Guerrilla artists in Wright County, Minnesota, have painted a
huge Pac-Man on Highway 55, as well as a series of seven-foot dots for it to gobble up. The hand-painted character (which is about a month old, but has been touched up several times) comes with accompanying signs--and a message:
The 7-foot dots are 225 feet apart, the distance needed at the 55-mile-an-hour speed limit, to stop in three seconds without rear-ending the vehicle ahead. Accompanying signs tell drivers to keep two dots apart in the stretch, traveled by an average of 16,000 vehicles a day.
Project traffic data collected on three July weekdays by the state Office of Traffic Safety showed that the dots had slowed drivers by almost a third of a second, to 2.6 seconds between vehicles monitored halfway through the two-mile section of dots.
And the space between vehicles increased by nearly 23 feet compared with gap data collected before the dots were added in June. Average speeds at the dots midpoint decreased about a mile per hour to 58.6 and remained about that speed a mile after the dots ended.
Earlier: Walker Art Center groundskeeper plays Pac-Man.
After four inspiring days at the Museums & the Web conference (and a lone blog post for it, on Brewster Kahle's opening talk), I took a few extra days to kick around. It's my first trip to the city, so I'm enjoying everything: the amazing architecture, the prehistoric plants we don't see the likes of in Minneapolis, the great food, and art seemingly everywhere. A highlight was Clarion Alley, which connects Mission and Valencia in the Mission District. For the past 15 years, the alley has been repainted with murals by neighborhood artists. A few favorites...
