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TRAFFIC GURU
Did you hear
about the lawyer who got out of a traffic ticket because a
street sign was not in French? It’s shocking but true, and part
of the amusing legislative inanities that bind this country
together. A lot of Canadians may have caught the story about the
unilingual traffic sign in downtown Toronto. There, it seems
left turns are verboten at certain times -- an ordinary,
quotidian challenge for most big-city drivers. The errant
motorist, although not fluent in the nation’s other mother
tongue, claimed the sign was unlawful. A presiding justice of
the peace allowed the argument that such signs need to be in
both official languages.
It seems
that Toronto is one of the places in Ontario designated for the
provision of bilingual services, if that service is administered
by the provincial government. This means drivers struggling
across Highway 401 in the world’s most multicultural city may
see a few roadside indicators in both tongues. These include
verbose construction signs describing how the road is apparently
being paved with tax dollars. Thanks to the slowdowns caused by
chronic 401 roadwork, one might actually have time to read both
versions of the fine print.
According to
Ontario’s ministry of transportation, neither the highway
traffic act nor provincial language laws require local
municipalities to post French signage -- unless they want to. A
city can pass a bylaw ordering itself to stick up bilingual
markers, but Toronto’s municipal council has not done so. The
city is appealing the case, which is no surprise. Tacking French
addenda onto thousands of traffic and parking signs would be
rather expensive.
More
crucially, it could make driving that much trickier. I already
squint at turn restriction signs to figure out when I can safely
hang a louie. A block away, I’m trying to figure out if that
thing up ahead says I can turn after 6 p.m. or 6:30. The tiny
numbers, already squashed above abbreviated days of the week,
resemble an eye test -- while I’m watching traffic and deciding
whether to turn before reaching the sign in question.
The case
points to a need to harmonize traffic signage, and not just to
avoid the linguistic tiffs that spice up our national life.
Along with the two so-called founding cultures, Canada’s roads
have to accommodate drivers who are not only from out of town
but often from out of the country. Simply having a driver’s
license gives most foreign visitors the right to drive here, and
travel is becoming easier. Canada is already home to many
motorists whose first language is not English, or whose first
alphabet is not Roman.
That’s why
airports worldwide have agreed on a series of visual images that
work without words. Pictographs smooth the flow of passengers
through terminals, and they can also make it easier to drive in
strange places. Quebec, despite insisting on the dominance of
French, has chosen many non-lingual road signs. Sure, you will
still have to sort out what Nord, Sud, Est and Ouest mean, but
many signs prove that symbols speak louder than words. It took
me a while, but even I figured out that if I throw a tin can out
the window while driving in Lower Canada, somebody is going to
hit me with a courtroom mallet and make me pay 500 dollars. (In
other words, No Littering - $500 Fine.)
We may have
to look abroad to find good non-verbal signage, especially for
tongue-tangling problems like day-of-the-week restrictions.
Bilingual cities like Ottawa list both versions on traffic and
parking signs, but there may be a simpler way.
Ed Drass,
National Post
Email the
Traffic Guru at edrass@nationalpost.com