As per title. I came across this picture http://xaxor.com/funny-pics/40381-Funny--DIY-dealing-with-potholes.html which suggests a fun way of dealing with potholes is to paint around them to make them stand out, and be pretty. It goes on to make the dubious claim that the next day, the potholes had all been repaired and the paint removed.
What I want to know is; if you were to put paint all over the road like that, could the city fine you for cleaning it up? Prosecute you for vandalism? Is it different from doing it to a building somehow?
Thanks in advance.
If you don’t own the street, and you don’t have the owner’s permission, then it can most certainly be considered vandalism. Now, if your art is pretty enough, they might decide after the fact that they don’t mind, but that’s a separate issue.
Chronos is correct. But in this case graffiti actually does some good.
when people get to know the paint is to warn of a hole then you might have people avoiding an exhole and cause an accident. having a road crew fix the hole and remove the painted warning takes time and money better spent fixing holes.
If a driver can’t safely negotiate a painted pot hole, then they don’t deserve to drive.
Or you could just call the city and tell them about the pothole, especially if they’re so very responsive that they’ll notice and fix a pothole within a day of someone just painting around it.
That series of pictures implies (but doesn’t actually say that I noticed) that people might have been complaining of potholes for a long time, then got frustrated with city maintenance inaction, then painted those holes like that as a means of public protest to call attention to the problem – with salubrious results. If that is so, and if the city were to prosecute them for vandalism and try to bill them for paint removal, and if the “vandals” had records or newspaper articles or whatever to document their case,
THEN what do you suppose the outcome would be?
Case dropped? Thrown out by judge? Laughed out of the jury room by the jurors? Big bad press in the local papers?
What the… those aren’t potholes. Try driving in the Twin Cities during the two weeks of Spring between Winter and Road Repair.
Well, yes and no… Looking at some of those pictures, I thought they could constitute a road hazard, by being excessively distracting. Drivers already have an awful lot of things they have to pay close attention to: additional distractions are, at very least, not helpful.
On the other hand, I can certainly see the value to a simple outline of the pothole in white paint. That could help prevent a driver from hitting it at an unsafe speed.
So: outlines, yes, but ornate artistry, no.