No body can miss this message! New York City to scare speeders into slowing down... by flashing images of skeletons
Last updated at 11:05 AM on 17th May 2011
It's certainly getting down to the bones of the matter.
New York City is set to scare its speeders in to slowing down by flashing images of skeletons by the side of the road.
The LED warning signs, which will be positioned by crosswalks, will be accompanied by the words 'Slow Down'.
They will be set up as speed boards, with Doppler radar to detect the speed of oncoming traffic, the Department of Transportation has announced.
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Scaring you in to safety: New York City's Department of Transportation is launching an ad campaign to force drivers to slow down
Drivers will see the familiar walking figure indicating a crosswalk and the 30mph speed limit.
But if the Doppler detects that they are going any faster, the crosswalk figure will change to a flashing pixellated skeleton.
The city released a statement citing research that claims a pedestrian hit by a car at 30mph has an 80 per cent chance of living.
If they are hit at 40mph, however, they have just a 30 per cent chance of living.
The skeletons, therefore, are part of the Department of Transportation's 'That's why it's 30' ad campaign.
A second component is the 'slow speed zones' being introduced in to city - starting in Claremont in the Bronx.
The speeding problem: Cars, taxis and trucks sit in traffic in midtown Manhattan (file photo). Often New York is plagued by gridlock - but in the outer boroughs speeders are being warned to slow down by signs flashing images of skeletons
In those areas the speed limit is being dropped to 20mph. The Department claims that reflects the need for even slower traffic in certain sections of the city where the number of schools and residences is higher.
Claremont will be the test, with the Department planning on rolling more slow speed zones out among the five boroughs.
New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said there was 'no clearer example of a threat to our safety than speeding'.
'Safety is one of those things that's hard to define, yet it's something that's impossible to live without,' she observed.
New York mayor Michael Bloomber said that since 2004 'there have been fewer traffic fatalities each year on our streets than any time since 1910, which was the first year these kinds of statistics were kept'.
The city claimed in a press release that its traffic fatality rate is less than one third the national rate, though research has not yet examined the role that New York's notorious gridlock traffic may play in those numbers.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1387771/NYC-scare-speeders-slowing-flashing-images-skeletons.html#ixzz1McM1NQm9
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