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We have a road that goes under a bridge so that you can make a right to go east on a 4 lane road. People would sit at that corner waiting to go left and it caused massive backups. (Which made no sense, why go under the bridge then? Use a different corner and make a right to go west!). We asked the city to make it right turn only - they interpreted it slightly differently and thought we meant people were heading straight the wrong way up a one way, rather than turning to that corner, came and put a temporary sign. I went with one of my kids, wearing safety vests, and moved the temporary sign to the corner we wanted it at.
Later the city came and put the permanent sign where we had it, and ALSO changed the paint on the road to make it one way right at the corner and disallowed left turns INTO that corner, they just broadly said no left. Which is good. Nobody should be stopping at the bottom of a bridge to wait to make a left turn.
It’s not like NOBODY does the left anymore, but there are not backups now because nobody is going to sit there waiting to go left, they get honked at.
What a savage
My friends and I stole a speed limit sign over a decade ago and they still haven’t replaced it.
They did replace the one on the other side of the road about 4 years ago.
20 years ago, our town had a war over an intersection.
Someone decided to upgrade a 3 way intersection, for a a dirt road going into the woods off a main artery. (rumored someone in town planning bought a house on that road and was trying to make it so they didnt have to wait a long time for a gap in traffic)
So they made it a 3 way stop unsteady of just the dirt road having a stop sign. This caused tragic to back up miles on either side, as it was pretty much the only stop on the main road going out to the town’s comercial district (100s of work vehicles traveling it at 9 and 5)
Almost immediatley, People started coming out with chain saws, and wpuld cut down the 4x4 wood signpost. Leaving the stump and the concrete block in the ground. Fairly quickly, the town ran out of room on the narrow strip between the road and the bike path, and started hammering in metal posts, wedged between the buried cement supports.
Guys with welders on their trucks started cutting those down flush with the ground. At one point, a cop car was stationed there overnight.
The police report detailed 2 trucks, with chain strung between them, driving on either side of the post at speed, wrapping the sign, and tearing it out of the ground before dropping the chain.
Thst was about as far as it got before town meeting, where an inquest was called for into the appropriateness , and approval process, and who had put in the work order etc. (There was some passage about the planning board being able to make minor changes to signage, etc without impact studies, and going through the approval process (which includes open forum, and with enough detractors to a project can force it to be put to a vote)
The main point of contention being how anyone qualified to be in that position could think that something that caused a 30-60 minute delay on a 5 mile road qualified as a ‘minor change’
Iirc the whole thing ended with the town cementing over that little strip (covering over all the metal and wood protrusions, and effectively signaling a stop sign couldn’t be put there anymore) and then several members of the planing commision, resigning their posts, which made the inquest moot.
Where funny?
No need to be funny. But it’s also not a meme. Not that most things here are.
I see this. There was another thread today where people were discussing if stuff like this counts as a “meme” or if it’s off topic for this page. I’ll be making a pinned post for community input tomorrow about a potential new rule. Stay tuned.
Remember that guy that made that highway exit sign in California? https://youtu.be/26-4oARwfF4
Where maymay
Stuck in traffic
Are people really praising this? I guess fuck the engineers who did a traffic study, and fuck the school children walking in that area from 7-7:30 I guess.
Won’t someone please think of the children 😭
You’re right, OP’s ability to marginally shorten their commute is more important than public safety, and the times indicated on those signs are completely chosen at random so it doesn’t matter anyway.
Good point.
Or, hear me out, maybe the sign was just wrong. If they haven’t catch up in almost a year that was probably the case.
I’m willing to hear you out. Your evidence for the sign being “wrong” is that it wasn’t discovered? Do you think that city workers would check to make sure the sign still said 07:00 and not 07:30? Why in the world would they check things like this?
Imagine you take out a good made stop sign. You’d probably have a lot of crashes in a short period of time and soon it would be discovered that something is wrong.
Apparently it hasn’t happened, so it doesn’t seem to be causing a lot of trouble.
The sign is there for a reason. If after modification that reason has not manifest itself, most likely the modification is within the margin of what the people who is regulating traffic want to happen.
Not everything needs to be on the same scale of safety. I’m not saying that this particular rule was 100% perfect, just that it’s not up to individuals to undermine them arbitrarily, and just because no one noticed in ten years does not mean that it was ok to do it.
I’m glad it’s not causing a lot of trouble anyway…
Ok cool so I guess OP is a civil engineer with a Professional Engineer license then, and got a resolution from the city/town’s governing board giving them permission to change it. And they publicly bid the project to certified contractors.
Oh wait no, none of that happened
Just because a traffic engineer has qualifications doesn’t necessarily guarantee they’re not an asshole who is wrong and also sucks.
to be fair on traffic engineers timing lights we have verifiable proof that sometimes adding roads can actually increase taffic (and that removing them can decrease it) And this information is not always taken into account on a high level so they get stuck trying to fix an innately flawed system.
Title text is great
absolutely… all the people praising this, like… those signs exist for traffic flow and safety… it’s so incredibly selfish to just say fuck everyone else, i need to turn right and even more selfish to avoid repercussions but making it “okay” for everyone else
maybe the sign was wrong, sure… but we don’t have that information… without more information, it’s an incredibly selfish act. dude has main character syndrome
Did you just invent a school zone to make an argument? What would the hypothetical civil engineers have to say after running countless hours of simulations on imagined children?
You’re right, illegally changing a public sign on a public road in order to make your own commute marginally shorter is absolutely just totally cool, and you would know because you “work for the government”.
It’s nice to see a few folks pushing back. This whole thing has the narrative of the ol’ incompetent state with its endless red tape and arbitrary nonsense!
Sometimes those things are true and it can be a pain, but it’s the same reason we don’t go out for vigilante justice. It wasn’t arbitrarily installed and no one noticed it because there’s no reason to check things like that.
There’s totally a reason to check things like that. If there were any accidents or reports of issues it would be investigated. If it was a common hazard, cops might even set up a trap to catch cars making illegal turns.
To check to make sure signs that look identical don’t have the numbers altered? Sure, I guess.
Never said it was cool. It’s not cool to make shit up to support an argument.
I worked for the government. I had a six month contract with Department of Justice on the massive influx of files shortly after red light cameras went up in our area. I filed traffic tickets, too.
One file that stuck with me was a commuter who accrued multiple speeding tickets over a few days in an area I knew well, because it transitioned from the highway to a residential area in like, no time, and the RCMP had set up a speed trap before the new speed sign. It’s not clear it’s residential because it’s a forest on one side with a huge hill between the road and the houses on the other. He went to court to ask for a sign to be put up closer to the highway or the speed trap to be moved up the road. They didn’t do either.
We have no idea why the sign was the way it was. They gave us no background. So I’m biased against the sign changer until given a good argument as to why it was acceptable.
I’m biased because I’ve worked for the government.
Which government? Makes a big difference since some other better than others.
I’m not saying OOP definitely had no legitimate reason to change the sign, but without knowing, we can’t assume they did either.
The fact they made no mention of it, leads me to suspect it was mostly for their personal convenience.
Also, government = inefficient is some neo-lib propaganda I can’t tolerate. Any organisation can be inefficient (so, so, so many examples of this in the private sector), and governments can and must be set up to be well-run. The alternative is the privatised neo-lib hellscape we (countries in general) continue to not fix.
Uh… all I said was that I worked for the government. You’re just making up your own little world over there, aren’t you? This argument is moot since I can’t anticipate everything you’re gonna think up in imagination land. Kinda hard to argue against things no one said.
They used lib pejoratively, they already live in their head.
From your username I can tell you’re a person of facts.
The lib thing is such a weird lemmy meme. Like tankies, they’re responsible for everything wrong in the feed.
governments can and must br set up to be well-run
Fucking lol
How is life like being a lawful good little paladin? I break rules that don’t apply to me. This guy seems to have broken rules that apply to no one.
You’re the guy saying the victim should have complied with the cop that murdered him.
Something like this has happened before.
This, specifically, did not happen.
How can you tell?
I can’t be certain, but the level of detail just feels off. He specifies the number of bolts, but glosses over setting up an alias?
Having read the version of this story that’s true, there’s also a lot more to it than just “buying a sign from the supplier”.
The way this is written is how I’d write it for a creative writing class. Possible I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.
My grandparents have a similar story (https://lemmy.world/post/40811218/21244723)
Peaceful activism doesn’t exist. This guy 😀
That happened
This is a lie.
It’s not that implausible; Richard Ankrom managed something similar (on an interstate no less).
I know it’s not implausible, but the fabrication about contacting the company that had the contract to make the signs blew it all apart, the fonts are heavily controlled and copyrighted and they would lose the city contract if they got caught, no sign printing company is going to go out of business to make six bucks off some random dude.
Looking to bulk order “pedestrian zone” and “cycles only” signs some time soon 👀
I have on numerous occasions considered ordering bike route signage to place up on bike safe routes. The city has official signs for it but puts basically none up. If I could just order a lot more to put up it could encourage more folks to join.
I’m French, so we have the standard European signs, which should be easy enough to order 👀
You don’t have bike routes in France?
France, while still seeing progress, is heavily car-focused. You’ll see car streets in cities that can barely fit an Aygo. I only know as a tourist, though, so it might be better in areas I haven’t visited.
We do have them, but not enough of them 😈
Huh, that’s a bit surprising to me. I moved from a small non-highway connected town last year, and there was a pedestrian and bike path the entire 32 kilometre way from that town to the bigger nearby city.
Wonder how many bike that distance. Honestly must be a really nice path to bike in the summer.
I’d say the problem is more bad bike paths than no bike paths.
Nowhere near as bad as in the US, but many places still have bike paths that just suddenly end, painted bike «gutters» on busy streets…
Overall it’s pretty good, but quite inconsistent.
I spent a weekend just filling all the potholes on my road. It wasn’t that expensive and it didn’t take long either. Turns out you can just do what you want
Thanks, Ron.
Diabolical
Did you know you can just rent a line painting tool and buy a high vis vest and hard hat?
You can just get all the things you need to make a bike lane.
Nobody will question you.
Be the change.
Unfortunately people just park on bike lanes, so there’s no good damn point.
That means the road is too small and they are too close to the curb?
Well yeah because the road wasn’t designed for a cycle line.
They should just build a second driveway damn assholes?
Just don’t get caught.
Hi-vis vest, hardhat, and a clipboard(optional but stylish). You can do practically anything.
And if you have a ladder employees will literally hold the door open for you
