‘Thickly Settled’: What’s The Most Confusing Road Sign You’ve Ever seen?

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My brother sent me the photo of the “thickly settled” sign you see above, and to be completely honest: I had no clue what the hell it meant. But it’s only one of many traffic signs that fail at their primary function of being easily understood by even the dumbest citizen. Let’s talk about the others.

Do you know what this sign means?

German Autobahn Sign "NO SPEED LIMIT" Reflective - Full Size - Euro Car Decor | eBay
Sign Lizard/eBay

What about this?

Screen Shot 2024 02 15 At 2.30.01 Pm
Autobahndirektion Südbayern/dpa

Well, that first one means “end of all restrictions,” so let’s say you are driving down a country road (which has a speed limit of 100 km/h) in Germany (yes, I made this hard by choosing German road signs), and you come to a town. The speed limit will drop to 50 km/h. When you leave the town, you might see that three-diagonal-line sign, which means you can now go 100 again. No more town restriction. That second sign is used as an “orientation point” for self-driving cars under development so that those cars know exactly where thy are.

Oh, and Thickly Settled? That just means there’s a high population density of folks around the road ahead.

Did you know this? What other road signs have you scratching your head?

 

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Jason Torchinsky

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133 thoughts on “‘Thickly Settled’: What’s The Most Confusing Road Sign You’ve Ever seen?”

  3. My favorite is the British diversion sign that says “Changing Priorities Ahead.” Like what, I’m going to come out a Buddhist on the other side?

    Also, the parking reg signs on W38th between 5th and 6th in Manhattan are deliberately confusing.

  4. If you like this, check out Leroy and Leroy on you favorite platform. Hilarious sign content.

    “I’m Leroy and he is Leroy behind the camera, there is always something to do.”

    1. Random trivia regarding that set of roundabouts – one night, many years ago, I was a passenger in a friend’s Datsun 510 that had a poorly set up turbo kit fitted. We spent maybe 5 minutes drifting many laps of those roundabouts before realising the local police station was right next to one of the roundabouts. As soon as we realised this, my friend took off at speed to make sure we wouldn’t get caught, and just up the road misjudged a turning arrow at a set of traffic lights, pulled out in front of an oncoming car and we got T-boned right in the passenger side doors at 70km/h. The 3 of us in the car were lucky to come out unscathed, as the B pillar tore completely away from the sill and bent the doors in 8 inches.

  11. I came across a cow abduction sign on a desolate stretch of M38 in the Western U.P. (East of Ontongaon):

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/ekelly80/15226042465

    I really wanted to believe it was an official sign. It’s on an official sign post, in front of a cattle farm. However, the sign was later removed. Oh, well.

    https://www.google.com/maps/@46.8016664,-89.1552201,3a,33.8y,321.77h,90.86t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sBreMTK90cstyFlRolBF1jw!2e0!5s20180701T000000!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu

    But it lives on in my memory!

  13. Some years ago on the east side of Cleveland there was a suburban “stroad” that was striped for two lanes with a double yellow in the middle, but was _almost_ wide enough for four lanes. It was a busy area, so traffic naturally formed four lanes, but the passive-aggressive town of Woodmere put up signs that said “This road is not a four lane highway” without saying what the heck it actually was. I presume some town lawyer was trying to evade liability for this stupid situation.

    It’s now clearly striped, mostly for two lanes with a center left-turn lane.

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