Thursday, January 18, 2007

Signs 1

One of the thigs that I find very interesting about living here is how different the signs and symbols are. So I'm going to show you just a few over the next couple of posts. This one makes every visitor from a non-left hand drve country laugh. "Look right" or "Look Left" is stenciled on the edge of every cross walk I've seen.

Speaking of which they are called zebra crossings here or pelican crossings. The zebra I get becasue of the stripes on the road. However, I've yet to hear a decent explanation for the "pelican."

But I digress, the look warning are great reminders that the dang traffic is coming from the direction you are not expecting.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My guess as to why they are called pelican crossings: Because a car will swoop in and finish you off like pelicans do to fish. So don't get distracted.:)

Anonymous said...

Pelican...got me wondering...hit google and wikpedia gives this...it's an acronym for
PEdestrian LIght CONtrolled crossing - PELICON.
Apparently there are also puffin and toucan crossings. cool.

more detail here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelican_crossing

Sian said...

very industrious of you, Marcia! I had reference in a book to Penguin but no one could confirm or deny - now I have a source.