The man in the hat is threatened with banishment: green light for gender-neutral street signs

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Groen Alderman Manuela Weichelt (55) is disturbed by the many men on the street signs. The resident of Zug asked the Federal Council this week to make the signage gender neutral. “The signs don’t reflect social reality at all,” she told Blick. In the future, instead of the man in the hat, a woman or an abstract figure should appear on the sign about the crossing and other signs.

Unsurprisingly, the green politician’s demand met with a shake of the head from the SVP. On Twitter, the party raged about the green ‘gender terror’.

New boards are in the works

Ironically, the SVP Federal Council and Transport Minister Albert Rösti (55) is now more open to the question. In response to Weichelt’s question about the gender-neutral signs, his department writes that the controversial footpath signal is based on the Vienna Convention on Traffic Signs. This convention is currently being revised – and the pedestrian traffic signs will also be revised in this context. “The Bundesrat will examine the new signals and adopt them if it makes sense.”

So Weichelt runs into open doors. A group of experts from the UN’s Global Forum on Road Safety has been studying the new signs since 2014. Switzerland is involved in the revision as a contracting state. Proposals for changes have been worked out in more than 30 meetings, says the Federal Road Service (Astra) at Blick’s request.

Switzerland does not have to take over everything

One of the goals of the revision is to modernize the signs, make them more understandable and gender neutral. For example, the pedestrian signs. But all the signs that cars show should also be revised and made more modern in the future.

The expert panel’s proposals will be discussed in September at the next session of the forum in Geneva. If they are accepted, the contracting states will have to decide in the coming years whether to accept or reject the amendments. Switzerland is not obliged to accept all changes.

Source:Blick