EXIT Sign Coloration: |
Everyone knows that STOP
signs are red. From Alaska to Florida, traffic lights are the same: red
means stop and green means go. Interstate highway signs are green--orange
means watch out for construction, yellow means watch out for something
else. All across the country, people know these things. We learn them in
elementary school, in driver's education classes, in experiencing the
world around us.
I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, where I learned that illuminated
EXIT signs are green. Makes sense: green means go, you go to exits...
Imagine my shock when I went to school in the East and was thrust into a
strange world of red EXIT signs. The first time I noticed, I just figured
that all EXIT signs were red--I was just misremembering my childhood.
Further observation revealed that I was wrong--every single EXIT sign I
could find in the public buildings of Salt Lake City was green, while
every single EXIT sign I'd encountered in the East was red. This seemed
odd. Now Salt Lake City is certainly an odd place, but this didn't turn
out to be about Salt Lake--every time I've traveled anywhere in the
country, I look for EXIT signs, and they seem to follow a simple pattern:
signs in the West are green, signs in the East are red.
Well, a simple and totally unexpected trend like this deserves further
attention: is there really a simple split? Where is the dividing line
between EXIT sign east and EXIT sign west? This page is my stab at a
reasonably rigorous analysis. It records two years of electronic communication between me and people all over the country.
The current map is
the 7th produced, reflecting data gathered before August 1999. This map
has not been updated to reflect the hundreds of data points submitted
since that time. From the beginning of this project on 16 February 1998
until 17 January 2001, over 500 contributors submitted data points, only a
few of which are shown on the map. Many people have contributed
additional comments, some of which are reproduced here.
Thanks to USA Today, for sending most of them this way.