How low can you go? For some people — like the person or persons who stole the lighted sign erected daily on Nichol Road to warn drivers how fast they are going through a school zone — there seems to be no limit.
Stealing the two-foot-by-three-foot electric sign may have seemed like a lark — I’m willing to bet that a couple of knuckleheads have set it up in their living room — and something to chuckle over while they’re getting stoned but they are putting young children at risk.
The sign contains a radar gun that clocks approaching drivers and tells them how fast they are moving.
People intent on getting to RMR first thing in the morning regularly speed through the school zone. That’s why the electric sign was lent to the Arrow Heights Elementary School Parents Advisory Committee in the first place.
Parents in the area have long had concerns about their children’s safety along Nichol Road between Airport Way and Park Avenue. Many already drive their youngsters to school even if it’s only a few blocks rather than let them risk walking. This theft will likely induce even more parents to drive their children.
“I put it up in the morning and take it down in the evening,” Tracey Vopni, chairwoman of the AHE PAC, said Tuesday. “We know it was there at 5 and at 6 but when I drove to pick it up at about 10 to seven it was gone. The sign was chained and locked to the existing 30 km speed sign.”
She said there were footprints but no indication that the chain had been cut. She believes the jerks who stole it lifted it over top of the speed sign.
It could cost about $3,000 to replace the sign.
RCMP Staff Sgt. Jacquie Olsen said the Mounties are “willing to ask no questions” if the sign is returned.
“In fact, if they want, there’s an old couch out behind the detachment office they can have in exchange for the sign,” she said.
