- A concerned resident in Colorado seems to have made their own street signs
- While perhaps well-intended, the signs use some crass language to combat speeding
- You might not be surprised, but the (humourless) police are not amused
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There are any number of ways to approach the scourge of speeding in residential neighbourhoods — but one Colorado resident went a few extra steps than most. And so now cops in Colorado are seeking whoever’s responsible for the manufacture and installation of road signs which take a blunt approach in telling drivers to slow down.
Popping up around the city of Boulder, the signs are the correct shape and colour (and close enough in font) to, at first glance, be official signage. However, the wording on them is definitely not approved by the council. They trade typical messaging such as “Slow Down Kids at Play” for a far more blunt “Don’t Kill Any Kids Today.” A simple “Slow the F*** Down” has also appeared, with the four-letter F-word appearing uncensored. One outlet says about five signs total have been spotted.
Harsh but fair, we feel, especially given the fact that any deaths or injuries caused by inattentive or reckless driving are too many. Still, there are rules in society preventing the unauthorized addition or alteration of official traffic signs, a law this vigilante effort flouts. “I appreciate the fact that it’s drawing attention to the fact that we’d like people to slow down and not be on their phones,” police commander Darren Fladung told Denver’s 9News. “But there’s probably, again, a few more appropriate ways about getting that message out.”
Local media reports the Transportation Department has removed all the rogue signage; we idly wonder how many of them now reside on the walls of DoT offices as creatively worded trophies. These signs seem to be professionally manufactured in metal and not just simple sheets of laminated paper some frustrated resident duct taped to a pole.
An interactive data set said to be maintained by the City of Boulder until about a year ago suggests there were approximately five fatal crashes in and around the area last year. The same data says just under half of the roughly 1,200 total crashes resulted in some sort of injury or potential injury. Numbers appear to have spiked pre-pandemic at about 2,100 crashes involving vehicles, about 600 of which may have caused some injury or fatality.
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