Posted on 09/08/2010 1:23:21 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
Officials in West Vancouver, Canada, apparently aren't satisfied with the driver-slowing properties of traditional speed bumps. On Tuesday, the town unveiled a new way to persuade motorists to ease off the gas pedal in the vicinity of the École Pauline Johnson Elementary School: a 2-D image of a child playing, creating the illusion that the approaching driver will soon blast into a child.
According to Discover magazine, the pavement painting appears to rise up as the driver gets closer to it, reaching full 3-D realism at around 100 feet: "Its designers created the image to give drivers who travel at the street's recommended 18 miles per hour (30 km per hour) enough time to stop before hitting Pavement Patty -- acknowledging the spectacle before they continue to safely roll over her."
You have to wonder if the designers of the "speed bump of the future" considered that drivers might become conditioned to disregard Pavement Patty and her imaginary cohorts, creating something similar to a "boy who cried wolf" effect. Couldn't such conditioning reduce drivers' caution if a real child should cross their path?
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Looks a little like an “after” picture of St. Pancake.
Excellent! Drivers soon will learn to ignore the illusions and little kids will be at risk. Why didn’t I think of that!?
I trained my brain the same thing when I turned 50, albeit not when I'm driving...just the rest of the time.
FMCDH(BITS)
50 points to take her down!!!!
That was the first thing I thought of. Some odd types are going to intentionally hit the “fake” child. I put fake in quotes because one day it won’t be.
Yeah that’s an awful idea too. I’d totally swerve to miss that and crash into something.
Okay, who wants to start a pool for the headline to appear reporting that the Safe School Czar was caught chasing one of these fake kids?
Get people accustomed to running over children in the road.
Amazingly stupid.
Yep, what I was thinking, they will probably cause more than one accident to happen with this kind of BS.
“Can we fix it? YES WE CAN!”
After 47 cars swerve, causing 86 fatalities, idiot artist finally decides to remove road "art."
Why not use an optical illusion of a real speed bump?
The child one is twisted.
(Speaking of illusions, I have a pretty good one on my home page.)
That is the most monumentally boneheaded idea I’ve heard in a long time. The first thing that came to mind was, “How many kids are going to die because of this idiocy?”
I hope David Dunne (quoted in the article) is held PERSONALLY liable for any injuries or property damage that arise from this idiotic idea.
The painting may be way cool, but the application is not much more than screaming “Fire” in a crowded theater - somebody’s gonna get hurt.
That’s pretty cool, but I wonder how many drivers have hit the wall or missed the turn because they were staring at the danged thing? LOL
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