Any American who has driven overseas, or any visitor to the US can tell you that road signs look remarkably different here. The video below explains why, largely a combination of historical and nationalistic reasons, with a flavor of the US’s refusal to adopt the metric system because it’s not what we’re used to thrown in as well. The Scholarly Kitchen has long been a stalwart supporter of standards, and I suspect this discrepancy is maddening to several of my colleagues who work in this area. Also of interest from a design perspective is that the US did try to move more toward a symbol-based set of road signs, only to find that they confused many drivers and so the US went back to text-based signage.
Discussion
4 Thoughts on "Standards for Road Signs and Why Signs in the US Are So Different from the Rest of the World"
As an Englishman, long resident in the US, I would also note that America is a very wordy culture. In general (a tendency, not a rule) Americans like to use a lot of words, they like to explain themselves (whether their interlocutor is interested or not.) I put this down to America being a largely immigrant society. Immigrants from different societies with different languages could not assume a common understanding, they had to use their words. In more historically homogeneous countries like England or Japan people just silently judge you.
Hah!
That is all.
You surely do know Americans!
In Australia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_signs_in_Australia We made some mix-up of American and British road signs…