Signs of Confusion

What if beach safety signs designed to save lives are instead putting lives at risk with messages that are unclear to the people they are supposed to help protect?

With previous research finding around 30 per cent of beachgoers misunderstood the “swim between the flags” sign, we decided to ask university students about what they thought common beach safety signs meant.

Our research, published in Safety Science, surveyed a total of 220 local and international students and found many terms and icons were dangerously misunderstood, in some cases prompting young people to behave very differently to the sign’s intended message.

Almost half of both the local and international students thought the swim between the flags sign was a message for both swimmers and surfers, so surfers need to stay between the flags.

Terms including 'shore dump’ and ‘shore break’ were poorly understood with more than half the local students and three-quarters of international students not knowing what they mean. Of those who claimed to understand them, some described ‘shore dump’ as “rubbish on the shore”, and “shore break” as “two currents split by a reef or rock”.

‘Bluebottle’ also proved a mystery to many international students, who had never come across the word before and therefore didn’t automatically associate it with a small creature with a nasty sting (commonly registered as a jellyfish).

But it wasn’t just the words causing confusion; graphics and icons were also widely misunderstood. This is of particular concern given the reliance on those imaged-based signs by international visitors who do not understand written English.

More than half of both groups has no idea what the ‘slippery areas’ icon meant; and more than 65 per cent of international students did not understand the icon for ‘dangerous currents’. Of those who claimed to understand the icons, some believed the icon for ‘slippery areas’ was warning of a sudden drop in the seabed. Eleven students believed that the icon for dangerous currents was instructing readers how to call for help and four students believed that the icon warns about sharks.

So why is it so difficult to understand warning messages on beach safety signs?  The language used on the signs has to be concise and simple, but at the same time it needs to deliver the full message. This is incredibly difficult. People have vastly different experiences of coastal environments, and hence their interpretations differ wildly. For example, regular surfers in Australian waters would associate the word “dump” with the motion of waves, but what about those who are more accustomed to beaches where there is plenty of rubbish floating about?

Our research also found that translation apps were not the answer to the problem.

Currently on Google Translate ‘shore dump’ and ‘shore breaks’ are mis-translated from English to Japanese and Chinese, two countries which have a high number of visitors to Australia. In both case ‘dump’ was translated as rubbish. The term ‘shore dump’ does not include the word ‘wave’ (as it would most likely do in languages like Chinese and Japanese) so readers are required to make that association themselves, without explicit help.

And it isn’t just an issue for people born outside Australia. More than half of local students also struggled to correctly interpret the signs.

So why is the safety signage so difficult to understand?

The simple language often used on safety signs omits any ‘unnecessary’ information. But because of this, readers are required to choose the most appropriate meaning of the word –  for example dump as a kind of wave motion, not rubbish – for a particular context such as the beach, and then infer the appropriate relationship between the other words that appear with it.

With ‘shore break’, how many readers would be likely to associate the word ‘break’ with solid objects such as cliff or rocks rather than waves which are, technically speaking, liquid?

Unfortunately there is no quick solution to clear up these signs of confusion.

If we carefully look into the meaning of each word or icon used in beach safety signage and the relationship between associated words or images, we may be able to improve our signs for better comprehension and translation. This may be a long process, but if water safety experts from around the world work together, we should be able to develop the most comprehensive and easily translatable beach safety signs.

Until then, we will need to keep educating people about beach safety as well as explaining the language of beach safety.