Fix the roads, not the signs
This video of cars careening down a Seattle street got me thinking about Safety Corridors, sunk cost fallacy, and the false belief that signage or labels can fix fundamental design problems.
If you read a Twitter thread referencing this video, you’ll notice an interesting, and likely familiar, phenomenon. There are many replies to the tweet in which people claim that because this exit hasn’t been an issue for them, it shouldn’t be an issue for anyone else. If you’ve worked in software, this should sound familiar.
People who don’t have the problem are convinced there is no problem. Or if there is, it’s only because other people are not as smart, as skilled, or as diligent as they are. As pointed out in several replies, there are “plenty of signs” warning drivers to slow down. They should simply pay more attention!
The DOT seems to agree with the reply guys on Twitter. They are well aware of the high accident rate at this exit and they have taken steps to resolve it… by making more, bigger and brighter signs. Much to everyone’s surprise (not), it hasn’t done much good. People still exit too fast and crash on a regular basis. Rest assured, still more and brighter signs are planned for the future.
The problem is not signage or drivers, it’s the design of the exit.
This Google Maps image (above) shows the street view and, in the lower left corner, a map. As you can see, the exit is wide, short, and dumps straight onto a city street. To make matters worse, there’s an intersection just a few hundred feet from the exit. There’s not enough time for drivers to slow from 60+ to 20 MPH and the wide roadway gives drivers no visible reason to slow down. Clearly the problem is not signage or drivers, it’s the design of the exit.
But making a change to the design of the exit is expensive and also implies an admission that the original design was bad. Rather than re-design the exit to make it safer, it’s much cheaper and easier to put up more, brighter signage and continue to blame bad drivers instead of bad design. In fact, this is a fairly common practice.
People generally don’t read road signs, they read the road itself.
Have you ever entered a “Safety Corridor” and wondered what, exactly, this means? It’s when a section of road is known to be dangerous because it has statistically higher incidents of injury and fatality crashes. Instead of changing the design of the road, a sign is put up that says “Safety Corridor” and often traffic fines are doubled in these zones. This is significantly cheaper (in fact, it generates revenue) and easier than actually fixing the problem.
Drivers are somehow supposed to know that seeing the phrase “Safety Corridor” on a sign means they should drive more safely, or simply watch out(!) because it’s unsafe. But the sign often doesn’t directly say any of those things. It doesn’t say “WARNING” or “SLOW DOWN” or “WATCH FOR CROSS-TRAFFIC”. Not to say that any of this language would help much either way. People generally don’t read road signs, they read the road itself -especially when traveling at high speeds. And yes, I know drivers are supposed to read the signs, but people are supposed to do all kinds of things they don’t actually do.
You need to fix the road, not the sign. You need a redesign.
What’s this got to do with designing software? Put simply, if you find your users skidding off the track you want them on, adding labels, or guided tours, or making things “more noticeable” probably isn’t going to help much. You need to fix the road, not the sign. You most likely need a redesign.
