“Your mom called. Are you buckled?” is a road sign in Iowa. “Use Yah Blinkah” fetches up on a road sign in the Massachusetts dialect. They brighten the day of drivers in the Hawkeye and Bay states. It seems, though, that they might not amuse the sourpusses at the Federal Highway Administration. 

If getting there is half the fun, the honorable grouches think that’s too much. Clever messages on electronic road signs have run afoul of the agency, which sees them as threatening safety rather than as a way to draw attention to topics in ways that increase their effectiveness.

The latest National Standards for Traffic Control Devices manual offers “new Guidance and Standard paragraphs” for “the appropriate and allowable use of traffic safety campaign messages” on electronic displays. The new standards, it turns out, don’t want drivers to smile.

Employing the tricks of successful Madison Avenue ad campaigns — puns, rhymes, and other creative flourishes that make them memorable — can’t get Washington to crack a smile. Messages, the manual says, “should be clear and direct and meaningful to the road user on the roadway.”  

The Federal Highway Administration’s new standard advises “that only traffic safety campaign messages that are part of an active, coordinated safety campaign that uses other media forms as its primary means of outreach be displayed.”

The manual says that the agency “believes these are important considerations as not to diminish respect for the sign when used in other traffic-related scenarios for regulatory, warning, and guidance under prevailing conditions.”

The Federal Highway Administration “recommended that messages with obscure meaning, references to popular culture that are intended to be humorous or otherwise use nonstandard syntax for a traffic control device, not be displayed.”

Such messages, the agency said, “can be misunderstood or understood only by a limited segment of road users and, therefore, degrade the overall effectiveness of the sign as an official traffic-control device.”

Consider a sign I spotted on I-95. It read, “Billie Jean got a DUI; she couldn’t beat it.” It invoked the Michael Jackson song, “ Billie Jean,” which has over a million plays a day on Spotify alone. It’s now advised against, despite being from “Thriller,” the best-selling album of all time.

Some motorists might not get the reference, but the vast majority would; for them, its message is that much more impactful. Meanwhile, drivers who have never heard of “Billie Jean” would still benefit from the context that driving under the influence won’t be tolerated.

Other electronic messages read, “Camp in a state park, not the left lane” and “Blinker fluid is free, use it,” containing no pop culture components. Anyone who reads them is required to think a little, which makes the messages harder to gloss over than rote statements of fact.

When KERA News in Texas requested clarity after pushback from the public, the Federal Highway Administration wrote that its manual doesn’t impose a “ban,” only “a recommendation to avoid the use of humor and pop culture references in changeable message signs that may confuse or distract drivers.” The AP updated its story to reflect the clarification.

 A “recommendation” from a federal agency, however, can have a chilling effect on behavior and the result is the same as a ban. It also wouldn’t be unprecedented for the federal government to start with a suggestion only to later use its power to enforce their preferred outcome. 

The topic isn’t just about making the open road a bit more enjoyable. Ignoring posted warnings, or “sign-blindness,” is a problem the humorous messages combat. That’s a benefit lost when messages are homogenized and boring, leaving drivers desensitized to ones stuck on endless repeat.

 “Over-warning” is a related phenomenon that a little levity can avoid. As the Cato Institute wrote in 2013, rather than increase safety, over-warning “may reinforce consumer inattention to the information, making it more difficult for consumers to consider risk differentials between products.”  

Nobody expects a government agency to have a sense of humor, but citizens enjoy a chuckle when fighting traffic or motoring endless, boring miles. The Federal Highway Administration may think generic warning messages are best, but despite the view from Washington, that’s just not the case when the rubber hits the road.