Databases Blamed for Poor Punctuation

I wanted to pass along this article I read this morning about punctuation being abandoned on road signs to avoid issues with computer systems. From the article:

Council says punctuation mark must go to suit computer databases, but grammar purists see signs of falling standards

Also:

This restricts the use of punctuation marks and special characters (eg apostrophes, hyphens and ampersands) to avoid potential problems when searching the databases as these characters have specific meanings in computer systems.

There has to be a better solution, right?

Thanks for reading!