Road signs and Irish Language

I think you’re trying to cram too much information onto one sign, and there are still far too many lines on the surface. Why separate the top from the bottom? That design might suggests that maybe J7 is coming up, but the list below it is on the mainline. The placement of the R406 boxout makes it ambiguous about whether only R406 leads to Naas, or to all of the destinations (which is the truth).

Remember for something like this, you only have around a half a second of the driver’s attention. Don’t make them work too hard.

There’s also too many destinations on it for an ADS for a motorway junction. The real sign (at 1km) omits Straffan, as you can see here:

Here’s how I’d improve that layout, but without throwing everything away.

In principle, this sign serves the same purpose as a fork sign, so I’ve tried to keep the item placement as close as possible to that design, which is very familiar to drivers.

1. arrow to bottom left adopts the the same pattern as seen on the roadside fork sign
2. Angle of the arrow changed to match that on forks.
3. the route number becomes part of the destinations list, but drawn larger (again, echoing the pattern seen in fork signs).
4. Junction number moves to the top, where it is on fork signs (albeit at top-left, not top-right)

I think it’s better than what’s there (not hard), without needing to forget everything you’ve learned by driving here for years. It can also coexist with older versions of the same sign.

The italics are difficult to read. Maybe that's just me!

Ahhh...is that why there is no dot on the Irish I in these signs? Every day is a school day. It would make perfect sense if the signs were in the old script but we moved to standard Roman in the middle of the 20th century.

@HabibiLibneni You've fought the good fight and won the argument, but I would suggest stopping feeding the trolls. I can rarely tell if the persecution complex is real or fake, but it's usually best ignored entirely.

@HabibiLibneni Unlikely in the short to medium term, I think. There doesn't seem to be any particular interest in standardising road signs across the EU, nor does it seem critical. I've never had a problem understanding the signs and signals in other EU countries, and besides, the Vienna Convention already sets some minimum standards.

Everyone speaks and reads English , some people are fluent in Irish, all warning signs should be in Irish and English , signs exist to direct people where to go and to warn people of roadworks or some hazard, eg Road closed . Remember rural areas depend on tourism to some extent

You can't expect tourists to read Irish signs or warning signs in Irish maybe people from the Gaeltacht don't like tourists or need them if they

put up some signs in Irish only

You'll never get one due to vested interests and language politics grounded in emotional attachment.

This country is filled with people positively disposed to a language they don't want to die out but at the same time need other people to do the work of speaking it for them.

Fine, you can speculate away :) they are plenty that do not, a cursory look shows me plenty of countries have signage in one language, the language the majority of the population speak, my view is a sign should only incorporate necessary information so as to be more easily readable at speed, in other words, decluttering them from superfluous info...

there are no Irish speakers here who don’t speak English I’d bet, but the majority of English speakers don’t speak Irish... so just have the signs, decluttered, in the language everyone understands, nice big font so the signs are easily readable at speed and from distances...

There’s no diagonal on that sign because it is a limit, not a prohibition.

The Fianna Fail OLA from the 2000s is a mess, its revision at some future date is inevitable.

English is treated as a subordinate language, which is problematic in a country that overwhelmingly speaks it. Putting ideology before all practical concerns is problematic, especially when it comes to road safety.

Not correct. Irish must be "at least" as prominent as English. Key phrase "at least".

Talking about the OLA, but it doesn't cover roads.

Layout of those signs in the OP is awful - language not the issue just the design of them - font/colouring etc.

Our signs are not lighter, just newer. The difference in brightness is down to the modern sign materials being more reflective, and also to a change in standards over the decades. UK signage seems darker because there’s a lot more old signs in the UK than in Ireland, and those are a lot darker (especially at night). Any new green road signs in the UK are just as bright as the ones we have here. The new, brighter, material is proven to be more legible than previous; that’s why it’s used.

There is a difference in the exact hue used, and the UK signage is usually a shade of green that’s more towards yellow on the spectrum than blue than ours, but you can also see the blue-green ones in the UK from time to time, and yellow-green ones here. It’s down to who supplies the materials, really: the shade of green is not specified as a fixed point; the colour only has to lie within a certain range of shades of green, and once a material is within that, it’s good to use.

Much of the UK’s signage was installed long before the latest standard was developed, while a lot of Ireland’s was made to that standard. Newer signs in the UK tend to be of the different, bluer, green too, although the A6 in Northern Ireland has some remarkably leaf-green signage (If I were cynical, I guess that could be NIRS making a point - ours are blue, so theirs must be yellow; they are, after all, the same people who seemed to think the A5 ended at a brick wall just south of Aughnacloy, but in truth it’s probably down to the green pigments used whoever they bought them from)

I note that they couldn’t resist a full redesign in their mock-up. Changing everything about the current design was an excellent way of hiding the change they actually wanted from the casual observer.