Stoptionals Are Like Snipe Hunting

This is for the little white car in the park. And just to be clear, I have nothing against little white cars. This may prove to be remedial for most of you, but it's been brought to my attention abruptly, some of you, perhaps driving little white cars in the park...need a remedial reminder...

I can see now that they are side by side, why some of you MAY be experiencing some issues differentiating between some of our critical red road signs.

And I'm not gonna lie, some of our signs are confusing. I'm not sure what an acorn and a penguin have to do with one another...for that matter I'm not sure why our pedestrian crossings contain a penguin at all. A penguin in a suit no less! But believe me I've got my eyes peeled for one every time I'm downtown Silver Spring.

But this is really about the little white car that damn near took the paint off my bike in Sligo Creek. Now I knew you weren't really going to stop, so it wasn't that close, but you do know what the red octagon means right?

I'm not sure what it is about spring, but it makes people drive poorly. I mean I'm not sure if there has ever been a scientific study...could there be a compound, element, or freaking amino acid like tryptophan that causes drivers to lapse into semi-consciousness while driving or even have selective amnesia?

I mean I tried really hard to give you the benefit of the doubt. I looked on every corner. I saw the same sign-everywhere. I tried looking at different angles. It always looked the same.

I investigated the yield sign. It is indeed the same color. It's even red outlined in white. Okay. Let's assume you are color blind. Let's also assume you can't read. STOP may mean nothing to you. Of course, let's be honest, if that's the case, this blog posting is falling on deaf ears...or rather illiterate eyes.

But is there such a thing as apparentylexia? I'm gonna tell you right now my spell check has got that made up word on high alert with its squiggly red notification. My inclination is NO that's absolutely not a word and absolutely not a condition. Therefore, the octagonal shape of the STOP sign and the triangular shape of the YIELD sign should mean something to everyone.

Whether it's the white triangle in the middle of the sign (assuming you don't speak English) or the letters on the actual sign...I'm not sure if you've ever taken the time to notice but allow me to point out S T O P Y I E L D does not repeat one single letter. So there's that. And then there's the shape. Eight sides to three. Surely you can count to three? If you are truly geometrically challenged, and I get it, some people are...an octagon is really more like a circle and a triangle more like a...well, a triangle. Get it?

Sometimes STOP signs even come with these pre-STOP signs as a kind of warning. This one comes in yellow and is a diamond, which is really just a square on its side. It's not really geometry, I think if you stretch your brain you can get this one. Turkey be damned.

This sign is alerting you to the fact that you are going to need to STOP soon. Stopping, in case that is the problem, is when you depress the pedal on the left, all the way to the floor if you have to.

Once when I was a kid I heard a rumor if the sign had a white border around it it was really a STOPTIONAL and you didn't need to stop if it were clear. Even at 15 I knew that wasn't true. Those are called YIELD signs and they look completely different, as we just remediated in this blog. Bottom line, if there's a question, please STOP. Thank you for your time.