VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) – Lithuania this week launched a novel program to deal with a shortage of traffic police: It’s cut new ones out of cardboard and propped them up on the side of streets to scare motorists into slowing down. About 300 of the cardboard cops have been placed at road crossings near 90 schools in Vilnius, the capital of this former Soviet Baltic republic, a spokeswoman for the municipality, Rasa Razgaitis, said Tuesday. She said the program coincides with the start of school in the nation of 3.5 million people. The life-sized replicas, painted turquoise green of actual Lithuanian police uniforms, are expected to stay in service for several months. Nearby Denmark tried something similar in the 1980s. But the program ran into trouble when many of the replicas of police sitting on motorcycles were stolen, apparently for souvenirs.
Novel! Hell, Panama’s been using those for years. There’s a funky-looking life-size cardboard “Transito” cop on a motorcycle that I’ve often seen posted on the highway a couple hundred miles west of Panama City.
I’ve always been so tempted to steal it for my living room, and since there’s often ten minutes between cars on that stretch it wouldn’t be hard. What’s held me back is the thought of what would happen if a cop caught me with it in the back of my jeep.
These are not cardboard cops. These are Corrugated Cops. “Cardboard” is a low quality solid fiber sheet, like the one on the back of a steno note pad. Corrugated is the bonded combination of at least three sheets of containerboard, (two liners and one corrugated medium), or five sheets of containerboard (three liners, two corrugated mediums), or sometimes even more. Look at the nearest box in your computer area. If it hefted any kind of weight, it prolly has the squiggly corrugated medium sandwiched between liners. Structurally strong and lightweight.
Kappa has Corrugated plants all over Europe, they are a supplier of packaging to my company’s European operations, and I am the company Packaging Manager. Please, in the name of Cecil, remember Corrugated Boxes, not Cardboard Boxes, and Corrugated Cops, not Cardboard Cops.
I’ve seen a few of those guys in Japan, as well. While riding to class with a student, she commented, “be careful if you drive through this intersection, there’s always a police car waiting here.” As we drove by, I looked over and saw that the car was a stripped-out junker with a flashing light on top and a uniformed mannequin sitting in the front seat. The student wouldn’t believe me until we had driven back for another look.
Well, user-friendly if you don’t mind papercuts from their corrugated pimps.
The MPs at Aberdeen Proving Grounds was putting inflatable dummies in spare patrol units, dressed as MPs, in the late 70s / Early 80s. Yup, you guessed it… Inflate-a-Dates in uniform!
NOT an Urban Legend: I used to deliver pizza to that base, and I saw several myself.
