Talk:Botts' dots

Inappropriately sourced comments
Someone with a poor grasp of Wikipedia policies is attempting to use Web blogs and forums as a source for what is essentially their own original research in violation of Attribution. Please see What Wikipedia is not and Attribution. When the Mercury News or the New York Times starts using such obscure synonyms for Botts dots, then they will be worth mentioning here.--Coolcaesar 23:02, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Researchers funded and promoted by the Canadian government already have. Remember, Assume_good_faith.  Easy enough to google around and get a valid source for the "drunk bumps" term.   MrZaius  talk  23:11, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Um, you just showed you're not acting in good faith. Your edit is not supported by the source.  The specific passage on that Web page is as follows: "One of the reasons balance worsens with age is that the feet become less touch (or contact) sensitive due to skin thickening and decrease in the number of nerve endings. One solution developed by Dr. Stephen Perry and Dr. Brian Maki is called the Sole Sensor-an insole with raised tubing running around its outer edge, sort of a counterpart to the "drunk bumps" placed on highway shoulders to keep people from veering off the road when their attention wavers."
 * At best, what this passage reasonably supports is an assertion that some Canadian researchers in aging research use the term "drunk bumps" to refer to the rumble strips on the sides of roads, which incidentally, are completely different from Botts dots (and please remember this is an article on Botts dots). It's obvious that you are not familiar with the most common type of rumble strips, the "milled" ones, (see the relevant FHWA Web page) which are large rectangular indentations cut directly into the pavement with a special machine.  The resulting bone-jarring vibrations are far louder, more violent, and more damaging to a vehicle,  than the gentle bump-bump-bump of lane-dividing Botts dots.
 * Your source fails to support two other assertions implicit in your statement: (1) that Botts dots (as opposed to rumble strips) are referred to as "drunk bumps," or that (2) this usage is increasing in North America. Besides, only a linguist or journalist (particularly one specializing in the cultural zeitgeist) would be really qualified to make the second assertion.  --Coolcaesar 06:30, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Wow. Calm down.  All I did was find a halfway reasonable, government-funded source that referred to them as drunk bumps.  If I misread the reference and erred, just fix it & let me know.  No reason to get all vitriolic about it.  Again, assume good faith in edits here.  If you fired off a rant like that at a new editor, there's a chance you could sour them on the whole concept of the wiki.  MrZaius  talk
 * I'm going to purge that entire section. At most, it reflects the view of only one group of researchers funded by the Canadian government, not the official view of the Canadian or American federal governments (or any state/provincial governments).  And it certainly does not support the view that the usage is "increasing" (a quantitative measurement which would have to be cited to a linguist or journalist).  See What Wikipedia is not.  Wikipedia is not a soapbox, a publisher of original thought, a directory, or an indiscriminate collection of random information.  --Coolcaesar 07:43, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * MrZaius never rebutted my last argument above. I'm purging that section again.  --Coolcaesar 08:43, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, I meant to cede the point in my second comment here - As you said, they may have been talking about the strips. Only tangentially familiar with the topic at hand.  However, the source would have met the guidelines for a reliable source if it had been more clearly apt. Additionally, note I did not refer to it as an official government document, but a 'valid source' - one that is verifiable and was published by a known entity.  PS, now that I'm rereading the above, seems like you might benefit from rereading WP:GF's lead. Don't really have anything to add to this article.  I was initially just interested in seeing if I could source the unsourced, and still unsupported, claims &mdash; removing from my watchlist.  MrZaius  talk  12:46, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Botts' Dots
I am looking for a source for this, but I always thought that Botts' Dots referred to ALL raised pavement markers, not just the non-reflective type. The Caltrans website that's linked in the article seems to be inconclusive, but the wording suggests that "raised pavement markers" and "Botts' Dots" are synonymous. Does anyone work in the industry have first-hand knowledge?

Also, I believe that blue markers for fire hydrants are universally reflective... this allows engines to see them clearly at night in an emergency. I don't want to edit this if someone else knows differently as a fact.

Finally, is there any reason why these are a separate article from the main "raised pavement marker" page? Sorry if this has already been the focus of discussion... it may be practical to merge the two together.209.59.32.221 23:03, 19 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Botts' dots as far as I know is a colloquial California English term that has been picked up by a few other West Coast states but is not yet universal in American English. Also, the formal term is "raised pavement marker."  And FYI, this page used to be separate, then was merged with raised pavement marker, then was split out again.  The problem is that there are a lot of amateur roadgeeks wandering in and out of various segments of the Wikipedia transportation articles, but very few transportation professionals.  --Coolcaesar 03:58, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Point of information: The original name for these markers at CalTrans was "Bott's blots" (not dots). I know this because my grandfather did many analyses of the epoxy developed there to attach them to the roadway. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.118.63.94 (talk) 23:06, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

I appreciate Wikipedians' good intentions in placing an apostrophe in this article's title, as that is at least a gesture in favor of punctuation. As a Californian, I can report that CalTrans actually referred to these devices, over their long deployment life, as Botts Dots, i.e., not in the possessive. Additionally, the correct way to put the name in the possessive would be Botts's Dots. The (incorrect) apostrophe formulation this article uses, Botts' dots, would suggest dots named for a group of people all named Bott, i.e., plural possessive -- rather than them being named for a single individual named Botts.

As a point of historical interest, the things are being phased out and pretty soon will be gone like the dodo, because as the Sacramento Bee noted, they "appear to be a bad fit as a lane marker in the emerging new world of driverless cars that rely on cameras, radar and computers to 'read' and understand lane lines" (https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/transportation/article127811959.html). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:3024:182F:D100:E8E1:7D40:B4E0:D21C (talk) 22:54, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Unused references
These notes were in the article until. I'm not sure where they belonged to, so I've moved them here. Zetawoof(&zeta;) 01:54, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Cave, Kathryn. "State lab in fast lane of high-tech road gadgets." The Orange County Register, 21 October 1991, sec. A, p. 1.
 * Martin, Hugo. "Behind the Wheel: The Botts Dot's Future May Hit a Bump in the Road." Los Angeles Times, 23 October 2001, sec. B, p. 2.
 * As far as I can tell, they didn't belong to any content in this article. They seem to belong to content that ended up in Elbert Dysart Botts. - SCEhard T 02:53, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Distance between two bots dots
Do you know what's the typical distance between the dots? is it equal between all the points? 80.178.114.234 (talk) 13:16, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Road cookies
Did anyone else hear of these things called "road cookies"? That was the only name I had for them until I heard about Botts. Frotz (talk) 08:12, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Never heard that term. Sounds like a neologism or regionalism.  The correct formal name is nonreflective raised pavement markers and the common name across the Western United States is "Botts' dots."--Coolcaesar (talk) 20:09, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
 * A little late here (as always), but in Washington state, (we've been using them for as long as I can remember, and I'm approaching 30), the colloquialism (sp?) for the device here is "turtle bump" due to their loose resemblance to the shell of a turtle when the turtle's body is retracted. In fact, KOMO 4 News did a story on them and the reporter never used the term "Botts' Dots", and instead used "turtle bumps." Srosenow 98 (talk) 11:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Word removal
I removed Washington from the list because snowfall is somewhat common there. South Bay (talk) 15:17, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Louisiana photo
The Louisiana photo shows raised square reflectors, but not what Californians call Bott's dots. As the article intro says, they are the round non-reflective dots, not highway reflectors that might be white, amber, red (wrong way), or blue (hydrant location). I think the first, second, and third photos are enough for this article. - Parsa (talk) 16:58, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

The historical narrative in this article is a mess
I hate to say this, but User:Vegaswikian (who in many other contexts has been one of Wikipedia's best editors) unfortunately made a confusing mess out of the historical narrative when trying to split the article on Elbert Dysart Botts out of the article on Raised pavement markers at this edit on 17 July 2006. That is, I had just added a section to raised pavement markers explaining how Botts had led the development of the dots. In attempting to minimize overlap between the narrative of Botts' life and the narrative of Botts' dots, Vegaswikian inadvertently created narratives that are discontinuous, incoherent, and don't make sense in both this article (which was split out of Raised pavement marker six months later) and in Elbert Dysart Botts.

For starters, a key point that Vegaswikian transferred to the Elbert Dysart Botts article but omitted from what became this article is that it was later work in the 1960s that determined the modern pattern of how Botts dots should be used and resulted in their widespread use. By omitting that point in this article, this article subtly overstates the importance of Botts' own research. Any objections before I fix this mess? --Coolcaesar (talk) 13:52, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Apostrophe placement?
Botts is not plural, so, shouldn't it be "Botts's Dots"? 2600:1011:B024:B9F3:9FB:470A:53D3:92FB (talk) 07:28, 26 April 2023 (UTC)