‘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 SĂĽdbayern/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. Duh…The round sign with the diagonal lines is a standard sign used pretty much everywhere else in the World BUT in the US. Gallons in Farenheit Psi much ? 🙂

    It means “End of the limitations imposed by previous road signs” or something along those lines.
    Basically means “Reset, watch for new signs, all other rules still apply”

    For example, in a European country where the national speed limit on highways is 130km/h, it will mean “We’re back to the standard 130km/h limit” after a section which was speed limited to less than 130km/h.

      1. Indeed, but this sign cancels all previous limits set by signs (leaving all other rules still valid of course). Not only speed limits.

        A close sign in North America would be “End of road work” for example. If the road work was imposing specific limits on speed, vehicle size, weight, etc, etc – each of them signaled with a dedicated sign at the beginning of the road work section (“No vehicles above X weight”, “no vehicles over X feet”, etc) – the End of road work sign would lift all these limits at the same time.

        The above sign is something similar.

        Historically, signs in North America have been text-based, assuming that drivers would be able to read, AND understand English.

        In Europe (and most other places) road signs have historically been pictogram/symbol-based as much as possible, for the standardized part.

        You can’t expect a million foreign tourists crossing France on their way to Spain to read and understand French for example.

      1. Interestingly, it’s a sign signifying that you should drive slowly, because elderly people with limited mobility reside in the area. The creepy part though, is that the reference can be taken not just to mean the elderly, but also ghosts or spirits. So considering Shinto beliefs, one wonders exactly HOW OLD the elderly wandering about the place might be…

  6. Thickly settled in Mass. enforces specific speed limits and has requirements for the distance between homes. It’s your heads up that a town cop is probably hiding in the bushes using radar.

  7. Not a road sign, but a sign by the road: Along Hwy 30 in Oregon, not too far from the town of St. Helens, there used to be a sketchy looking tavern that had a big piece of plywood nailed to the wall with the words “Steak. Girls.” in black spray paint.

    1. That was in Goble, (grew up in St. Helens and still there) and it said
      TOPLESS
      GIRLS
      STEAKS

      I always wondered what a topless steak looked like but the place closed before I was of age. It’s a mini-mart/diner now.

  8. Encountered in the mid 90’s in the south of Ireland, on a country two lane, approaching a very small underpass, on a blind curve…”Oncoming Traffic in Centre of Road”.

  9. The road sign reader on my US market Volvo somehow picked up that ‘end all restrictions’ sign yesterday. Very confused, thought it was some kind of doomsday warning. Now I know – thanks David!

    Strange they wouldn’t just omit foreign signage from the detectable library once the vehicle is committed to a specific region…

      1. It wouldn’t let me post the sign the way I wanted, for some reason it kept cutting off the important “ONE WAY” part when I tried making arrows. You must have commented while I was trying to edit…

  12. Just across the valley is the military road. The military in this instance left some years ago, it was the lateral supply road for the forts along Hadrian’s Wall and built by Romans who reaallllly did not do corners. The result is an arrow straight unlit twenty five mile stretch of quite wide two lane roadway across the fells, at two points the ground falls away really quite steeply (and rises equally steeply), the road, being Roman, does the rollercoaster thing. This is signposted by a triangular sign with a large black exclamation mark in the centre. Judging by the quite amazingly deep gouges in the tarmac and the bits of vehicular detritus scattered by the roadside, at 70mph there is just enough time to wonder”what does that sign mean” before finding out.

  13. I live in rural Vermont. . .construction road signs here are sometimes just plywood and spray paint leading you down a dirt road. If I didn’t know some of the town road crew guys, I would be nervous.

  14. Dad and I were headed to VIR for a track day many years back, and there’s a place somewhere where two different Interstates run concurrent for a few miles. Before they join, each of them also has a state route that is running concurrent with them. Since the state routes are north-south, and the Interstates are east-west (as far as I recall), and everything is running diagonally, during this few mile stretch the signs along the highway show you all four highway numbers, and in that moment they show that you are travelling in four directions at once.

    I can’t remember exactly where this was, but a quick check on Google Maps makes me think it was where 77 and 81 join between Fort Chiswell and Wytheville? Can anyone corroborate this for me?

    1. Yep: 77, 81, routes 11 & 52. It’s a bit messy right through there.

      And, as a heads-up: 77 south from 81 there is not a stretch where it’s safe to speed—at least until you hit the NC border. I don’t know why they patrol & enforce so heavily there, but it’s about the worst place west of Charlottesville within in my experience

  16. Slow Children Ahead signs always seemed a bit cruel to me. I mean, don’t these kids have enough to cope with without some public official announcing it to the world on a traffic sign?

  17. In Mexico, took us a a hot minute to understand “Conceda cambio de luces”, or “Grant change of lights”.

    In other words, turn your damn brights off and stop blinding people lol.

    More here, and accurate as far as I could tell:
    https://www.sfgate.com/mexico/mexicomix/article/How-to-make-sense-of-road-signs-in-Spanish-2378211.php

    I particularly enjoyed the dire safety warnings that are both sobering and somewhat panicky at the same time. On the whole, as much as the lack of overall consistency in terms of driving patterns felt less safe, I did feel much better as a pedestrian in towns due to the violent speed bumps that will happily snap an axle if you go too fast. Wish we could get those in Seattle ngl.

  19. There is a road sign in Poland of a girl holding a large lollipop indicating a road crossing used by children. If you see one it is a bit confusing. They call it sign number T-27.

      1. I have and while not Guinness, cannabis, yes. A little gin maybe later. Oftentimes inconveniently, I’m one of those that tastes all the bitter in brews.

    1. I just assumed that the Restricted Area signified a place where the government/MFP had lost control or authority, and therefore you should not go there if you value your life. Or along the same lines, the government assumes anyone there is an outlaw, and therefore periodically goes in and shoots anyone they see.

    2. Probably after the protests from when they put up the “Dense Population” sign.

      I always thought that “idiots ahead” would solve most safety issues.

  24. Speed limit enforced by aircraft. The fuck does that mean? Are they going to dispatch an F35 to hover over me and give me a stern talk if I speed? Is a police chopper going to drop explosives on me like in an NFS Hot Pursuit game? Even if that would happen aren’t there better uses of government funding than dispatching an aircraft to deal with people enjoying the zoom zooms?

    2. haha yeah for real, these ones are so funny.

      A while back I had a roommate who was one of those people who just couldn’t tell the truth about anything if their life depended on it, very pathological.

      This guy had a WRX when they first came out in the states, and he actually tried to convince people that a helicopter was tracking his speed and that he “out maneuvered it”…

      … a fucking helicopter

    4. Look for markings painted on the road surface within the shoulder that are shaped like this:

      |—

      Those markings are placed at fixed distances so aircraft can calculate how fast you’re going based on how long it takes your car to go from one marker to the next. The “aircraft” being a Cessna or the like. Then they can radio down to a Highway Patrol cruiser waiting up ahead to pull you over. It enables speed traps without radar, which can be avoided or defeated.

      What I’ve never been able to find out is how many jurisdictions still do this, and how regularly they patrol. (Budget cuts, and all that.) But it was definitely a thing, and may still be depending on the area.

      1. Many moons ago I got caught by an airplane driving up to Road America for a race. I came over the hill and the officer was waving me to pull over already. Being a teen, I asked him, how could you have gotten a speed on me from over the hill? So he pointed up, and I saw the plane. Ugh.

      3. Yep, and the flying shit still pays for itself if you have the right ratio of troopers needed to actually write the tickets the plane can spot n any given amount of time. That’s where it breaks down for many jurisdiction.

        Yet, as Matt Sexton mentions below, Wisconsin did it and still does it to this day as far as I know. They keep those lines in pristine condition along 94 and 43. Every so often I’ll see the line of troopers waiting, especially around peak FIB (Fucking Illinois Bastards to cheeseheads) travel season.

    5. This one cracks me up too. There is one of those signs on I-25 just north of Colorado Springs heading to Denver, and the second everyone sees that sign they speed up from the 10mph over the speed limit they were already going to 20-30mph over the speed limit (seriously, people will tailgate you like you are driving slow at 90mph). I have never once seen an airplane fly overhead, but I have seen the State Troopers just chill in a few discreet spots and go to town ticketing people. I’ve heard people complain about getting pulled over on that stretch, and I always just ask “Does the sign say ‘Exclusively enforced by aircraft’?”

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