Around the nation
Holiday road signs alert — and charm — drivers.
The state Department of Transportation has our attention.
This holiday season, Reddit users and drivers give DelDOT a tip of the hat for the message boards on state highways noting, among other holiday tips, that “SANTA IS WATCHING. DRIVE SOBER. DRIVE SAFE.”
Another favorite is “ONLY REINDEER CAN FLY. WATCH YOUR SPEED.”
That message came directly from the top.
DelDOT Secretary Jennifer Cohan suggested it at a meeting in December, according to DelDOT Chief Traffic Engineer Mark Luszcz.
“We put [the lighter] messages up when there isn’t a more critical message that needs to be shown,” he said. “Those might include messages about weather, construction or crashes.”
An interactive map showing what messages are posted where can be found at deldot.gov/map.
DelDOT has used the message boards the past few years, Luszcz said. What is new are the general safety messages disguised as witticisms to grab drivers’ attention.
“We’ve gotten good feedback that people are looking at them and talking about them and letting us know the messages are being read,” he said. “We have had a couple of complaints with people telling us we shouldn’t try to be clever, but those are few and far between.”
No Madison Avenue marketing firm has been hired.
“It’s mostly our staff brainstorming ideas and then sending the messages on for approval,” he said. “We’re just trying to be a little bit more creative to get somebody’s attention.”
Though some of the humorous messages have come from Cohan and her staff, more traditional safety messages bringing attention to fatalities and crashes have come from a relationship with the state Office of Highway Safety and the State Police, Luszcz said.
One Reddit user started a conversation about the messages by posting the question “Anyone notice the comical DelDOT signs around Dover/Camden?” Others joined the conversation. “Yes, it’s on 95 just north of Christiana Mall! They come up with some good ones,” one person wrote. Another comment was “I did a triple take on this one the first time, too.”
One message that has garnered a lot of attention has been geared toward distracted driving: “DON’T TEXT AND DRIVE. GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR APPS.”