Signs to confuse.... or help....!

Traveling takes most of our lifetime these days. Though we are blessed (!) with smart gadgets for communication with people in the nook and corner of the world, we need to travel a lot to fulfill our business and social obligations. It was during some such travels, I experienced some interesting things.....

Behind any heavy vehicle (bus or lorry), you can notice a warning : LEAVE A GAP OF 10  METERS.  That is 32.8 feet (still cannot escape from the urge to convert meter to feet...!). While on the move (speeding behind a vehicle around 80 to 100 kmph), how could anyone think of or calculate to maintain such distance...? I feel it to be ridiculous. Instead it could be "MAINTAIN A SAFE DISTANCE".  Depending on several factors like nature of the road, weather conditions, braking capacity of the vehicle you are in, you (or your driver) will be the best judge. This is what I think. May be I am wrong!

Those days (once again...!) when the British system was being discarded and metric system being introduced, I used to see sign boards with speed limit written - SPEED LIMIT - 32 KM/HOUR. How absurd! The original speed limit mentioned before the metric system, was 20 MILES per hour. The brilliant officials did the exact conversion (1 Mile = 1.6 KM) and put up the sign boards. Can anyone read 32 KM  in the speedometer? Either it should be 30 KM or 35 KM. Irrational thinking at its best..!

When I travel from my town to the nearby town, in a place I see 13 KM (to my destination). after I travel for about 2 KM, the next signboard shows 15 KM (to my destination). Is my car a time capsule (traveling back in time / direction)? Even today, I see the signboards. Are the concerned officials not traveling in this road for so many years....? Did they not notice? Or is it a callous attitude?

On some roads, you could still see TAKE DIVERSION - WORK IN PROGRESS, even after several months of the WORK getting completed. They do not bother to remove the sign boards put up when the work was on. I am reminded of a movie scene : A person had to go to a particular place in Chennai for an interview. Looking at various TAKE DIVERSION boards, he would finally end up in Tirupathi in Andhra. Though the scene was meant to be a joke, there is an iota of reality in it, right?

When you go to a particular place, you will see the sign boards TURN RIGHT (and the name of the place). Traveling a distance, you will see the road branching off in all directions but there will be no sign boards at that junction! If you ask a passerby, he would say 'turn right at the next junction'. Then why the signboards at an earlier location? No clue...!

(NOTE : I am not good at reading Google Maps....!)  

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