On the (In)Adequacy Between Traffic Signs’ Graphic Designs, Legal Names, and Explanations: Selected Polish Cases

Legal acts containing the graphic designs of traffic signs also include accompanying texts that officially name these signs and provide explanations, for instance, by specifying the behavior they communicate to road users. However, the question of whether mutual adequacy or correspondence has been upheld among the triad of traffic signs’ graphic designs, their legal names, and explanations has heretofore been practically omitted. The study presented here fulfills this noticeable gap in the research on traffic signs. It comments on selected results coming from a thorough, current review of 183 Polish warning, prohibitory, obligatory, and informative traffic signs. This focused comparison of graphic designs with names and explanations yields many insights and further implications, some of which are practical. Cases of adequacy maintained between the design, name, and explanation are ultimately infrequent. More common are cases of different types of inadequacy. The study carefully and critically discusses found instances of complete inadequacy (when a given traffic sign’s design, name, and explanation are all misaligned in terms of their content) and examples of middle categories (when two elements out of the triad of design, name, and explanation, correspond while the remaining one stands out). Moreover, the study considers the practical (traffic sign comprehension-related and legal) relevance of inadequacy, its potential sources, how cases of inadequacy can be approached from the regulator’s perspective, how the discussed issue can be related to other relevant empirical research on traffic signs, and what other research avenues it opens.