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Scott Meacham
In a list of mid-century inventions, I put the traffic yield sign near the top. When you think about it, the yield sign is pure genius. It is all about keeping things moving until the precise moment they need to stop.
The story of how the yield sign came about is a classic parable of innovation, and it happened right here in Oklahoma thanks to Clinton Riggs.
Riggs was a state patrolman and police officer from Tulsa. He reportedly had his idea for the yield sign in the late thirties when he attended Chicago’s Northwestern Traffic Institute. As part of the curriculum, he and other highway patrol officers were challenged to come up with solutions to real life traffic problems, for example the tendency of drivers to roll through intersections. There was already a yield law on the books, but people ignored it.