Fake Children and Fake Police
I picked this up toward the end of last week from Bike Portland - pictures painted on the road to give drivers pause for thought:
It looks pretty real, but is this the sort of thing that’ll end up causing more problems than it solves?
- Drivers swerving (rather than braking) to avoid the perceived hazard?
- Drivers becoming desensitised to small girls wearing blue and picking up pink balls from the road? What would happen if a real little girl were to run out into the street?
Mind you, I am in favour of things that might make drivers think the road isn’t safe to drive as fast as they like / can. I particularly like policeman scarecrows:
So what do you think - time to get busy making our own plastic plods?
I quite like all this road witching stuff, but ultimately drivers become used to it, and things go back to the way they were.
And a trompe de l’oiell that has drivers running over a respresentation of a child is going to ultimately be self defeating, in road safety terms. “Persuading” drivers to slow down/pay attention is certainly part of the equation, but enforcing the traffic law when they do not is very much missing here. Particularly given the stated aim of ending the (non-existent, so far as I can tell) “war on the motorist”.
Certainly where I live, folk speed regardless of road conditions, park so as to block pavements with more or less complete impunity.
Policeman scarecrows are a great idea. We can never come desensitised to them, there’s always that doubt that they might be real. Anything that slows the traffic down has got to be good.
Yeah - I’d love to see the traffic laws enforced . . . drivers on the phone, the speed limit, parking in bike lanes, parking on pavements . . . actually I have some thoughts on some of these things. More later.