After the whole “Talk to the Hand!” bit a couple of years ago, I can’t look at the Idiot-Friendly pedestrian crossing signs the same way. Why is the stupid light telling me to talk to the hand?

In at least one place in Baltimore there is an ancient crossing sign that says “Walk” and “Wait”. I’m not going to say where it is, because if some city worker or advocate for the illiterate finds out it’s still there, it will vanish before I finish typing this.

I am aware that European countries also use pictograms on their street signs, but for once I’m not going to champion the European fashion. The little fedora’d green guys on Berlin’s walk signs are cute and all, but European traffic signs are universally nonsensical. They require you to memorize a vast array of colors and shapes without actually telling you a damned thing. By the time you remember what a yellow circle with three red slashes through it mounted on a blue triangle means, you’ve driven up the steps of the Michaelerkirche and have flattened six hapless Japanese tourists and two frantic German policemen (who know precisely what all three hundred different signs mean).

The trouble with pictograms is that, while you don’t need to understand English to see them, they assume familiarity. Over the years, we’ve figured out what the crosswalk signs mean, but someone from a different culture might not know and would be every bit as lost as if the signs still said “Walk” and “Wait”. If I didn’t know better, I might simply assume that the glowing red hand was simply trying to be friendly. The weirdly-articulated “walking man” that means “Walk” – what the hell might THAT be telling me to do? Is that how I’m supposed to stand? Or does it just mean “Warning: Stick People Ahead”?

Pedestrian pictograms are the sad result of thirty years’ worth of people running around like hand-wringing chickens worried that someone, somewhere, will be discriminated against. They might have to dig through every alleyway in Baltimore to find someone so brain-dead that he can’t read a “Walk” sign, but damnit, when they find him he’ll be able to cross the street (or he’ll be on the lookout for stick people).

Instead of spending I-don’t-want-to-know-how-much on making the streets safe for the illiterate, why don’t we focus on stamping out illiteracy? Teach someone to read and he’ll read for a lifetime; put up a sign without words and he’ll just talk to the hand.