The painting, like the one above, is being trialed by authorities in a West Vancouver school zone starting yesterday and will be removed after a week of evaluation. From a distance it appears as more or less a smudge, but at a certain distance the stretched image becomes coherent to the driver and appears to rise from the pavement in 3D. The faster the car is traveling, the faster the image pops into view. A nearby sign bears a motherly admonition: “You’re probably not expecting kids to run into the road.”
It seems like there’s room for epic backfire here, something that reads in the Vancouver Sun like “Driver Runs Down 11 Schoolchildren on Sidewalk After Swerving to Miss Optical Illusion.” But it is an interesting way to trick drivers into thinking about the ramifications of their driving habits. Right after they pull their hearts out of their throats.
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Good one.
If this was used widely, the brain will start ignoring ‘the reflex’ to break when a human shape is directly in front of the car. Rather than breaking, the brain will learn to ignore the human shape. This is bad because when that shape is no longer a painted figure on the road but a real person, you do not want your subconscious ignoring the real person for even a second.
This whole exercise screams stupidity with potentially lethal but unintended consequences.