You know how I said that I was done with road signs. I am not done with road signs. You need to allow me one more story about road signs. In the 60’s in Wichita and Sedgwick County someone decided that it might be a good idea to erect signs that said Think X on them. The purpose of these signs was to act as a deterrent to cause drivers to think about the dangers on the road. These signs went up whenever there was a fatality. What ended up happening was that at certain intersections there were quite a few of these signs. I guess no one thought that by putting these signs up they might pose a safety hazard. Honestly, I remember some intersections where your view was really obstructed by these signs. Unfortunately, that meant that a fairly large number of people had lost their lives in those places. It did one thing… it showed how dangerous some intersections were. Eventually the powers that be realized that the policy that had been put in place was actually becoming a road hazard. So almost as quickly as they started putting these signs up, they were taken down never to show up again. I don’t know what this program cost or how many lives were saved by warning people about the dangers of driving unsafely. At the end of the day these deaths occurred by accident. Maybe they did throw caution to the wind and maybe all these people would have died anyway. It is not for me to say. I simply wanted to share this little piece of Wichita history.
Someone thought this was a good idea. The problem with it was that no one took into account the consequences of erecting these signs. It seems like they should have checked history to see how many people died at different intersections in the past. Maybe if, say in a 5-year period several hundred people died at a certain intersection, it might have given them some idea of the potential magnitude of what they were getting into. Think about it… this program was destined to go away when you consider how many people actually die in automobile accidents.
Now I am really done with road signs.
