A Spanish road signage company is being investigated by police after using a highly realistic cut-out to represent a patrol car in an attempt to slow down traffic.
Video footage emerged on social media last week showing drivers reducing their speed as they passed the 3D hoarding – complete with blue flashing lights – parked in a lane that was closed due to road improvement work.
The footage alerted Guardia Civil officers from Albacete, southeastern Spain, to what they believe is an unauthorised use of their image.
“That car is not official. The Guardia Civil does not have cardboard cars,” the Guardia Civil said after putting an end to the experiment.
Is the Guardia Civil as effective ass cardboard cars?
I do find the Guardia remarkably civil. Unlike their UK colleagues who bring abrasiveness to the level of an art form.
As for cardboard cars, don’t you think that’s quite clever? See what you thunk is the filth ahead, you’ll likely ease off on the juice. Has to be a helluvalot cheaper than lining the roads with cameras. OK, if you regularly use the road, you’ll know it’s a fake. But how’s that differ from cameras? Most people just slow when they know there’s a camera.
So I wonder why the Guardia Civil doesn’t copy the idea? Seems like a good way to slow traffic without any side effects.
Here in Japan I’ve seen a few cardboard silhouette police cars. Some are obviously not real but others are highly realistic and I assume the police either put them up or allowed the local council or whatever to do so
They’ve had a cardboard cut out of a plod in my local Morrisons for years. Has slashed the shoplifting rate dramatically i’m sure.
Cardboard policing is the future.
All the real bluebottles will be busy on Black History training courses because they are obviously steeped in white history but cardboard ones have no such discernible bias. Another advantage is that cardboard flatties will be visible in the ‘community’ whereas the flesh and blood variety prefer investigating hate crimes in comfy offices.
The downside, of course, is that you can’t ask cardboard peeler what the time is or for directions but this could easily be overcome by putting a “You Are Here” map on the reverse with a solar powered digital watch.
TMB At least cardboard plods can’t steal watches from passed-out drunks, which is the burden of the music hall song: “Every member of the force has a watch and chain of course, If you want to know the time, ask a policeman.”
@TMB
I think for the UK you’d need to add a synthesised voice chip to make sarky comments for complete
verisimilitude. Optional for other countries.
They’ve had a cardboard cut out of a plod in my local Morrisons for years.
Same at my Morrisons. It still startles the crap out of me every time I walk in. LOL
In Austria we had cut outs of rozzers holding radar guns or those ping pong bats they use to stop vehicles.
The car is a neat idea.
Here in Scotland we’ll need cardboard plod invited to dinner parties and family meals to make sure we don’t say anything hatey.
“Investigating hate crimes in comfy offices”
Or (as they now prefer) Working From Home.
As for cardboard cutouts – someone round here put up a fairly realistic speed camera in his garden. If memory serves me correctly, he was told to take it down!
I think I may have had a cardboard doctor for the past couple of years. How can I find out?
There’s been reseach in the past that showed a life-sized cardboard policeman (or actually, didn’t need to be a policeman but a civvy didn’t have as much effect) “watching” an area did have a significant effect on the crime rate. Using a cardboard car is merely an extension of that – as others have said, you see a “police car” up ahead so you tend to be more careful about speed, and by the time you realise it is a cardboard one then the effect (traffic calming) has already happened. Similar thing can happen with large vans in certain colours which from a distance might possibly be a scamera van.
But to work well, they need to move about. You soon learn if there’s a cardboard “something” in the same place week after week. But if they appear in different places at different times then it’s going to be fairly effective.
T’fuzz round here often leave a real, empty cop car parked.
Seems fairly standard practice…
@Sam Vara: Play Pin the Tail on the Donkey? Or something similar… be creative… 😉
“Is the Guardia Civil as effective ass cardboard cars?”
No. That is why they had to put an end to it – people might notice how much better the cardboard cutout works.
“T’fuzz round here often leave a real, empty cop car parked”
Are you sure? Maybe they’ve been stolen, and then dumped…