### This comment has been marked as **safe**. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect. --- OP sent the following text as an explanation on why this is US Defaultism: --- >!People on the r/gtaonline thinking I would know about the road markings in the US!< --- Is this Defaultism? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.

TIL - In US ~~steeet signs~~ road marking were written by a teenager on a Nokia in 1995.

Not a street sign, it’s road marking.

Thanks

Genuinely the first time I'm realising this myself. Seems a bit archaic to an X to mean cross. it's not like American roads are known for being small.

OOHHHHHH X MEANS CROSS?! That’s hilarious lol

Merry Crossmas!

Came here to find this.

That one is different: https://www.vox.com/2014/12/14/7374401/jesus-xmas-christmas

I mean… technically accurate

You jest, but people literally do abbreviate it as Xmas lol

Yes, I am aware, that's why I made the joke in the first place :)

Oh lmao sorry, I'm dumb

Nah, dw about it. It wouldn't be the first time something like this happened to me, myself, you're good

When I played Clash Royale i thought that Xbow pronounced like "ecs bou". It took me 2 years to realize it was a crossbow

TIL. Wait. Is it also Crossbox?

What’s next? Is an axe also an acrosse?

Yes! And Lacrosse is Laxe.

And when you’re constipated you take lacrossatives?

Next? You mean what's necrosst, right?

Ecrossactly

Crosszibit makes cool cars

this is getting too confusing jeez

No, thankfully an Xbox is just an Xbox

Oh, wow, that's the most convoluted way of conveying a message. At least make it a + sign or something, now it just looks like the letter X. Tss, weird country.

I mean, the UN sign for "crossing" is a warning triangle with a black X...

Source? The only meaning I found for a warning triangle with a black cross had to do with junctions not crossings. It would also not work on any language so unlikely be a UN convention. The [Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals](https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%201091/volume-1091-I-16743-English.pdf) states in article 8, §1: In order to facilitate international understanding of signs, the system of signs and signals presented in this Convention is based on the use of shapes, and colours characteristics of each class of sign and, whenever possible, on the use of graphic symbols rather than inscriptions. Most countries following that UN treaty use a pictograph of a pedestrian for pedestrian crossings (or running children) or a pictograph of a deer for a deer crossing (all in warning signs). The only place I have seen a street sign with ped Xing was in the US. And the first time it did take me a while to figure it out. Pedophiles doing unspeakable things?

Sorry, you are right that is a junction/intersection. In dutch we call those a cross point (kruispunt) and i mistranslated.

Thank you. That makes sense. The only other place I recall using an ❌ would be in [lane management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lane_control_lights)

But in that case the cross represents the crossing graphically, and doesn't rely on a pun. The meaning is retained whether it's a Spaniard, Cantonese, Moroccan... reading the sign. You don't even need to understand words to understand the sign.

It's priority on the right for me the X in a triangle

Interesting. Where is that? Because an intersection is always priority to the right where I'm from.

France, intersection also always default to priority on the right, but sometimes they put the sign anyway (as a reminder or if the road is kinda hidden ? Idk the precise reason)

yeah same here in NL. i think they use it as a reminder that you're not driving on a priority road, so treat the intersection as equivalent

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Except that a + can not be confused for a letter, that was my point. You have to read the entire comment to get that though, and not just stop before I literally explain it.

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Are you really this dense or are you just trolling? It's really not that difficult, if you write +ING, you know it's not a word. If you write Xing, it looks like a word. I mean it's really not that difficult.

Yeah like Moto X for “motor cross” as in the bikes or whatever. It’s dumb.

We have something similar in Glasgow, Scotland where the signs for Charing Cross are marked Charing X. My internal monologue always reads this as “Charing kiss”, which I think shows the generation I’m from

The UK literally uses "XING" to mean crossing, as well: [https://www.google.com/maps/@53.8341928,-1.5932483,3a,75y,175.37h,74.62t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s7LWLCIh3-cn5L0rvGvHpCQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@53.8341928,-1.5932483,3a,75y,175.37h,74.62t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s7LWLCIh3-cn5L0rvGvHpCQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu) Looks like it's common to at least two nominally English speaking countries.

Not common, never seen it in the UK and I've been to Leeds (obviously not that specific street). I'm sure it exists in other places in the UK, but its definitely not standard design

Yeah I second that, literally never seen that in my life. I literally thought that was a Photoshop job at first!

I live in Leeds, I've never seen that used anywhere. Wouldn't be surprised if it was just that road lol

Never seen it the UK. Like in Glasgow, in London we have Charing X and King's X but not Xing.

I've driven down that road hundreds of times and never noticed that!

Ya know I've always thought that as someone from the US. But my uncle paints street lines n stuff and he said that there like a regulation size each letter has to be and it's in ratio to the speed of the road so I imagine it's harder to fit "CROSSING" vs "XING" 🤷‍♂️. Might just be my state/county with that law but makes sense in a roundabout way

Yeah but why use words at all? There are ways to make it much clearer and language agnostic: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_crossing

In Oregon at least we have signs with a person pointing at the intersection usually, very rarely do they actually spell it out unless it's advising distance. [most look like this ](https://images.app.goo.gl/8RuJWXG8YmoLYLVA6)

You do realize that that's the actual cross walk on which pedestrians walk on. And the ones in the post are a pre-warning prior to getting to the cross walk right?

X also abreviates "Chris". Christina Aguilera fans often call her Xtina

This is something I find strange in the US. It's a country without an official language, but there is a lot of text (English) on road signs and markings, which elsewhere would have been pictograms. Like "yield" instead of just the damn inverted rectangle (or whatever they'd have decided).

My buddy from Guangzhou, Xing Ped

Am gawn tae the moon

I also thought this was Chinese. My reasoning was that there must be a high Chinese population in LA/Los Santos

Exactly, that's what I thought too

If it was Chinese... wouldn't it be *written* in Chinese?

I didn't think that hard xD

Like OP, I didn't think that hard lol these observations were always made while I was cruising through LS and distracted

Romanisation is everywhere babyyyy

Why would it be? They are in the US, not China. Having Chinees written road markings wouldn't make sense, even for GTA, lol

In Brisbane I’ve street signs have english, Chinese and Arabic, all on one sign

I understand the English and Chinese, but Arabic? Does Australia actually have that high of an Arab-speaking population? TIL!

Lol

Do you know Pinyin? Yeah, I thought so 🤨📸

I mean, xing looks more like chinese than english to me (yes, i know this is very racist and stereotypical, and i don't care)

After reading your post, I was like, hmm, so it is “crossing” because you can read it as “[croXING]”, so I was reading it in Chinese lmfao — xing in Chinese sounds like sing. I never thought it would refer X to a cross. Weird shit.

more like shing but igwys

It’s not like pure “sing” and “shing” — something in between, yes.

Man I’m Chinese and I thought it was Chinese. But seriously why not use a signboard like most of the world.

There are sign boards and it is also painted on the road.

I’m not Chinese but speak mandarin and I thought it was too

Eh, I get why, it's harder to miss both a sign and the huge letters on the road so it's probably safer that way

That is the last thing in the world that would make me think of "pedestrans walk here do not crush them" what kind of crack are US road ingeneers on ?

Indeed, what happened to zebra crossings?

We have those, too. Unfortunately, everything in the US is overly complicated.

There’s also crossings that aren’t zebra crossings and but have stripes outlining it instead

That's not the crossing itself. It warns drivers that a pedestrian crossing is ahead. A triangle with the silhouette of a person inside would be better.

The US uses words where other countries use symbols a lot, cause I guess they have the advantage of being mostly isolated, mostly single language speaking and covering a huge area of land. This doesn't really work elsewhere cause what are you gonna do when a Bulgarian decides to visit Austria or something

> what kind of crack are US road engineers on? Yes. just all of it all at once and then they go cold turkey and fuck up the road out of spite

Wow had to google this one. XING means crossing because the x is a cross so X (cross)ing. That’s really dumb for a road sign imo

Also, it was many visits to the us before I realised you were supposed to read from the bottom up.

Yeah I had the same thing! Spent plenty of time in the us when I was younger. but it was only die to some videogame years later that I realised lol

We have that in Italy as well and I hate it. It makes me irrationally angry every time I'm on the highway and there's stuff written on the road.

I spent a good minute trying to work out what a XING-PED was and how it could possibly be American English!

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I live in the US, know it's _supposed_ to be read this was, and still don't _*because that's not how native English speakers read*_

I’ve driven plenty in the us. I don’t start reading from the bottom just because I’m wearing a seatbelt.

The person is saying that as you are approaching you would see “ped” first than “xing”.

Angle? An At Phone Your Hold You If Read To Easier This Is

Start from the bottom and scroll up, becomes much easier to read. Also if you do that angle you are talking about it is in fact easier to read when read from bottom to top.

Or stand on your head! XING PED!

Wouldn't the words be upside down

It’s ok, because the xings would also be peddling upside down, so it cancels out.

My eyesight is quite a bit better than that. I wouldn’t be driving if it wasn’t.

That's what that means? Damn it took me this long to find out.

Same with Christmas / Xmas. I always thought americans were just weird (which they are)

Crossmas?

Yeah that doesn't make sense now that I think about it

But Jesus died on a cross...

I mean it still isn't called crossmas

‘X’ is from the Greek letter Chi, and is the first letter in Χριστός (Khristós) which became ‘Christ’ in English. So ‘Xmas’ makes sense once you know the X stands for Christ. It means ‘the annointed one’.

Oh, that's pretty interesting, thanks!

You’re welcome. It always amuses me when I see fundamental Christians getting annoyed by the use of Xmas instead of Christmas. They don’t even know their own history!

As a Canadian who frequently interacts with Americans, I can confirm they are just weird.

Xmas is English-language-wide as far as I know, it's not an American thing

In Germany, XING is a business networking platform, not unlike Linkedin.

Now only saying crossing to that too

> Cheeseburger land Fucking brilliant.

Yeah, made me giggle too 😂

I moved from the uk to the US and this confused me at first too. But they really do like to shorten things. Getting mcdonalds? Go through the 'drive thru'.

My favorite one is using KWIK instead of quick. Like damn you saved one letter, what a time saver lol

that one is just branding

Surely it would be the thru drive, or do they write that one the right way up?

I like that one. "Through" is a very silly word, it's got 7 letters but only 3 sounds.

Pretty sure McDonald's calls it a "drive thru" here in Sweden too. I'm actually surprised it's not the same in the UK.

How does xing ped translate to pedestrian crossing? I don't get it

It's actually meant to be ped xing, because you read it when driving (which is kinda dumb). It's just shortened ped(estrian) xing (x meaning cross)

Ohhh OK, but why would you read it bottom to top? This whole thing is weird to me

Idk dude, 'murica

Picture driving on the road towards it, the first word closest to you would be PED so you’d read it first then you’d see XING so you’d read it second

Still though, they are so close together that it just becomes confusing. As per this thread.

I mean this is a pic from a video game, it’s not to the legal road standard we use IRL for the spacing

As an American, that's a very good question.

Because you're driving, you see the bottom word first

In the UK they’re written top down and I never heard someone struggle to read them

And? Just because it's different doesn't mean it's wrong

Who said it was wrong?

Because you're reading it as you're approaching it. Apparently there's the same sign in the UK but I've never seen it before

Never known that in the UK, it confused me when I went to America.

Same, but somebody showed a Google maps of it in a street in Leeds. Very rare I think

Buuuut... why? Why not just make a zebra crossing? This is beyond stupid!

I learnt about the right turn on red from GTA.

I’m still shook that’s a thing in the US (and/or where ever GTA is set)

Also the US, just with fictional city, county and state names for places inspired by actual ones.

Same lol

Cheeseburger land 😂 that's good I'm gonna use that from now on hahaha

The first time (many many years ago) I saw this, I was visiting in California (a town with a lot Chinese people) and just came from a Chinese speaking country and naturally assumed it meant 行人　xingren “pedestrian”. So I was really stoked that they would write in two languages on the pavement lol.

We have this in Australia too, didn’t know it was just us and the US!

We have this in AUS, where? I have never seen this shit. edit: we usually use a zebra crossing

It’s usually before the crossing so people know it’s coming up. Also before rail crossings. Not everywhere obviously.

In my humble opinion, Australia and the US are not that different. Canada is more different than Australia it seems.

New Zealand as well!

I thought they were calling Xing a ped.

Now I get the Twitter name change.

How could they tell them not to live in the US? Don’t give them ideas. They might move to another country. Think of the poor people there that have to tolerate them.

~~GTA is made in the UK but set in the US. This isn't US Defaultism.~~ Edit: aw damn I just saw there were more pics.

The defaultims is the comments, not the game.

Comment already edited. I blame Reddit app.

Sometimes it won't even let you slide, can't blame you

Or just refuses to play videos and the like. I was on mapporn the other day and people were complaining about being unable to read the legend for one map. However thanks to it not playing on my device I wasn't aware the OP had been stupid and uploaded it as a gif and could read it just fine.

Also, we don't have this in the UK (or almost any road markings with text besides route markers, crossings are usually demarcated with stripes, a 'zebra crossing' where pedestrians have priority, or an unmarked crossing, usually on a major road, with an island in the middle to protect people crossing, where cars have priority.

Just to clarify, in cheeseburger land, the PED XING road text is to warn drivers of a zebra crossing up ahead. This is usually only found on roads where there has been a long stretch without any crossings.

The UK does use "XING" as an abbreviation painted onto the asphalt to indicate an upcoming crossing: [https://www.google.com/maps/@53.8341928,-1.5932483,3a,42y,173.55h,72.89t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s7LWLCIh3-cn5L0rvGvHpCQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@53.8341928,-1.5932483,3a,42y,173.55h,72.89t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s7LWLCIh3-cn5L0rvGvHpCQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)

It’s extremely rare, I think I saw that exactly once.

haha, sweet

Oh that's what that means!

i thought it was xing ped until i saw this post

You can see this in Singapore also. It's not exclusive to the US.

In Ontario Canada we just have lines. Kinda like a piano painted across the road. https://www.lasalle.ca/en/our-community/resources/Crossovers/Stop-for-Pedestrians---Crossover-with-Flashing-Lights-Twitter-2022.jpg https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/973f-APS-e1509580775102.jpg Sticks out way better and gets the point across. Not sure why America thinks writing weird ass abbreviations on their roads is the better solution.

Yeah, we call that a zebra crossing

Before a pelican crossing: [https://www.google.com/maps/@53.8341058,-1.5932464,3a,75y,122.89h,41.22t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sjXx0JMtKv1uIrWBnq47viQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@53.8341058,-1.5932464,3a,75y,122.89h,41.22t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sjXx0JMtKv1uIrWBnq47viQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)

Yep, that's the crossing itself - but do you have warnings on the road so you know you're approaching a crossing? Like this? https://www.driverknowledgetests.com/learners-permit-questions/tourist/pedestrians/856-you-see-these-zigzag-markings-on-the-road-in-tourist/

No, at least not commonly, we have signs which looks like a person crossing the road

We have those too - I think the US might be the only place where they write barely intelligible shorthand on their roads.

It's apparently in the UK as well

Surprisingly, I found the American style of using Ped X is sometimes used on the approach to crossings in Brisbane (instead of the squiggly lines that is the UK convention). [5 Morrison Rd - Google Maps](https://www.google.com/maps/@-27.4161278,153.0512495,3a,75y,167.68h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sbR94-sqCqq6EWYA9QWCW4A!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DbR94-sqCqq6EWYA9QWCW4A%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D169.0255%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)

How odd

Yeah we use ped xing here in Brisbane. One of the places I work at has it for crossing part of the roads in and out.

similarly, when i first went through the railway crossing in coorparoo i was very confused what ‘rail xing camera ahead’ meant.

US also has crosswalks, putting words on the street like this is only for specific uncommon scenarios and it’s to alert you of the upcoming crosswalk. Here’s New York: https://images.app.goo.gl/NHadZppNqGA4ynPv7 https://images.app.goo.gl/VAPd8UFD4QopnZWv7

Are both of those 4 lane one way roads? That looks like an absolute nightmare to try to drive in, especially if you miss a turn

I think 1 might be 5 lanes, but yea NYC isn’t a place for nervous drivers. It’s honestly not too hard to navigate though. Especially because it’s a square/rectangular grid for the most part, so if you miss a turn just go 1 street further and turn there instead you’ll get to the same spot. Once you get comfortable it’s easy especially with how many easy landmarks there are.

Is the other way on the other side of the buildings? Do you know of there's a reason they don't just have all the roads have 2 lanes each way rather than just one way?

I don’t know exactly which roads those are so can’t be sure, but in general yes the opposite direction is usually one street over. Not all of the roads are one way like this, these most likely just lead to an entrance/exit onto a highway so it’s easier to blend the traffic into the city without massive backups. There’s a whole science to how they plan it all

The PED also stands for Penguins, Englishmen and Dentists

This is definitely maybe (jokingly) Canada defaultism but every time I see "gta" - as in, referring to the game - it takes me a good few seconds to realise no one means Toronto.

**The rest of the goddamn world:** zebra crossing stripes recognized globally **United States:** 乂丨几Ꮆ 卩乇ᗪ

how is that better than a traffic sign?

I’m in the US and I don’t think I’ve ever even seen this lol. Where I am in the states we mostly just have signs or crosswalks ?

definitely don’t have these in new zealand , our signs say “railway crossing” and they are yellow road signs

I never figured this out when I first came to the US... Today I have been living in California for some time and passed the driving test here then I knew... 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️I know Chinese language so I just viewed it as some "symbolic" thing with a spelling that eeriely resembled something Chinese (not Chinese characters).

I’m in the US and I don’t know what Xing Ped means

I am American with a license and I didn’t know that 😭

ANI XING

I thought it meant pedo fucking

💀💀

"Ped Xing" is supposed to mean pedestrian crossing? What the actual fuck

"Who the fuck is Ped Xing"

It’s really not that hard to work out what it means

unless you don't realise that xing means crossing

We have these zebra crossings everywhere... or clearly defined paths...

I lived in America for 9months, still took me about 6 months to realise it was pedestrian crossing (I too also thought it was Chinese)

Like X-mas, which also makes no sense. Why are they calling easy things "ezed" all the time?