Back in 2011, DIYDPW #4 highlighted an unauthorized sign installed at an egregious Pittsburgh intersection (above). That sign was intended to alert drivers that traffic patterns had been changed, even if they hadn’t been changed in any particularly logical way. Before the sign appeared, the intersection was regularly littered with the colored plastic shards of headlights, tail lights, and turn signals from the near-daily fender-benders that result when everyone thinks the other driver is supposed to be the one to wait. No data is available on whether this extralegal sign actually reduced accidents, but informal observation concluded that less broken car detritus littered the intersection as a general result.

This past month, the actual Pittsburgh Department of Public Works replaced the sign with an up-to-municipal-code, higher-visibility version of the same message:

Reminds me of when someone painted crosswalks at an intersection in Pittsburgh’s Polish Hill neighborhood back in 2012, and the city was then obliged to come back and paint them to spec…