“Today, West Vancouver officials will roll out a new way to keep drivers alert and slow them down: a little girl speed bump. A trompe-l’œil, the apparently 3D girl located near the École Pauline Johnson Elementary School is actually a 2D pavement painting, similar to the one shown here.”
“In what sounds like a terrifying experience, the girl’s elongated form appears to rise from the ground as cars approach, reaching 3D realism at around 100 feet, and then returning to 2D distortion once cars pass that ideal viewing distance. 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.
The illusion is part of a $15,000 safety program that will run this week, led by the BCAA Traffic Safety Foundation and the public awareness group Preventable.ca. As drivers approach, the police will monitor the fake girl’s effects. Despite fears that drivers may stop suddenly or swerve into actual 3D children, David Duane of the BCAA Traffic Safety Foundation told CTV news that the bump was meant to bring attention to driver-caused pedestrian injuries, and that the fake girl should not cause accidents: “It’s a static image. If a driver can’t respond to this appropriately, that person shouldn’t be driving….” ”
Read more at Discover Magazine (Thanks Christopher C)
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Yay, let’s habituate drivers to driving over children.
Very nice concept but isn’t part of the danger here that drivers will get used to it and perhaps one day confuse a real girl for one of these? Maybe that’s far fetched, I don’t know.
I don’t think this is a good idea. It will create people who will assume over time that a real person is not real. Imagine the defence in court ” your honour i beleived the girl was a road painting”
That’s a good idea. It would certainly get me to slow down if I was too see that
Surely that’ll just get people used to running over small children? Dinosaurs would be a much better idea. Dinosaurs are always a much better idea.
Isn’t there a danger of becoming used to running over visions of people in the middle of the road?
I can see the insurance form: “I thought it was an optical illusion!”
How long will it take for drivers to become habituated to these images? My worry is that one day someone will run over a real child, thinking he/she is an optical illusion.
The Law of Unintended Consequences sees small girls chasing after pink balls all over Vancouver mown down (slowly) by responsible drivers who thought the girls were anamorphic speed bumps.
Bit of strange one this. I can see what they are trying to achieve but two things come to mind
1 - If you are a driver who is perhaps a little nervous or has even crashed before, are you not going to start swerving all over the place to avoid this. Thus endangering real people’s lives?
2 – if this image became a common occurance, I could imagine a complacency setting in and when the real girl runs out.. like a bit who cried wolf situation
Great concept but so many things wrong with the principal. The Dragons wouldn’t have it and neither will I – I’m out.
Good idea in concept. But whether it would actually work for the purpose it’s designed for is another matter.
LC x
A better illusion would be a bollard, or pair of bollards.
(Or a dinosaur… like that idea)
The person said “It’s a static image. If a driver can’t respond to this appropriately, that person shouldn’t be driving….”
When you are driving at speed and taking in all the info around you (signs, markings, drivers, pedestrians) you are going to get only a couple of seconds to see this image and react. You may quite possibly think it is a real girl, or real enough to worry you.
If you are speeding, then you may swerve.
If you become habituated to the image of a girl in the road, you may (in a split second) mistake a real girl for the illusion.
It is not worth the potential danger – just change the image and keep the idea.
Am I the only one that’s thinking I would probably speed up once I noticed it was Pavement Patty?
Aesop anyone?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf
There’s a little girl! Oh no, there isn’t.
There’s another little girl! Oh no, there isn’t.
There’s another little girl! Oh no, there… Oh $h1t there is!!!!!
Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed. The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth.
Nobody mentioned the fact that before drivers learn to ignore these paintings they will be completely fixated on them as they approach, possibly missing any surrounding hazards
There is a video here of it : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r26AwT7PTM
for a secound you think its real, but as you get closer, it stretches.. like the chalk on pavement things..
even though its a good idea in some respects, because of the whole some people may break suddenly or swirve in the road, causing more of an accident, i think they are trying too hard with out the box methods, thats its going to backfire.
One of thee best artists i studied at college was a guy called Juilian Beever, he does those types of pavement drawings where they are drawn in a distorted way and at a certain angle the picture looks 3D and realistic, its called Anamorphic Illusions
http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm
Some fantastic stuff on his website
R
x
This would make me slam on my breaks, possibly causing the car behind me to crash into me. And after I’d gotten used to Pavement Patty’s in their various forms, I’d probably run over a real child. What a waste of $15000!
There was a similar thing earlier in the year, but the picture on the road was a 3d image of a pot hole, so therefore drivers slowed down so they didn’t damage their vehicle, much more effective, without the shock factor! X
I just had an image of a driver running over a child because they thought them to be an “optical illusion”.
I was going to mention the ‘cry wolf’ fable, but I see Rob got there first. Some ideas can be so incredibly stupid that if it hadn’t been mentioned, I would have sworn it came from the US.
What if the person behind the wheel hates kids? They’ll just put their foot down harder.
Otherwise, they’re just creepy.
Robert the blogger for Preventable.ca here. Thanks for all the attention, comments, and feedback on this campaign so far. For clarification on how the road installation works, please checkout our my post – http://ht.ly/2BYTv
Even a pothole can cause people to swerve, which can create an extra hazard in slippery conditions.
Ok, so a fake child on the road might cause some jittery drivers to swerve and crash (or cause others to crash) and/or cause inattentive drivers to emergency brake.
What I find more disturbing is that even attentive drivers are likely to get a heightened pulse and feeling of fear or unease, and people feeling that way are more dangerous in traffic. That’s something we actively try to discourage in all safety critical areas. Nervous or startled people make mistakes AFTER they’ve been startled.