You board a plane in Charlotte. Four hours later you land in Denver, rent a car, and follow Peña Boulevard from the airport to Interstate 70. You merge into westbound traffic.
A lot has changed since you left the Tar Heel state. You’ve traveled more than 1,600 miles, crossed the bulk of the North American continent, and climbed to a mile above sea level. You’re no longer driving beneath pines and oaks. Instead, you see fewer trees and thinner foliage, and those Rocky Mountains — what a dramatic backdrop!
But some things look the same: Like the yield signs you saw while merging onto I-70 and the green signs mounted above the highway. The color and style of the markings on the pavement look the same, too.
This, of course, is not a coincidence. The transportation industry follows a set of standards that allow drivers to follow the same rules across the country. Even if you’d landed in Honolulu, half a world away, these standards would have guided you around the Big Island without having to learn a new system.
It seems simple enough, right? Just make the roads, signs, and pavement markings look the same across the country?
Well, like a lot of things that seem simple, highway standards aren’t. In fact, the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, or MUTCD, which defines these standards, is about 1,100 pages long. The table of contents alone, for the current edition of the MUTCD, takes up more than 30 pages.
Turns out creating a simple system requires a lot of detailed work.
MUTCD standards regulate every imaginable scenario a traveler could navigate on an American roadway. How do you mark bike lanes and rail crossings? Where should you place junction signs as drivers approach an intersection? How do you set up crosswalks? MUTCD has an answer.
Because of MUTCD, any work done by any contractor in any state syncs up with the national system.
These standards continue to evolve and respond to different travel conditions. The very first edition of the MUTCD, which came out in 1935, didn’t address every travel condition we face on today’s roads. Vehicles and vehicle travel have changed a lot over the past 90 years.
But across all eleven editions of MUTCD, these rules and regulations have served a single purpose: Safety.
Standard traffic control devices communicate with drivers on a subconscious level. Standards direct traffic without drivers knowing they’re being directed. This allows drivers to pay more attention to the behavior of other vehicles and to better plan ahead for their next turn or stop.
If contractors didn’t follow these standards, drivers might have to adjust to a new system every time they cross state lines or leave an airport in a different major city.
Our InfraStripe family of companies performs the highest quality MUTCD-compliant infrastructure work in 29 states plus the District of Columbia. We’re proud to help uphold this standard of safety everywhere we work.