Comment by mandevil
1 day ago
A scoutmaster of mine had a theory. Everyone has their own different version of what "9:30" means- to some it's 9:25, to others 9:45. But there is only one 9:32. So he would use weird times like that, we're meeting at 6:07 today.
Saratoga, CA does something similar. The twisty part of Quito Road, between Bicknell Road and Pollard road, has a speed limit of 25 mph. But the sharper turns have advisory speed signs (the yellow diamond kind) with numbers like 17, 19, 21, and 22 mph to catch drivers' attention and get them to slow down on these turns.
Then there’s an aggressive driver who sees that and realizes it hammers home the point that the yellow speed signs (vs the white ones) are not enforceable.
And an enforceable sign could never be a weird number because speedos don’t have ticks but every 5mph.
The first time I drove in the US I came up to a turn with the yellow speed sign. I was going faster and I could feel my car strain to not go off the road. This is to this day the second scariest thing I've experienced in a car.
After that I 100% followed the yellow signs.
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> And an enforceable sign could never be a weird number because speedos don’t have ticks but every 5mph.
Disneyland famously has a 14mph speed limit for their property. They do this both to get your attention, and because the tram moves at 14mph (because 15mph requires seatbelts).
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I always love seeing stuff like this on reddit /r/oddlyspecific
I think I even saw a 5.25 mph sign once!
Not really the same thing, but in New Zealand, all speed limits are multiples of 10 (km/h), and all recommended safe speeds (e.g. for a sharp corner) end in ‘5’.
The 95 signs are hilarious.
Initially I was sure you were talking about my Scoutmaster. (The details diverged in the end.) The expected arrival time for camping trips was always something like 9:59am - that way people would hopefully show up at 9-something or maybe just a few minutes late like 10:10. If the expected arrival time was 10:00, people would interpret it as 10-something and show up at 10:45.
It breaks the autopilot habit of just rounding things off and rolling in late