Cardboard Cutouts of Kids Slow Traffic Down

Trevor is spot on. Also, what about the inattentive/wasted driver who spots the kid at the last minute and then overreacts, causing an accident that kills a carload of reaal kids. Bloody moron… At least his intentions are in ehe right place I guess. We have a lot of retards around here who think their yards look great with realistic deer sculptures near the road.

Seriously, if I lived near that idiot with the cardboard kids, I would lean on the horn every time I passed his house. Day or night (I even might make a special trip when I’m fighting insomnia) he’d hear a very loud application of my very loud horn. The neighbors would kill him if his wife didn’t first.

I don’t see the problem here. If you live on a street where people constantly speed, and the city won’t do anything about it, then you should by all means be able to do something like this. It almost feels like those of you that are criticizing are actually defending complacent/bad drivers. I tell you what I would do, is animate these little guys via a remote, and if I see some butthead barreling down my street make the thing jump. That’d ruin some upholstery.

“The Dad Who Cried Boy” is a poetic modern twist on “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” Of course it is a perfect solution because everybody knows that lying to people always works out in the end!

I startle easily. If I saw one of those at the last minute, I might have an accident. I’m not a “dopey driver”. I just have ultra-sensitive reflexes.

As others have said, it’s also a form of “crying wolf”. For example, my neighbours’ kids might be being abducted because they’re screaming their heads off in the yard. But they do that all the time, so nobody pays any attention anymore. The same thing could easily happen with these signs.

I think it’s a great, inventive idea. I don’t think it would be useful to standardize them for the great reasons listed above by other commenters (misuse, getting used to it) but frankly, the blame for an accident still wouldn’t be on the cutout guys’ shoulders. We don’t know what this guy’s street looks like, maybe you can see the cutout for a while coming if you’re paying attention. If the driver swerved out of the way for a still cutout that’s on the property (it’s not in the street, as you can see in the picture), it’s still the driver’s fault for speeding or not paying attention. I don’t see why you’d want to take it out on the homeowner for putting a still object on his property in order to quell an established problem, instead of the reckless driver who actually hit your car. I think it would be effective even if it were a little further from the street. Cops already do this (cutouts of cop cars make people hit the brakes really fast, and the cops can do something a little more intense than sit in a speed trap and wait to catch people).