Normative Signs: The Poetry of "Ought"

Here’s an example of a sign that simply gives too little information. It’s posted on a residential street in Toronto (near Ossington and Dupont), along with several others like it. The weathered look of the paper, and the growth of the surrounding greenery, suggests that the emergency — whatever it was — wasn’t recent.

And yet the signs are still there. It’s easy to see the analogy with certain laws & regulations.

The real problem: now that I’ve seen some of these clearly outdated ’emergency’ signs, am I as likely to take other such signs seriously in the future?

(Further thought: Is it even an official sign? Maybe not. There’s no police logo, and no contact information. Did I fall for it?)

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Update! I asked the Toronto Police, and it is an official sign… but perhaps not put UP officially. Here’s the tweet:

Thank you for bringing this to our attention!

It IS an official sign, but it appears it was not posted by Parking Enforcement, nor Police.

We have @ParkingTPS heading over to remove the signs right now.

^vk

— Toronto Police (@TorontoPolice) August 17, 2020

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