Wow! Really good idea, at least for a place with a lot of one-time traffic. I’m guessing if it was on a road you travel every day it wouldn’t fool you too many times
I fear that the cleverness might itself be an illusion. It looks like the 3-d effect doesn’t really kick in until you’re close enough to the crosswalk that a speeder wouldn’t have time to slow down.
Hmmm…I’m actually at my mother’s assisted living facility doing her laundry. <looks around> Is there a camera in here?
I usually come on Saturday, but today they’re having the annual Dog Halloween Costume Contest, and it is a [del]hoot[/del] woof. If I get some good pics, ill post them.
Is that a one way street? The effect is only maintained from one direction. From the other direction it seem less clear than a standard crosswalk that it’s meant to be a crosswalk.
I’ve seen a picture of a crosswalk with a tromp l’eye painting of a child in walking across it, meant to accomplish the same thing. At the right angle of approach it was quite striking.
Tangentially, I remember from the book Traffic that localities have used child-associated physical objects placed near intersections to slow traffic (eg tricycles).
(Even more tangentially, they just put a tiny roundabout on the intersection near my house, and I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how the traffic engineers could sign the damn thing better. I’m coming to the conclusion that speed bumps on the approach would be the best — people are taking the damn thing too fast. But maybe creative street painting would work…)
PS: I guess it’s trompe l’oeil, and googling “trompe l’oeil crosswalk” gets some interesting image results.