Signs Point To…

The other day as I was walking from the parking structure (they call them “ramps” here in Michigan) to our office building, I noticed a sign that said “Warning: Snow Dumping Area! Do Not Enter!” next to the giant heap of snow that the maintenance people had scooped off the top of the structure and dumped onto the ground. One might have expected that the yellow “caution” safety tape might have been a clue, or perhaps that the sound of bulldozers working and huge clumps of snow plummeting to the ground might have tipped someone off, but even if it didn’t, you might still think the addition of “Do Not Enter” at the bottom was superfluous. Unless, of course, you are familiar with the way people behave around warning signs…

Case in point: Many years ago I had travelled to Yosemite National Park, and climbed the steep and narrow trail (it’s actually a staircase in places) to the top of Yosemite Falls, a 3-section drop of over half a mile total. At the top of the falls was a warning sign that read “Danger: Waterfall. Do not enter stream or moving water.” Since the only way to see the sign at all was to hike up one of the steepest trails in the Western Hemisphere, the warning may have seemed a little redundant, but some people need things spelled out explicitly. I paid the sign no further attention, but a year or two later I made the climb again, and found that the sign had been changed; it now read “Danger: Waterfall. Do not enter stream or moving water, you may be swept over the falls.” Again, somewhat redundant, but perhaps it was better to say explicitly what the connections between the rapidly flowing stream and the 3,000 foot fall actually was…

Several years later I made a third visit to the top of the waterfall, only to find that the sign had been replaced with a new version which read: “Danger: Waterfall. Do not enter the stream or moving water, you will die if you are swept over the falls.” Again, it didn’t seem like you would need to tell people this if they had just spent several hours climbing up a narrow trail next to a bloody great waterfall, but perhaps it’s best to be clear about these things. It’s always possible that there were people reading the sign who could actually be dim enough not to realize that a 3,000 fall down the side of a granite mountain would be catastrophic for your health. But on my fourth and final visit to the top of the falls, I discovered that the sign had been changed yet again; it now read “Danger: Waterfall. Do not enter stream or moving water; you will be swept over the falls and die. YOU DO NOT GET A SECOND CHANCE!” (emphasis theirs)…

I’m not sure if this implies that people are dumb enough to think that, as they are being swept over the falls they will be able to grab hold of a vine (which don’t grow in pine forests 8,000 feet above sea level) and swing to safety like Tarzan, or whip out a safety line and grapple something like Batman, or perhaps that if you die by massive impact trauma after being swept over one of the world’s tallest waterfalls you would then re-spawn, like in a video game. Possibly they just believe that since Yosemite is a national park, and the national government would be responsible for their deaths, that someone has put up a net, a safety rail, or perhaps a giant airbag at the bottom of the falls. But on the way down I stopped off at the Park Ranger station and confirmed that, sign or no sign, multiple foreign languages (and pictograms) or not, several people each year leave the trail, jump the fence, squeeze under the safety railing, get into the stream, and are swept over the falls, where they subsequently die…

So the next time you’re about to introduce a new product and you’re wondering if you should put an additional safety warning on the package, even though it seems redundant with the seven other warnings you’ve already got… I’d say go ahead and put it on there. Signs point to the general public being even dumber (and even more likely to harm themselves in creative new ways) than you think…