Hey friends! Thanks so much for all the great feedback on A Brief History of the Exit Sign.
And for those of you who are new here, welcome! Thanks for sticking around and thanks for
all the great comments. Now let’s take a look at what some of you have said.
Willem, as well as many other of you, pointed out that the US doesn’t actually have the
metric system either. Even though, as Shadow points out, technically units in the US have
been defined via the metric system for a more than a century, it’s just rarely used.
And don’t even get me started about how crazy I think it is that you guys still haven’t
gotten rid of the penny.
Xplayer007 says “In the US, building codes are regulated on the state level…The US
is a geographically diverse country and the parts of the codes that apply” in certain
states wouldn’t make sense in others.
Now it is true that building codes are legislated on the state level. However all 50 states
actually have adopted the International Building Code, a model code developed by
the International Code Council.
Canada actually works essentially the same way. The National Research Council
of Canada develops the National Building Code, this was where they introduced the ISO sign
in 2010. Each province and territory can choose whether or not they want to adopt it.
And they may not to, again due to the reasons Xplayer pointed out, when a country is so
geographically diverse, not all codes make sense in every region. it just so happens,
this ISO sign did make sense in all the provinces and territories.
Adopting the ISO Sign in the US may not be as hard as it seems. As Oliver points out,
if we can convince the ICC to adopt it, or if we can convince a large enough state
(say California) to adopt it, that could be enough of a changing tide
to get the rest of America to follow suit.
Garret says “it's interesting that you say the US is really monolingual. culturally,
you're right, but legally, we have no official language.”
I actually did not know that. And as Random Creek also commented, the US is, in a way,
much less monolingual than most European Countries. Actually yeah, come to think of it,
In the US, 80% of people’s main language is English. While in a country like Germany, 95% of people’s
first language is German. And 95% of people in Czech Republic speak Czech. By the way,
hello to my new Czech friends.
But anyway, the difference is that a lot of Germans and Czechs speak more than one language.
However that is not true in the UK, with 95% of people
there ONLY speaking English. And the UK adopted the ISO sign decades ago.
Many of you also commented that you have seen a lot of green exit signs. For instance
Nick noticed in new buildings in the US they still use the old-fashioned exit sign, but in green.
And Ethan found this map which indicates that some states require the exit signs to be red,
some require it to be green, while other states merely recommends one or the other,
but most allow both.
Antilles1974 asks “what are the thoughts regarding people with color vision problems
in regards to the green color?”
Actually research seem to suggest that green is the most suitable colour in most circumstances,
especially for people who have colour blindness. Link to the study in the description.
Chris says “(exit signs) should also indicate in some way if the exit is suitable for wheelchairs.﻿”
Yes! In fact, there is actually a movement called “The Accessible Exit Sign Project”
which advocates that there should be exit signs
indicating which exit route is wheelchair accessible.
Andrew and Michael expressed their appreciation for the close captioning. Thanks guys!
I'm actually still trying to find time to finish captioning some of my older videos.
So for those of you who have a a few spare minutes here or there, I’d love it if you could
help me caption some of my older videos that don’t yet have captions. And if you speak
another language, I’d also really appreciate it if you could help me translate some.
Every little bit helps to make these videos as accessible as possible.
jacmeade says “We don't have (these exit signs here) in the U.S. because once you're here,
there is no escape.﻿”
Well, that’s gonna be a bit of a problem for me as I will actually be going to the
US in a few days. If any of you are going to Vidcon, let me know!
I’d really love to meet you guys!
I will also be speaking on a panel called “Edutube Beyond the Sciences”
Friday June 22 at 10am with these cool people.
I think it’ll be fun and I really hope you guys can make it!
And if you have a video suggestion for anything art, design or architecture related, feel
free to leave it in the comments below, or you can tweet at me @articulationsv.
Okay gotta go! bye! *snap!*