TxDot Signs Saying, “Don’t Read Texts” …are Technically Texts, right?
Have you ever been driving on I-10 and one of those TxDot signs caught your eye?
Sometimes they’ll have new ones, often clever little seasonal messages. Like the one, Joanna wrote about at Thanksgiving.
Eye-catching, sure. And, I suppose, they might actually remind people to drive safer and use seat belts.
But, can we all agree, these are technically text messages? Many messages tell you that if you read a text you will almost certainly die. You’ve seen these.
“Arrive alive! Don’t text and drive”.
“You Talk, You Text, You Crash”.
“Drive Now. Talk or Text Later”
These are all excellent sentiments, I guess. I just question telling people that a text can kill them IN a text!
CAPTION: “Wait…but, I’m texting NOW! I’m reading YOUR text!”
So, most of these TxDot messages are brief enough that they probably WON’T cause the immediate death and twisted metal carnage that THEY predict. But there are other messages that are much wordier.
Like the Amber alerts. These things give the age of the child, the make and model of the vehicle, WHERE the child was last seen, what direction they were headed, etc., etc.
You’ve got three options on these.
One, ignore the message altogether. This is known as the “path of least resistance” option.
Two, slow way down so you can read the whole message.
You just hope that the driver right behind you isn’t distracted by the giant text message and rams into you from behind.
Three: try to read really, really fast and, maybe crane your neck to see the message as you’re passing by. That’s the option that makes reading a text on your phone that’s right in front of your face seem like the SAFER choice.
Here’s a video about some of the state workers who come up with the clever/seasonal/college football-allegiant signs out on the highways of Texas:
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