Q: I was on a state highway and saw what I thought was a stop sign posted on the side of the road, not near an intersection. As I got closer, I saw that the sign actually said “shop” and was in front of a store. Other than the change from ‘t’ to ‘h’ it looked like an official stop sign. Is that legal?
A: There’s a line somewhere between clever marketing and criminal behavior. Remember the Fyre Festival? That was the once-in-a-lifetime music festival on an island in the Bahamas with luxury accommodations, gourmet meals, and a line-up of famous bands. Sounds like catnip for influencers, right? In reality, attendees were housed in disaster relief tents with rain-soaked mattresses, served pre-packaged cheese sandwiches, and the bands didn’t show up. That kind of misleading marketing gets you a six-year prison sentence and 26 million dollars of restitution.
In comparison, putting up a “shop” sign that looks like a stop sign seems benign. But it’s probably illegal. Not Fyre Festival illegal, but enough to have the sign removed without notice. The law says, in part, that “No person shall place, maintain or display upon or in view of any highway any unauthorized sign which purports to be or is an imitation of or resembles an official traffic control device.”
The same law also says that you can put a sign on private property adjacent to highways “giving useful directional information” as long as it’s “of a type that cannot be mistaken for official signs.”
Before we get to this specific situation, I think we can agree that, generally speaking, we don’t want people putting up what appear to be legitimate road signs just because they have a personal opinion on traffic management in their neighborhood. You shouldn’t be allowed to swap a stop sign for a yield sign or bump up the speed limit from 25 to 35 mph with traffic signs you bought on the internet, just to reduce your commute time.
However, I doubt that the store owner had any intention of bringing drivers to a stop on a state highway. More likely, they thought the sign was a clever way to draw attention to their store. Before reaching a final answer, we should ask a couple more questions.
Question one: Is the sign within the highway right-of-way or is it on private property? If it’s in the right-of-way it’s clearly not legal. According to the Washington Department of Transportation, “Only official traffic control signs may be placed in the state highway right-of-way. All other signs are illegal and will be removed by maintenance crews.” (Local rules apply to local roads.)
Question two: Does this sign resemble an official traffic-control device, and can it be mistaken for an official sign? From your description the answer is, at least from a distance, yes. Upon closer observation though, it became clear that it wasn’t an official sign. I thought this could go either way until I came across an open letter from Washington DOT addressed to political candidates. In it they state, “a campaign sign cannot be designed in a manner that resembles an official traffic control sign.” Presumably, a candidate isn’t going to put up an exact replica of a traffic sign, so this implies that installing a self-designed sign that resembles the official version is not allowed.
We all want to be working from the same page (or same sign) when we’re driving, so putting up a sign that looks like the real thing, whether to intentionally mislead a driver or not, is a violation of the law.