Most advertisements are irritating, fraudulent and meaningless. This includes sales promotions, public advisories and road signs. Behold the most useless notification ever presented:
Signs like this are often posted on the side of the road near airports in order to notify drivers that planes may be landing nearby. But what, exactly, is the purpose of doing this? What are drivers expected to do? Stop and wait for planes to land? Some say that the purpose of the sign is simply to inform drivers so that they are not startled when they see an aircraft approaching, but there are a few problems with this interpretation.
The first issue is the fact that these signs are usually posted near airports, and airports are far more visible than the signs themselves. Second, some versions of the sign include “CAUTION”, “WARNING” or “DANGER” or even an image of an airplane bouncing off the roof of a car, which implies that the purpose of the sign is to inform drivers of a threat. The final problem is that it is not common practice to use signs to notify drivers of things they can do nothing about. Drivers are constantly distracted by the beauty of nature, the peculiarity of pedestrians and the hideousness of modern exterior home design, but we don’t put up signs with “CAUTION BEAUTIFUL FOREST”, “DANGER WEIRD PEOPLE” or “WARNING UGLY HOUSE” on them.
We don’t need to know what’s above us when we’re driving, especially when we can’t do anything about it.