Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

A lesson in decision-making from the world’s worst road sign

It’s cognitive bias that makes me blame myself for missing the M25

Credit: Streetview 
issue 28 March 2015

Driving from Dover on the M20 a year ago I missed the turning for the M25. A month later I did it again. Then again. ‘You bloody idiot — you missed the turning,’ I said to myself each time. Eventually, after I had missed the turning five times in ten journeys, I wondered if it was really all my fault. So I logged on to Google Street View and retraced the stretch of the M20 leading up to the junction. That’s when I found the image below.

Perhaps it doesn’t look odd to you. It took me a while to spot why it is a contender for the world’s worst road sign. By the time you can read the information it contains, you can no longer act on it. Some idiot has painted a row of chevrons in the road for the previous 500 yards (which it is illegal to cross).

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