Jack is perturbed that the Federal Highway Administration wants states to stop putting jokes on their digital highway signs. He writes:
This is a dumb decision that only a highly technocratic mind would consider smart. Drivers are more likely to pay attention to unexpectedly amusing messages than to boring, technical text they’ve seen before. Defaulting to messages of the latter kind also makes driving just a little bit less fun, and makes different parts of the country just a little bit less unique. These fun-sucking bureaucrats are doing their predecessors proud and depriving the rest of us of yet another minor pleasure.
If people were really deriving that much pleasure from bad jokes thought up by bureaucrats, then I recommend they listen to music or podcasts when driving instead. It’s a much better experience.
It’s actually the technocratic mind that thinks, “I need to come up with a dumb pun to get those idiots I rule over to pay attention to my important life-saving message.” The important life-saving message is, invariably, something everybody already knows, like “Wear your seatbelt” or “Don’t drive drunk.”
I hope the FHWA also bans the practice of using these signs to display the total number of highway deaths so far that year. That’s not useful information to drivers, and the mere distraction of the sign might cause more accidents.
Instead of using these signs for nanny-state purposes or jokes, states should use them to convey straightforward information about the traffic. If there’s nothing important to say about the traffic, turn them off so they aren’t a distraction. It’s not the government’s job to scold you or to be funny.