I too used to wonder what the point of this sign was. I think that what they are really warning about is that you should look out for rocks that have fallen on the road.
So why not say something like “Look out for fallen rocks”?
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Civilised countries use signs that don’t assume literacy & fluency in a specific language. This cartoon hits a cultural niche.
Maybe that sign was created by someone who did not know how to draw rocks. 😉
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=traffic+sign+rockfall&iar=images
At least with fallen rocs, you can easily see their corpses from the distance.
In California, the word only sign does not exist? There’s some cliffs on and around Monterrey, am I wrong?
I have never seen it, and supposed this cartoon was made up.
TIL that there are other places in the US where a sign like this exists. If you place ‘fallen rocks’ on a sign then this makes folks wonder why the gubmint didn’t pick them rocks up and spent a lot of tax-money on the sign instead. It also makes them think all of the falling of rocks has been completed and there will be no more.
The rocks don’t have to be thousands of pounds to send you off the road, crack your axle, destroy your tires, or blow your catalytic converter off. There can be earthquake and/or rain and I have seen still some CA drivers will zoom zoom zoom around these corners and along these cliffs. So maybe the signs don’t matter at all and Rat is right.
I think Pastis used a word sign to be consistent with the later panels. I think the joke might be less comprehensible if he mixed a pictograph with words.
Rarely will a falling rock area be a vertical cliff. Usually it is just a steep slope where rocks either roll down or slide down. This would be at a slower speed, so it would be possible to react to actively moving rocks. Of course rocks already sitting on the road bed are the more likely danger.
The sign that used to amuse my family when I was a child read’
“DANGER -- LOW FLYING AIRCRAFT”
obviously we all called out, “DUCK!”