What's with the British... street signs

Navigating around anywhere with which you're unfamiliar is always tricky. You don't know the main streets, much less the smaller cross streets, you don't know where one-way streets are and are not, etc. Thus, the road system should be setup to make this as painless as possible. One of the ways you can do this is through street signs. If someone tells you "turn right on Oxford road, then left on Smith avenue", it obviously makes it a load easier if those streets are labelled. Cities are therefore kind in labelling these streets well. Or so I thought. Let's compare a hypothetical corner in Canada to one in the UK, shall we. Here's a random street corner from a fairly small street in Toronto. It happens to be near where I used to live and is a very reasonable facsimile for countless intersection across Canada. I have labelled the potential locations for the street sign with red dots.

The potential locations are:

1. About a meter in from one of the corners, on an 2.5-metre pole.

That's it. That is the only place it will ever be. The signs look like this:

This will be the case for every single intersection. If you are going along a street and pass five cross streets, you will see each cross street labelled, and will see the name of the street you're on five times (helping confirm the street name hasn't changed, etc.). The only exception to this is for major streets where in addition to these signs, there will be a gigantic sign hanging above the street itself, to make it easier for motorists to see. That will look something like this:

That's it. Consistent. Predictable. Visible. Obvious. Easy to find, easy to read. It doesn't matter if you don't know the city well, you will damn well know what street you're on at all times. It doesn't matter at which point you get on the street, because every intersection is clearly labelled in the same manner.

Then we come to Britain. Oh Britain. My only thought is that the Ministry of Transport is secretly running psychological experiments disguised as a guessing game. Because they don't locate the signs in any way that makes any damn sense. Let's look at a fairly typical intersection in Manchester:

The street sign(s) (there may be zero, one or two), may be in any of the following locations:

1. One the corner on a pole (very, very rare, I think I've seen this about twice in four years).
2. On the main street (on any of the four corners, but only one at most).
3. On the side street. Again, only in one location. Note that this means if you are driving along the main street in the right direction, you will see no labelling for the side street at all.
4. About a foot off the ground on a fence surrounding the house. This may be as far down the side street as 20 metres or so.
5. Behind a bush in front of someone's house. Again, might be as far as 20 metres down.
6. On the side of one of the houses, about 3 metres off the ground.
7. Nowhere at all (happy guessing time!)

Note that not only are the signs in any number of different, unpredictable locations, not only are they often obscured by trees, bushes, fences, roof overhangs, etc., not only do they only ever face one direction at most (so if you're going the other way, you're basically screwed). But on top of all of that, they often just don't have a sign at all. This is especially common for a main street with several sides streets intersecting it-only about one side street in ten will have a labelling for the main street as well.

Let me tell you where this is annoying. I was going to a friend's poker night, as part of his bachelor party. I had printed out a map of his neighbourhood. I came to an intersection where I had to turn right or left, but didn't know which. In Canada, no problem. Pick one way at random and see what the first side street is. If it matches the map for the direction you're supposed to be going, great. If not, turn around. Max time wasted: about 2 minutes. I walked for twenty-five minutes without a single cross street being labelled (or the main street) and without seeing a single house number either (so I couldn't even tell if the numbers were approaching my friend's number or getting further away). I lucked out and had turned the right way, but there was a 50-50 chance of that.

I dunno, maybe some people find this fun. I like surprises as much as the next person, but I don't think that figuring out where I am in an unfamiliar city is the best time and place for a guessing game. It's no wonder everyone here has satellite navigation in their car: if not, you're liable to end up in France by accident. And nobody wants that.

See the rest of my "What's with the British..." series.