Highway Signs and Prison Labor
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Hey there, it's Stephen Dovner. And today we've got a bonus episode for you. It is an episode of another show in our network. It's called The Economics of Everyday Things, which is hosted by Zachary Crockett. In the past, Zachary and his team have made episodes about Michelin stars, snake venom, prosthetic limbs. Today, they bring us their reporting on highway signs and prison labor. If you like this episode, be sure to follow the show on your podcast app. Again, it's called The Economics of Everyday Things. And let us know what you think. Our email is radio at Freakonomics.com. OK, here is Zachary Crockett.
The town of Bunn, North Carolina, is easy to miss. It occupies a total area of just half a square mile, and it's home to fewer than 330 people. Most of the surrounding land is used to grow tobacco and soybeans. But off the main road, behind a series of chain-link fences and secure gates, is the state's primary manufacturer of highway signs. Inside the plant, workers are busy shearing giant aluminum panels, cutting sheets of green adhesive, and measuring out the spacing between letters. And outside in the shipping yard, the plant's general manager, Lee Blackman, is admiring a row of completed products.
This sign right here is 12 foot tall. This is going somewhere on Interstate 95 in North Carolina.
This facility makes all kinds of road signs. Stop signs, yield signs, construction signs. But its biggest products, both by size and revenue, are those huge green signs that loom over you on the highway.
That's going to give you information about what road you're on right now, the intersections that are coming up, what is the next town coming up, the exit and so forth.
Signs like this are all over American highways and freeways. There are literally millions of them. And they're so familiar that many of us don't stop to think about where they come from or why they look the way they do. Behind every highway sign, there's a long and winding road of economic decision-making.
We want to make sure that we get a good quality product because we want it out there for 20 years. We've got to be good stewards of the taxpayers' money.
For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is the economics of everyday things. I'm Zachary Crockett. Today, highway science. Back in the early days of the automobile, driving on American roadways was a free-for-all.
There was no coordinated effort to manage the movement of vehicles, whether it be through road construction, a connected network of roadways, highways, traffic control devices.
That's Gene Hawkins. He works for the forensic engineering firm Kittleson, and he's a professor emeritus in the Department of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M University. He's one of the foremost experts on the history, design, and installation of traffic signs.
The vehicles back then would not be used to travel long distances anyway. As the ability to travel longer distances increased, they created these trail systems, which were typically run by trail associations.
These informal networks of roads were a predecessor to the highway system in America. And along these roads, there were very rudimentary ways of telling drivers where they were and what was up ahead. Most of these signs were hand-painted. Some had words, others had symbols. They were made from an assortment of materials in all different sizes and shapes, and the signs were different from place to place.
I've seen pictures of stop signs that looked like coffins, signs with skull and crossbones on them.
As people started driving further and crossing state lines, they didn't know how to interpret all the markers they saw.
The State Highway Department people recognized we need to do a better job of providing a consistent, uniform system of traffic control devices.
In the 1930s, these efforts culminated in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, or MUTCD for short. It provided a set of standards for traffic control devices across America's growing system of roads. Today, it's run by the Federal Highway Administration, and every state in the U.S. adheres to its guidelines.
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