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Marie
08-06-2007, 09:53 PM
A family in West Salem, Ohio, is using life-sized cardboard children placed near oncoming traffic to slow speeders in their neighborhood.

Mike Wood and his wife said their homemade cutout children make them feel uneasy at times because they look so real but said they force motorists to slow down.

"First when (motorists) saw them, it scared them that the kids were so close to the road," Woods said. "And they thought why are they letting their kids play next to the road like that?"

The Woods family house is on the fringe of town so many drivers have a tough time slowing down to 35 mph.

Some motorists have stopped after realizing the children were not real.

"A man stopped here a couple of weeks ago and bought one because traffic is going by his house so fast," Wood said. "It had such an effect on him, he wanted to put one in his front yard to slow the traffic down going past his house."

Wood said his initial idea to create the cardboard children was not to slow down speeders but to start selling the posters to their grandparents.

Wood said he is now getting calls from police departments and neighborhood associations across the country.

He is selling the cardboard kids for $60 each.


http://www.local6.com/spotlight/13775524/detail.html

IBMMuseum
08-06-2007, 10:52 PM
...Wood said he is now getting calls from police departments and neighborhood associations across the country...

There are communities that have also done "cardboard cops" (will ICE/BPE do that next?). A small village here put its unmanned squad car in place with a dummy (ok, a manequin) to slow speeders. My friend was upset when the guy didn't wave back (yes, I'm perfectly serious).

Along the note of going slow for enforcement, we went through the BPE checkpoint twice this weekend, the first time waved through, the second the BP agent just asked for confirmation that we did have visas (he actually said "permits"). There was some humorous things I could have said if prodded, for one Saturday was going to meet family (my side, from Iowa) and Sunday was with friends at their swimming pool (we went through the checkpoint still in swimming gear), both in Las Cruces, New Mexico (one hour north of CDJ). Last weekend we went camping, and swam in a river within the United States.

If stopped on Sunday I was thinking of commenting that we were visiting family, but actually "swam the river" the weekend before... :bleh:

egonzalez1975
08-07-2007, 08:09 AM
Whatever it takes to slow people down. . . I say more power to them.