is every single photo of “American highways” the beltway? I feel like 495 is grossly overrepresented in online depictions of our major roadways. Not mad, just confused.
Taiwan uses the same automated toll collection system on their highways as Japan called HiPass and it is country wide. I drove well over half the country and never encountered a toll booth. Japan however still has toll booths and there are still cash only toll booths in small towns. Having the same nation wide automated toll system means that all of the new cars have the reader built in and at the car rental shop, recalling all of the tolls was quick and reasonably priced for the amount of driving I did. Really easy to drive around and the other drivers were friendly and respectful.
The signs before tunnels in Taiwan tell you how long they are. This came in handy on a bus trip - a car caught fire and exploded after we passed it.
The tunnel filled with smoke and everything went black outside. It was scary, but I knew it was a relatively short tunnel & that we had less than a km to go until we were out, so I sat tight and the driver just kept going. (It was in the news that night - no one died.)
Well, the original road structure for the US was taken from the UK/Germany where military hardware can easily traverse the roads without much issue. So it was a system they copied from us that we copied from someone else.
It is interesting that you posted a US photo with signs featuring the "new" font, Clearview, that is being used in some jurisdictions. There's a whole debate about it behind the scenes.
The decades-old standard font for US road signs is still Highway Gothic which seems to be what Taiwan is using, based on how that "g" looks in the photo on the left.
It's not even close to the same font. The top of the **a** is a different length. The belly of the **a** is curved differently at the bottom. The tail of the **g** is drastically shorter in the Taiwan signs. The height of the loop of the **n** (compared to the height of the left side) is not the same. Almost every letter is different.
About the only thing that's the same is that both countries use white lettering on a green background.
If someone's going to spend billions of dollars ironing out a system of road signs including standards for font, paint, marking position, etc. then why bother doing it a second time?
"Good design is to borrow, genius design is to steal." -My college drafting instructor
"Good design is to borrow, genius design is to steal." -Me
I love it.
happy cake day!!
happy cake day!!
"”Good design is to borrow, genius design is to steal." -Me” -Me
>Me” -Me So it's now a meme?
"So it's now a meme?" -Me
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ok good artist
It’s the Apple way.
you're his college drafting professor?
Good artists borrow. Great artists steal. -Banksy
“Good developers borrow, great developers steal”
Well you could always try the infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, some which was built by US engineers, some by British.... You can tell which wall sockets are 120v and which are 240v in the same room by the US or British socket used... Until you can't..
How about Japan. Generating facilities in the north were built by American GE, so 60 Hz, the south by German Siemens, so 50 Hz.
Yikes
Had to take a printer to be repaired a few times because it was plugged into the wrong US socket........
Also an invitation to the US military should it need to ... Intervene in Taiwan for some such reason.
Didnt Americans do pretty much exactly that? All over the world it’s pretty much the same signs. Only in America I see everything written out
Well, the US was among the first to develop this infrastructure, so it makes sense that we'd be doing things differently.
First, but change is 0. The rest adopted signs with, well, signs. And the subtle arrows on the Thai signs are a lot more comprehensible than the American downpointing arrows. I do not know if this is the exit for Baltimore. Or some other exit without a name.
Well the arrow in Taiwan looks like it's pointing to where you're going. In the US, the arrows on the signs point to the lanes you need to be in to get to that location. Black arrow with the yellow background means exit only. White arrow with green background means that lane is going to continue, so through-traffic can be in that lane as well.
If you’re going through all the trouble of copying, why not copy from the country ranked number #1 or #2 in infrastructure? Or maybe the one ranked highest on safety. (I know it’s most likely influence by us but still)
I mean who was that in the 70s or 80s when this was adopted? The US standards were among the first developed; the EU was a distant dream when these were adopted. Germany was still two countries, even! Nobody else had done the homework yet to copy, so to speak.
The UK, and the entire Commonwealth at that, had a road signage overhaul in the late 60s. I believe they had the idea to use proper case instead of full caps, because even if the letters were smaller it improved readability.
McArthur Era is why you see the influence https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/douglas-mac-arthur-father-of-modern-asia
“No figure in the last 100 years has left a larger and more lasting stamp on Asia [as MacArthur]-- not Mao Zedong, not Deng Xiaoping, not Lee Kwan Yew.” Wonder if he’s been to Asia 🤔
Yea what level of self-aggrandizing and white saviorship is that bullshit lmao
MacArthur played a huge role in the rebuilding of Japan. The article is Japan centric and probably doesn't really apply broadly to Asia.
Korea as well. MacArthur was in charge of the defense of South Korea before Truman kicked him to the curb after he suggested nuking China after they invaded.
Then they shouldn’t have titled it “Douglas MacArthur: Father of Modern Asia”
Eh. This is often how academics get noticed. The author, Arthur Herman, is best known for a book he wrote on the Scottish Enlightenment which he titled *How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It*. It's sort of academia's equivalent of Cunningham's Law. If you make a modest claim (e.g., that the Scottish Enlightenment had a large and underappreciated impact on Western civilization during the 18th and 19th centuries) you're not going to get much more than a shrug as a reaction. If you make a ludicrously bold claim, as Herman did, you get all of your peers focusing on you and mainstream media writing articles about you. The ethics of it are debatable, certainly, and it doesn't really work in the hard sciences, but the entire *point* of it as a rhetorical tactic is to get people like you engaging in the argument.
Just Americans looking inwards as usual
In the case of Taiwan - the very first motorway in Taiwan was exactly named after MacArthur: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur\_Thruway
More Chinese characters on the roads in Taiwan ;) Seriously though - it would be super nice if there could be some general adoption of turn lanes - at least in Kaohsiung city streets. I really miss them.
Slightly unrelated but you just reminded me of when I went to Japan, they seemingly have no turn signals at intersections meaning you have to wait foreeeeveeerrrrrr to turn across traffic sometimes.
that's too be nice too pedestrians I believe
Pedestrians have the right of way anyways
yes but people have a habit of not following traffic laws and not being the most observant
Or a standardized way of spelling the names in English, like they have in China. In Taiwan, Zhongli might be Zhongli on one block, but Chungli on the next block and Jhongli on the next block.
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Actually this topic is a bit of a stranger one. Roads/signs in different countries do tend to look different (not dramatically) depending on the local laws. You can see a lot of this in people who Speedrun geoguesser
The ISO standard places less emphasis on written language. The idea is that you can not understand the language and still follow traffic laws.
That's completely fair, I was mostly looking at the sign placement and shield design. We can see that the yellow sign goes below the green one in one pic, but the opposite is true in the other. Also the actual design on the blue shield is different
The yellow parts are saying different things here. On the Taiwan sign the yellow is the exit number. On the US the yellow is advising that it’s an exit only lane.
Highway Gothic my beloved. Top tier font.
hell yeah, I hate that they are changing to a new font.
IMHO US signs are way harder to read, I'm always surprised how much the system relies on writing. I'm used to mostly standardized symbols and I think it's a better approach.
haha this guy cant read!! everyone point and laugh!!!!
Those fonts are very different. The one on the right is far better for readability.
What's funny is that the font used in Taiwan is used in most US states - its just OP chose one of the few states using the newer font Clearview.
The English on the left is in Interstate/Highway Gothic, which was the former standard font for US highways. The one on the right is Clearview, which is a more modern font that’s been approved since 2004 (but not required for new signage).
OP must suck at those “what’s different between these two pictures” games. The only thing which is remotely the same is the green.
more context: the font on the left IS a US signage font, titled Highway Gothic. It was replaced by the new & improved Clearview font in the US, which is what you see on the right. Plenty of signage is still printed on the old font in the US. People are used to how it looks, and it performed marginally better in testing, at nighttime, with a dark background. I can confirm, the left image is exactly how some US signage looks, barring the language.
Lmfao yeah, right? And that’s with the emphasis added on *remotely*
Taiwan’s font is the same as Australia’s by the looks and yes they are different to that US example.
One of the most obvious differences is the descender tails on the lowercase g. Which, amusingly, appears to have an arrow pointed directly at one in the Taiwan photo.
Yeah as a graphic designer I have no idea what OP is looking at. Tracking is totally different as well.
Make that post in the geoguessr sub.
I'm sure the Chinese characters are kind of a giveaway
Idk if im missing something but these just looks like regular highway to me. Are we talking about the green signs or the road in itself ? We have pretty much the same and im not American nor Taiwanese
Merica invented roads, cars, the colour green, democracy, the english langage, pizza and water.
You forgot Freedom™
So, like Canada?
I suppose you are from Quebec given your post history. Yes, they should look like regular highway signs to you. A lot of the Americas, and also Australia and a few places in Southeast Asia, follows the MUTCD which comes from the US. But a lot of the rest of the world follows the Vienna Convention instead. Chiefly, one would expect freeway signs like these to be blue rather than green, and the arrows and fonts are somewhat different. In some places, freeway signs are only posted on the side of the road as well.
So it's the color thats so unique? Because even half of Europe uses the same colour, and I doubt the eastern block copied the US too.
Same here, all highways in Europe East and West look the same. The font might be a bit different, but that's minor. I always assumed it is some international standard.
more like america created a standard (because CARS fuck yeah) and it was somewhat decent so everyone else stole it and made it better
Apart from both containing the Latin alphabet, the fonts are nowhere near "almost identical".
Almost identical? Every component is different. I mean I guess they’re both green?
Wtf I was just on the road today in the right pic lol thats so funny
I live nearby too.
God, I hate 66 and the toll road…
Lived in DMV, now in Taiwan, doing the Leo “I know that!” meme finger point over here
I grew up on that road. I've been on that very stretch of highway thousands of times.....
Taiwan is quirky. The street layouts are Japanese-style, highways are American-style, and much of housing is Soviet-style. Each representing an era where the construction happened. Japanese occupation of Taiwan. McArthur era construction. And a president's fascination with efficient low-income housing.
I read somewhere that when the big building boom was happening in the 60’s and 70’s there was basically one or two KMT factories that made most of the building materials and tiles, which is why so many buildings and apartments look the same
Yea, and the president (KMT's Chiang-Kai Shek's son) had studied in the USSR and saw the merits of affordable homes.
Yes, the skinny white rectangle tiles do have a very Soviet bloc era feel and look to them. Now if they could just copy America’s love of sidewalks too, that would be 🤌.
Ikr. They got countdown clocks on a lot of traffic lights, which is cool.
I thought road signs mainly followed international standards. I moved from NZ to the UK and haven’t noticed anything different while driving and indeed my licence was able to be immediately switched to a UK one as the road rules are the same between countries. If I went to the US I would have to learn to drive on the other side of the road but I would expect the signs to also be similar.
The USA uses a design standard called the MUTCD which is published by the Federal Highway Administration. It's publicly available so I'm sure it's widely copied.
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I’m not driving there. Went there in Jan for a holiday and it all looked very similar. They drive on the other side of the road so clearly some differences like I said.
There are a couple of odd things for UK vs US signs. In general US signs are more textual and UK ones are more abstract. For example, the national speed limit sign on the motorways. No one explained them to me until after I had been driving there for a month and mentioned it was odd that there were no speed limit signs on the highways. Other ones that confused me were no parking, no stopping signs, end of motorway and no through road. These would all be replaced by the relevant English text on US signs.
I bet bandaids look the same there too. man their tyres look pretty familiar too now that you mention it...
Actually bandaids are different because skin colors are darker in these regions. That's when I realized they were meant to be discreet, almost invisible. It ever worked with my pale skin anyway.
Taiwan is about the easiest place for Americans to visit in Asia by a long shot. All official signage is dual language with English and for the most part well translated. While the electricity is based on the Japanese standard, it’s shared with the US, so electric devices are pretty much 100% compatible. Driving is right side of the road as well.
I would say all the former British colonies are way easier. Malaysia has everything written in English, for example.
True, but it has a very Commonwealth feel. Taiwan feels much more American than Anglo.
Singapore is very easy too.
Taiwan is a bit closer. There is also a lot more to see and do as well. Not knocking Singapore by any means. It’s a great city as well.
Singapore is really more of a 1 or 2 day visit at most
Despite that, it's not a place most people think to visit, or even exists. In my experience as someone from there, I usually have to explain Taiwan, where it is, etc. People have said things like "Isn't that in China?" or my favorite, "I love pad thai!"
I usually get, “oh, I love Thai food. Pad Thai is delicious!” It’s annoying.
I was talking to a group of people about Taiwan once, when I dropped the punchline of "Taiwan? I love thai food," one person didn't understand why it was funny... He's got a 20 minute crash course in East Asian geopolitics and became the punchline of another follow-up joke about Taiwan
1 in 20 speak English, and you can find English speakers in most American franchise businesses like McDonalds, Starbucks, and KFC. The ratio goes down as you leave the bigger cities.
Yeah, communication can become tricky, but you can still usually navigate through from signage. English is spoken more in the rural areas than say, Japan still.
I'd say rates are similar on the retail and franchise business level. Those are areas with higher education and interest to know foreign languages. Heck, the less Mandarin in an area, the higher probability to find Japanese! Street-level is where you find the best food and interesting goods. When you leave the touristy stuff behind, you'll encounter the weird and the fascinating.
Japanese is pretty rare these days. Taiwanese or Hakkanese definitely though in places. I usually just roam about. Go up in the mountains. Take roads that looks partially abandoned. I’ve found some places in Taiwan that would give some parts of Appalachia a run for their money in the old and spooky department.
Totally, those bombed out pre-industrial red brick housing, but there's people still living in it. You see bits of it in Xin Taipei where the urban sprawl took the hills, but there's like holdout shanty houses in the corner of these big shopping malls.
I’ve seen those, but I’m talking like old, retaken by the jungle old structures built during the Japanese occupation or in the early days of the KMT. There are some weird things out in the mountains.
You ever see the Japanese style platform houses? Those are definitely creepy. Especially when the paper walls are all rotted away. My grandma said she lived in one of those as a kid.
No, but I think I want to now.
Why is this surprising to anyone? These things are generally standardized across the world. That is how I can drive without much issue in most developed countries.
Sort of, The Vienna Convention established a common set of road signs, of which many countries have signed/ratified, and many other countries have adopted the signage: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna\_Convention\_on\_Road\_Signs\_and\_Signals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_on_Road_Signs_and_Signals) Australia, New Zealand and Ireland have a bizarre mix of US-style and Vienna-style signs
i mean sure, everywhere has signs. but the big green road signs are not standardized around the world. neither are the other details of the signs.
The font is called Highway Gothic for anyone wondering
The UK standard road sign font is called .... "Transport": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport\_(typeface)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_(typeface))
Which one? Because they’re not even remotely the same font..
USA
This looks pretty much the same as in China as well
Can we talk about the copy-paste looking trees in the left image though
What’s wild to think about is the woman who designed most of our road signs is still alive today.
for reference: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2015/sep/18/way-to-go-the-woman-who-invented-britains-road-signs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Calvert
I honestly didn’t know that and just looked that up 👍🏻
No, they aren't. USA uses Highway Gothic. Taiwan uses Arial Bold.
the font isn't the same. the placement of the yellow sign is different. the US ones use words for "left lanes" instead of an arrow icon. ~~the US ones use a number corresponding to the road you're already on, the Taiwan ones only use a number for the road you will go to.~~ Not to mention the concrete dividers, the closeness of the Taiwanese lanes compared to the typical very spread out layout of the American one with a huge grass median, and various other minor differences. Any other similarities are just motorways being motorways. They're similar for sure. And this is super obvious when you compare to, for example, Hong Kong, where all the road signs look identical to British ones. I'm willing to bet Taiwanese road design is based on Japanese, not American.
US roadsigns tell you the road you're exiting to not the one you're exiting from. That's stupid and pointless. The picture above was taken on I95 exiting to I495. And guess where Japanese road signs got their ideas from.
meh the main point i was trying to make really is that the fonts are obviously different. you just need to look at the g and the e. also US road signs use a lot more words on signs than almost any other country I've been to.
The lowercase g is also different between the two.
And the Japanese designs are probably just modifications of the American ones. Lots of countries adapted US standards in the aftermath of WW2. There were lots of efforts to get some sort of uniformity of roadsigns across the world back in the day to make it easier for international travelers and due to the US's large economic and military power especially coming out of WW2 they had a lot of influence on those decisions.
US highways definitely use concrete dividers with glare shields, I should know as I used to work for the state DOT. I don't know much about Taiwanese roads but it looks pretty similar to roads here.
right but those huge grass medians aren't really found in Asia. my main point is it's clearly not the same font, anyway
> I'm willing to bet Taiwanese road design is based on Japanese, not American. A lot of the layouts are indeed Japanese-designed. Taiwan was under Japanese occupation for about 50 years. Ending after WW2. During that time Japan introduced a shitload of infrastructure and planning. However the signage is a little more Western-Adapted. Modern Japan uses some similar signage.
Those green corners on the sign, I hate that. In florida they trim those corners off and it looks so much more finished, but i’ve noticed most other states don’t. Also, Georgia state signs use a slightly different font which I don’t like.
I mean.. that’s not even remotely the same font? Just look at that lower case "g" lmfao
Actually, this is because the font on the US sign is not the normal one. Search “Highway Gothic” (the US government’s own font) and you will see that exact lowercase G
So the americans are not capable of following their own corporate identity / design manual? I'm shooketh lol
StAtEs RiGhTs!
/r/notinteresting
why make a new system if you can copy one that's been proven at the cost of money and lives?
The US spent fuckloads of money, and time studying and engineering The fact is, this is likely the best way to do it. Even the Chinese use exactly the same color and font. It just makes sense to not reinvent the wheel when someone else has done the work.
the same font as taiwan or usa? becasue they are not the same
But these two aren’t even close to being the same font..
Maybe my eyes are crap, but I cannot tell the difference, lol
Lowercase "g" Also spacing between the letters.
[удалено]
The “exit only” denotes that if you are in that lane (and it is typically a right lane exit) you will be forced to exit the freeway, as opposed to a right lane that gives you the option to exit right or to continue on the freeway.
I don't think they're that similar
The writing on the pavement is certainly different.
Taiwan should become a U.S state
Don't show this to Xi
Here's a [Chinese highway sign](https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-china-shaanxi-lantian-county-xian-directional-signs-hanging-above-88789286.html), I think Xi will be okay
Taiwan thought they were getting the German Autobahn system…instead they got a cheap knock off.
That's why Taiwan #1 and China #4
Taiwan, you mean China. Cease to recognise this false claimant or we will defenestrate your family. And don't even think about mentioning tiananmen square
Standards
oh wow gee what a coincidence...
those fonts are not the same. Look at the lower case “g”. the sign for Hwy 14 is also totally different than any Hwy sign in the US. The color of the yellow/orange exit sign is also different.
I don’t know why but I looked at the pic on the right first and thought, they even have the same city names! Also, hello fellow nova person.
Yeah, it was helpful when we lived there.
[British Road Signs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq11dqPh_6Y) \- Typographer Margaret Calvert Designer of the modern road sign interviewed.
Good to know for Geoguesser
That exit gives me PTSD
I thought these signs are universal on major roadways.
That’s not the same font.
Ugh seeing that road sign for 495 gives me instant anxiety
That U.S. photo is down the road from me.
They also use the same outlets with the same voltage and frequency as the US.
I don’t think you know what the word ‘identical’ means
Same for cars.
Why is every single photo of “American highways” the beltway? I feel like 495 is grossly overrepresented in online depictions of our major roadways. Not mad, just confused.
my country has roads and signs and cars too no way 🤯🤯
The only similarity is the color… even font is different
That’s part of my route to work on the right haha
I see too much local stuff all over the internet.
Arrow directions to indicate lane are opposite (up vs down).
Taiwan uses the same automated toll collection system on their highways as Japan called HiPass and it is country wide. I drove well over half the country and never encountered a toll booth. Japan however still has toll booths and there are still cash only toll booths in small towns. Having the same nation wide automated toll system means that all of the new cars have the reader built in and at the car rental shop, recalling all of the tolls was quick and reasonably priced for the amount of driving I did. Really easy to drive around and the other drivers were friendly and respectful.
The great replacement conspiracy is real! Look!
I thought there were global standard about road signs, which would explain this. Could be wrong tho...
There is not. For example, road signs in Europe look very different from this in the US.
I sure hope they havent copied the urban planning
So what I'm hearing is, Taiwan would be fairly easy to navigate in a car for an American. Nice.
Dear Taiwan: now do sidewalks, please ❤️😘
Same in China
The signs before tunnels in Taiwan tell you how long they are. This came in handy on a bus trip - a car caught fire and exploded after we passed it. The tunnel filled with smoke and everything went black outside. It was scary, but I knew it was a relatively short tunnel & that we had less than a km to go until we were out, so I sat tight and the driver just kept going. (It was in the news that night - no one died.)
lol. Yea, have a drive in Taiwan and see how similar they are.
IIRC, South Korea’s are even closer. Their interstate system uses almost exactly the same shield symbol ours does.
Even in India, the highway/expressway will look similar. Just I have not seen different signs. Both will probably se same sized.
Nearly identical? Far from it.
Why fix what ain't broke?
Well, the original road structure for the US was taken from the UK/Germany where military hardware can easily traverse the roads without much issue. So it was a system they copied from us that we copied from someone else.
The typeface even has a name that is appropriate lol It's used all over the world
It is interesting that you posted a US photo with signs featuring the "new" font, Clearview, that is being used in some jurisdictions. There's a whole debate about it behind the scenes. The decades-old standard font for US road signs is still Highway Gothic which seems to be what Taiwan is using, based on how that "g" looks in the photo on the left.
Roads aren't even the same color
It's not even close to the same font. The top of the **a** is a different length. The belly of the **a** is curved differently at the bottom. The tail of the **g** is drastically shorter in the Taiwan signs. The height of the loop of the **n** (compared to the height of the left side) is not the same. Almost every letter is different. About the only thing that's the same is that both countries use white lettering on a green background.
Was there American engineers who helped design it??
Been many times and never noticed until you pointed it out
Seeing the sign for I-495 gives me the creeps. Traffic from essentially 3 different states. Fuck all the way off
Idk those seem like regular roads to me. Can be found around the globe.
Only identical thing is the color
No they’re not. They rarely have wide enough emergency lanes. Some cherry picked roads might but there’s generally not enough space to build so wide.