Time has come to standardize street signs

"Drivers in some of Canada's largest cities can have trouble just going from one part of town to another because of the wide range of street signs."

Alison Smiley, a signage expert for the firm Human Factors North, has studied street markers around the world. She works in both Vancouver and Toronto. She asks: "What do drivers need in order to be able to read [signs] in time to change lanes before they get to the intersection and slow down and turn comfortably?"

The size of the lettering is crucial -- the characters used in many cities have traditionally been 10 centimetres high. Smiley says that allows a downtown driver only two seconds' warning before the vehicle reaches the intersection's stop bar.

"In the suburbs you have higher speeds, so that means you have to be able to read the name even farther away from the intersection so you can line up in the right lane. And there are more lanes. So you really need advance signs," she says.