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Transport focus want us to report tree foliage obscuring information signs.

Just a thought,please don't try and take the pics while in the car on your own.

Take a second person with you and get your passenger to take the pics.

https://www.transportfocus.org.uk/news-events-media/news/sort-my-sign-transport-watchdog-calls-for-better-road-user-information/

Thanks for that link.

Better still - take the pictures from a bus!

I have a similar gripe but about information signs at railway stations that have been installed without a thought as to whether they can be seen. Fine example here from Bristol Parkway.

What about keeping them clean so at least you can read them at some point?  I have a particular gripe about traffic bollards that are so black with dirt that they are impossible to see in bad weather, and rather than being a safety feature they become a hazard in their own right :-[

Not to say in your example it couldn't have been placed in a better location, but there are rules that are followed that can sometimes lead to locations which are far from optimal.  They include things like height off of the ground, whether a location hinders a drivers view of any signals (that is the reason Didcot's Platform 3 ones are tucked out of the way a bit), and the ease of installing an electrical supply to power it.

That answers a lot of questions as I have often wondered why the signage on Platform 3 was so useless unless you are stood right by them. Thanks.

Lovely!  (Not!)

One of my pet grouches is the lack of departure boards easily visible to passengers as they get off trains when making connections at hub stations.  A bit off the "bad ROAD" signs topic ... but stepping off a train onto a crowded platform at New Street or Temple Meads, wouldn't it be lovely to know where to head straight away?    Mobiles and devices much more common these days ... I've taken to using my self defence pages at http://www.mrug.org.uk/bhm.html and http://www.mrug.org.uk/bri.html respectively.

Forgive me if I am going off topic slightly, but puffin crossings are all badly-signed by design. How anyone could possibly imagine that putting the signal on the post where you wait is a good idea defies reason: on crossroads, this often makes it unclear which crossing the lights refer to. On top of that, the pedestrian lights appear to be deliberately angled so that you can't see them until you are stood right at the crossing, which just makes life that little bit harder.

My pet hobby-horse (in a big hobby horse stable) is that the various highway authorities (Yes, Worcestershire County Council.  I'm looking at you) don't take down signs that have served their purpose.  Within half a mile of my front door, a section of road was resurfaced about 8 years ago.  The "new road surface" warning signs are still there.  And in a 25 mile drive, I can pass two "new traffic signals" signs at different junctions, that have been there for 10+ years.  Reporting these to the council is a waste of breath.

There are too many signs that, it could be argued, are legitimate.  Leaving the illegitimate ones in place just adds to the clutter.  The more signs there are, the greater the risk of confusion and of missing something important through fatigue.

I completely agree.  I have never got used to the fact that there is no light opposite where you are standing. 

Another one in agreement here. This is simply moronic. If whoever dreamed this one up thinks that putting red and green lights to the side rather than in front of you is a good idea, then why aren't all traffic lights placed to the side? After all, it's only the person at the front of the queue that needs to see when it changes, isn't it  ::)

Cyclists Dismount signs, ever seen a Cyclists Remount sign?

...or a 'Motorists please push your vehicle' sign?

And sharp deviation chevrons. On the A30 between Milborne Port and Sherborne there is a nasty double bend on a hill and in a rock cutting where the chevrons are so dirty they no longer reflect. I informed the County Highways dept. in early January. They've still not been cleaned.

And while we're discussing safety features, have councils and Highways England run out of road marking paint and cats eyes? In many places these are in a terrible condition.

The theory behind having the pedestrian signals on a post on the right hand side of the crossing is that you are looking toward approaching traffic while watching for the green man. That's supposed to be safer than looking across the road. Having the red/green man closer to pedestrians also aids the visually impaired. It's easier for them to see the lights than if they are on the other side of the road.

Thanks.  I have no problem with a repeater for visually impaired people.  I do have a problem with a set of lights at waist height that are not in my eyeline when looking for traffic and are blocked if there are a number of people waiting to cross.

A set of high lights across the road is the obvious place.

I too dislike these lights because my instinct is to look in front of me which is where I have always looked in years gone by. I do normally look to my right (then left) but that's me obeying the Green Cross Code. I don't always see the green / red man because someone is standing in front of it and often walk across not realising it's a light controlled pedestrian crossing. After all there are many traffic lights that are for vehicles only with pedestrians having to guess when it is safe to cross.

However....

Maybe it's a bit of topic stretch - but I've been grappling with "them" over road signs half the day.

Late last night a big "Motorway Maintenance" flatbed full of cones and signs stopped on the road past my house, doing something I couldn't see. When I went out today I found a couple of big yellow diversion signs (with a sticker naming Chevron Traffic Management) blocking the pavement. I wasn't impressed, but I had no idea what was closed. Eventually, after I'd been out later on part of the route, I worked out it's King Street Lane in Winnersh, where Highways England are working on the M4 overbridge. Though that closure is not until tomorrow, and for three days.

So I sent an e-mail to HE and chevrontm.com (not really expecting a quick response), stating why I thought the signs were not right:

I then phoned Chevron - office closed until Monday - and HE. They did at least have an "advisor", in Birmingham, who didn't really know anything (she couldn't even pick out the right icon on the Elgin (one.network) map we were both looking at, hiding underneath a longer-term partial closure one). And she was certain she knew the signs were needed, even before she'd dug out my e-mail and seen the picture. But of course positioning signs is not her job! Finally I rang Wokingham Borough's urgent line, and was told someone would be told and would phone me.

In fact, within an hour or so I saw a pick-up parked outside, and it (and a van) turned out to be from WBC (or WSP, who do roads stuff for them). These two guys had already concluded the signs were wrong, and agreed with me entirely about why - including that they should not block the footpath. (Note that Chevron TM work for WBC as well as HE, and none of use knew who was their principal for this job.) So they moved them out of the way ... and we'll see what happens next!

My post was about something that wasn't very important at the time but ... my word hasn't it shrivelled into insignificance since then! But something did happen next, so:

I found a Facebook page for the council's roads office, which told me that the closures at Winnersh were only overnight (two nights) anyway. So that's a shortcoming of the one.network (Elgin) maps - the pop-up for the road works gives the overall duration of the works, but nothing tells you when the road is actually closed! The signs were left leaning on the gates into a development site, and then got put back facing the traffic but not blocking the footpath. Not knowing who did that, I thought I'd try to find out what was going on (this was the 12th). Later I worked out it was a couple of site visits by the developers.

Ringing the council was not a success. Traffic said it was street works on option 6, but that was the switchboard who said they could only ring their office and no-one was in.  And any attempt to find someone in Traffic who liaised with the likes of HE and Chevron was firmly resisted. So I gave up - I mean, I was only trying to help, and by now something else had cropped up! The signs were collected, during the day, several days later (Monday 16th).

Then on 23rd I got an e-mail from HE (though it identifies as OPSSE BMT). It reads like a personal reply, though with stock sentences dropped in. It doesn't prove they took much notice, but it was still a surprise by that date.

Finally, one more example of Chevron's outstanding professional expertise in the art of signing diversions, from the same route. The entry to the right is Sainsbury's car park.

These lights can be even worse when they are in your eyeline. Some are positioned so that when you're standing next to them, they obscure your view of oncoming traffic.