Beware the Hunchbacks, and Other Warnings Posted on British Roads

My sisters and I are recently back from a trip to Scotland. A good friend of the family whom we were visiting there, drove us about the countryside, putting over 2000 miles on his car, and ensuring that we saw a great deal of interest. So much driving also gave us a chance to observe some rather peculiar (at least, I found them so) road signs. There was, for example, this sign:

which appears to be advising one of the upcoming danger of running in to a tuning fork, but which is actually warning that the 2 lane road you are currently bowling pleasantly along on, is about to become 1 lane.

Then, of course, there is the sign cautioning against zombie-like hunchbacks:

which is actually alerting you to the far less sinister possibility of frail persons - i.e: the elderly, blind, disabled - crossing your path at this point.

Indeed, the majority of people crossing signs I found to be a bit sinister looking. Take, for example the sign warning of impending danger from hulking juveniles:

which is actually just a harmless school-crossing notice. Or there is this one, that suggests the possibility of imminent abduction by preternaturally tall aliens:

which is merely giving you fair warning that there might be pedestrians in the road ahead - though, I must admit, if I noticed a pair of pedestrians looking like this, I'd still be inclined to think there was something sinister about it

There is also this slightly confused sign, mostly seen along Highlands roads:

The weather, while we were in Scotland, was, up until the very last day, both sunnier and warmer than our section of California had been at the time of our departure, so we observed neither ice, nor snow. The Highlands also boasted this dire-looking notice:

which sometimes appeared with a small car beneath all that unlikely shedding from the crumbling mountain. This sign seemed to appear most often along side a bit of innocent road, looking rather like this:

in which the mountain which was about to collapse upon you, could only be faintly glimpsed through the trees.

My favourite sign, however, might possibly be this one:

Very civilised, that polite notice. Very kind of them to be so polite about it. The impolite notice, should you inadvisedly ignore the polite one, would consist of a parking warden in a fluorescent-yellow vest (with which Scotland is thronged) appearing the instant your vehicle stops moving (even if the motor is running) and writing you up a citation. Or possibly, if you had actually gotten out of your car, clamping your vehicle to the road by its wheels, so that you have to pay a ruddy great fine to have it unclamped. Obey the polite notice.