…not the revered ones created by Jock Kinnier and Margaret Calvert, but the ones that face you as you slide off the motorway for a pee – ones like this.

As signs to walk up to and carefully consider, they’re fairly inoffensive, but as pieces of information to be read whilst slowing down a car (usually in the rain) they are pretty useless:

• they aren’t big enough
• in most of them the icons for different types of vehicles don’t look that different
• they’re always badly lit and dirty (much like the services themselves)
• they are nearly always placed right at the intersection the arrows relate to, which in turn is created by concrete blocks – not something I really want to hit.

The result leaves the user trying to make a decision whilst pulling their best Lewis Hamilton moves.

Therefore, if anyone from one of the major motorway service companies would like fund me to do some research, I’m pretty sure I could come up with a better solution for you – I would expect a hard hat to be included.