The Occult Traffic Sign

If the traffic sign indicates the safety of deceleration, locomotion 
sides with the danger of acceleration. The red, white and black of the 
prohibition sign derives from the pre-capitalist, absolutist power 
system, in which it was used to warn currents against the fatal other 
side of fast traffic participation. The traffic sign was introduced in 
the 1930's as a primary visual system of motion control. National 
motorization was systematically enforced as a means of combating the 
ongoing crisis in economic traffic. The Austrian highway designer A. 
Hitler (1889-1945) founded the European traffic initiative. However, he 
confused the need to accelerate motor traffic with his craving for 
geopolitical space. He assumed the red, white and black as the symbol of 
a Movement which would ultimately founder on the outdated blood-and-soil 
coordinates of a static prehistory. Commuter Model 40/45 resulted from 
his confused attempts to both conquer space through acceleration and 
protect the race and the nation.

The tricolor reappeared on timeless-looking traffic signs during the 
postwar reconstruction period. Although these no longer designated blood, 
death and purity, they successfully revived the traditional power over 
life and death in terms of fast traffic. If, during the preceding 
centuries, power had taken the form of impregnable fortresses and 
strongholds, in fast traffic it now reaffirmed itself through firmly 
fixed bollards and traffic signs. As the craving for space got obsessed 
with cosmic air during the Cold War, the tricolor's dark side lost its 
natural influence in the mundane unconscious. Thus, the traffic sign 
could witness another baby boom, without the catastrophic consequences of 
earlier years.

Even today, the road sign's design is less inspired by its occult color 
scheme than by the postwar enthusiasm about the liberation of traffic: an 
élan undampened even by road casualties. There was simply a general, 
unshakable faith in the progressive disciplinary power of road signs, 
even if they reintroduced chance and fate upon, above and along the 
thoroughfares. The insurgent act of demolishing or reversing road signs 
is an attempt to control this fate and turn it against the power system 
of mobilization. Bollards can be bent over or used as battering rams, 
street furniture can be converted into barricades or used as a shield, 
torn from the ground and paraded as a trophy or be equipped with a new 
message (-50oC). Resistance against traffic control signs naturally 
appeals to the imagination and is a part of every action or riot. 
Penalties against such sign perversion are low, because even power 
considers them obstacles.

With the traffic boom of the 1960's, the visibility of road signs became 
a problem. In an information brochure entitled "Man-Road-Car," Keesing's 
"Reflector Series" had already raised the isssue of the disappearance of 
the prohibition sign under the heading of "The Human Animal": "Even in 
modern vehicles, with their infinitely superior view, drivers survey no 
more than one fifth of their total visual range and observe only a single 
object at a time. In effect, the options of drivers are so limited that 
traffic engineers had best assume they will fail to notice any traffic 
signs." But before its late twentieth-century confrontation with policy 
plans to impose a sign diet on the grounds that there are "too many 
traffic signs," the road sign was first to witness a democratic revival.

Prior to the road sign's removal from thoroughfares, it had already begun 
to infiltrate slow social traffic. In this intimate sphere of 
pedestrians, bicyclists, consumers and night hawks, prohibition stickers 
pay their moralistic respects in the public spaces of escalators, 
platforms, gates, street furniture, self-closing doors, crossings, street 
signs and household goods. Annoying signs of proper conduct ("No 
smoking," "No snack food") are meant to stimulate public awareness of 
cleanliness and safety. In the interests of public health and 
environmental protection, even blood is being reintroduced as a dangerous 
prohibition sign. "Doctor J.K. van Wijngaarden, head of the National AIDS 
Control Commission, pointed out that a wide reestablishment of the old 
adage that blood is a dangerous substance is imperative." The Stop AIDS 
Campaign compared the risk of participation in loose sexual intercourse 
with the unavoidable risk of tank trailers overturning in residential 
areas. Similarly, signs like "Stop Acid Rain" or "Stop Immigration" try 
to convince private political and environmental consumers that these 
traffic flows are in a state of crisis, not unlike that of motor traffic 
with its endless traffic jams.

Furthermore, road signs increasingly take on the form of an absolutely 
informal advice presented as information. The fascist red, white and 
black is being replaced by the more stimulating and democratic blue, 
green and yellow. The new pictograms fit into an endless variety of 
designs. Appropriated by the sign masters of marketing, the road signs 
infinitely refer to each other, whereas the prohibition sign's power lay 
precisely in the fact that it managed to avoid all fashion codes.

Although the traffic sign's crisis can be solved by transplanting its 
iconographic system to the slow circuits of the social, the political and 
of public health, this would render fast traffic directionless. In fast 
traffic, the tricolor is being overtaken by the blue and green, but as 
immobile obstacles even these "notifications" frustrate movement. Thus, 
road signs gain an air of nostalgic attraction. Drivers slam on the 
brakes to admire their timeless aesthetics or to add them to their 
collection of modernist objects as collector's items.

Because road traffic refuses to give up acceleration as the principle of 
motion, it copies the sign language of faster data communications. As the 
auto connects to the computer, national computerization becomes the issue 
at stake. Laser signs, suggested itineraries and speed control are 
introduced to solve the problem of "responsible driving." At the same 
time, hacking offers a chance for digitized traffic to reestablish 
unprecedented, high-risk contacts. The tempting perspective promised to 
road users is full of virtual traffic signs that will communicate 
directly with the board computer, without bothering the driver with 
injunctions or instructions. The people's movement of fast traffic will 
coincide with automation and tourism and vanish down a fibre optics 
cable.

One counterstrategy consists of delaying this development through raids 
or blockades. In practice, this can only lead to clever alternative 
routes. The collision of various means of transport is far more 
interesting. Power has always struggled to prevent the transition from 
one mode of traffic to the next. The ritual signs of financial, sexual, 
highway and data communications had to be kept pure and separated at all 
times. Traditionally, the intermingling of currents has been condemned as 
the sin of incest which leads to death and destruction. But this warning 
is ignored by the dangerous life, which actively seeks out such fusions.
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