As I've discussed before, there is a stretch of the southbound I-35 access road between the Slaughter and Slaughter Creek Overpass exits that has two strange merge signs that my fellow drivers do not understand. Or, I should say, had these signs. About a month ago, the confusing straight line/broken line signs that indicated that the left lane ends and the right lane continues were replaced by signs saying "Lane Ends Merge Left." Um, yes, that's correct - they changed it so that the right lane ends and the left lane continues (which both Robert and RB independently decided the road appeared to suggest by design, though it looks completely ambiguous to me). Once I got over boggling at the turn of events, I thought it was more logical - the right lane is usually bogged down by cars turning into the Wal-Mart shopping center or onto Old San Antonio Road, so it made more sense for the left lane to be the through lane. And traffic seemed to me to be slightly more sane along that part of the road after we all got used to the change and/or the rules of the road changed to conform to what we were already doing.
But then - in a bizarre switcharoo that had me talking in my car at loud volume "What?! Now they're just fucking with me!" - on Tuesday night, the signs had been changed again; they now read "Lane Ends Merge Right," thus re-establishing the original protocol, only with words instead of those pictograms that are equally incomprehensible in every language. Well, I say "now" but really, who knows? Since 5:15 this afternoon, they could have been changed to the semi-mysterious drawing showing that we should merge left or replaced by a series of Burma Shave-esque signs:
You must suffer
From aphasia
We were always at war
with Eurasia
Merge now
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That's pretty amusing to think that they accidentally improved flow of traffic (and then switched it back). We had a less bizarre experience when the highway on-ramp for our work commute suddenly became metered recently, but we did have that "oh shit" realization of having run a red light we didn't expect to encounter -- at least there was no cross-traffic to cause any actual danger. As far as baffling signs, unfortunately we are having to endure that incredibly stupid Ask.com billboard campaign at that same highway on-ramp... I refused to even look it up until this last one about the unabomber, when I finally was at least curious to know who could possibly actually be paying for it (and what company to blame for my morning scowl).
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