In 2001, a friend and I had gotten so tired of a massive pot hole in Seattle that we went and got some vests and bags of asphalt and fixed it ourselves. We didn't live near it, but hung out down there almost daily and hated driving over it. People in the neighborhood asked if we were from the city, and we said no. People clapped, and one brought us iced tea. A city bus came by as we were finishing and was so happy he drove over it, backed up, and drove over it several times to pack it in. I drove by it earlier today for work, and our patch still holds.
Your's still holds. Now the cities, on the other hand. City "repairs" last months, if that. In Chicago once they made a big deal after filling in potholes on Lake Shore Drive from the prior TWO winters. The "repairs" lasted less than two months.
It had been like that for a long time. The had to have been hundreds of accidents. Fortunately, the speeds are seldom above 20mph so most were just fender benders.
Public servant can't give him credits cause that would motivate random people to do random things to "better the community". Some of those random things they do might actually be harmful despite good intention. The reason Richard got away with it was because he did it better than any official contractors could and the quality of his work is well documented.
So is what Gary Webb did #2? Gary Webb exposed the CIA for creating the formula to turn cocaine into crack cocaine and provided the drugs in LA so they could use the money independent from a congressional budget and enslave an entire demographic and destroy lives and their families. The CIA got a slap on the wrist and Gary was murdered.
I HATED that transition. People would suddenly stop in the #2 lane so they could cut into it at the last moment, causing a lot of rear end collisions. That man in a hero.
If you were smart, during traffic, you'd stay out of the left hand lanes, because they were always going slower than the 110 north lanes, and then dart in at the last second. Good times!
Crashes. Most collisions can be prevented, mostly through drivers paying attention, therefore NOT "accidents." Take responsibility for yourselves and your 2000lb death machine.
I was one of the unfortunate suckers that was driving from San Diego with passengers in my 20 passenger Excursion limo and missed that stupid exit and was cussing the city out for no proper warning. Thank you for fixing it!
I never knew this and I ACTUALLY SAW THAT EXACT SIGN for years in Downtown L.A. since my grandmother's house was near USC/MLK Jr Blvd. Never thought anything "out of the ordinary" about it because, like you said, it was so convincing. Thanks for sharing this.
This kind of stuff reminds me of the channels showing people cleaning storm drains to alleviate street flooding. It may seem small, but it really does make a huge difference. Props to people that do things like that.
@@jimba6486 "I think you all know that I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help." -Ronald Reagan
Actually, the story about it being installed is probably what delayed the replacement. There'd be more than enough places wanting the sign (or part of it, those things are deceptively huge) as part of their museum.
8:00 THIS is how our officials should be. She praised the guy then basically said "I love it, but this is the real world and we just can't allow anybody to randomly change our signs so we'll have to replace it with an official one and we hope others don't make this a trend". No grandstanding, no being an idiot. She's one of the good ones.
The only thing she did well was waving the flag after someone else completed a job that she was supposed and paid to do. A "good one" would have admitted the failure to put up a sign in the first place. And the fact that it took 8 years to replace that hand-made sign with an "official version" speaks volumes about how "efficient" her department is at doing their work.
@@BondiAV She can't just wave her hand at have it dealt with. There's paperwork that needs to be signed and roads that need to be closed. It was a small problem in a city that is fucking massive and the would have other fish to fry. Is it inefficient? Yes but that's how things work. She was perfectly right in saying "yes this guy did a good job but we can't condone it because we have the follow city code and if people get hurt it's a problem." It worked so the city planners put it on the back burner but they did have to take care of it.
@@funnynameforme4091 What "roads that need to be closed"? One man made and installed that sign by himself, in a professional manner, without any traffic disturbance; proving that it can be done quite easily when paper pushers don't make it much more difficult than it needs to be. "if people get hurt it's a problem" but all the accidents that happened because that sign didn't exist were not a problem? Any "massive city" has a massive army of people who are in charge of such work, so that excuse does not hold water either. The saddest part of it is that they also trained you to believe that this is normal... "that's how things work" only when people fail at doing their jobs and don't care.
A perfect example of the adage - easier to apologize afterwards....than ask permission beforehand. Kudos for the initiative, the know-how, and gonads to pull this off.
Signs might be kind of obsolete for the majority of drivers but for truckers they're an absolute necessity. These trucks are over 70 feet long and of course nobody wants to let us over--so we have to be in the lane we need WAY ahead of time, which means we need to know what lane we need way ahead of time. As far as I'm concerned this guy still deserves a trophy and all the free beer he wants.
They're not obsolete. People are just dim and can't be trusted with tools lest they become fully dependent on them. The amount of dangerous driving I see when people almost miss an exit has gone up proportionaly with the adoption of navigation apps. Same with blind spot detection. People in cars with it simply don't check their blind spots anymore. People with backup cameras don't look behind them. Doesn't make a rear window obsolete, no matter what some manufacturers say. We really can't have nice things.
As someone who doesn't know where I'm going, SIGNS ARE EVERYTHING. Sure google maps exists, but looking down isn't always possible or viable. Google tells me my exit verbally, I look up for the sign of that exit, and there we go, I'm off to the correct lane much ahead of time. Especially thanks to exit sign markers that are miles ahead of an exit. Super tactful when riding a motorcycle as well. My headset tells me what road to get on, and everythings good. No wasting battery life with its screen on for hour long rides in the sun at full brightness, or risking having my phone fall off a mount on the freeway.
Speaking as someone who did food delivery full time for years, you really can't exclusively rely on google maps. It's not just big trucks. Especially downtown where all the the big buildings fuck with the gps
I let trucks merge. I guess I empathize with the drivers. I am not a truck driver, but I travel for work. I am on the road way too much!! Thank you to all the truck drivers out there!! Know that you are appreciated!!
Retired long haul driver here, THANK YOU for your sign. If you knew how many of us used that sign to guide us safely along the insane CA freeway system, you would smile. some of us haver avoided accidents due to a private citizen doing the good work of the government.
Seriously, it’s yet another layer of the pile of crap that is the LA area traffic infrastructure, I love when people do something so professionally that no one questions their authority, entire careers are born on initiative like this, people could learn a thing or two from this guy
Here in Australia some years ago a father was concerned about the speed that cars ran past his kid's school at dropoff and pickup times. There were speed limit signs but they weren't effective. He was some sort of engineer so he designed a flashing speed sign that was powered by a solar panel on top and a backup battery. It operated only around morning and afternoon kid times. A few weeks later and it was removed. So he put up another one and wrote about it to the local newspaper. Once he was identified they tried to charge him with something like defacing public property. However, he got the support of people everywhere as his case was elevated through different courts. The end was that the road and traffic department designed similar fittings and erected them at all school crossings in the state. A community win for the lone instigator.
Why does it take one person willing to risk personal injury to do the right thing to get government to do the right thing? It says a lot about how messed up governments are.
Typical Australian bureaucracy! Some idiot who never did a hard day’s work in his or her life and got an ‘important’ job in some local or State government office, getting vasyly overpaid, decides that this guy’s work is not authorised and sets about doing what all bureaucrats do best; making life hard for decent people who actually do productive work. People complain about politicians, but the real enemy is the bureaucrats. Politicians get voted in or out, but Bureaucrats are there forever.
The Australian government and their agencies absolutely hate it when a member of the public has a smarter idea than they do. Instead of adopting the idea, they take it to court to have it defeated because they didn't think of it.
Or they knew something the instigator didn't, that stopped them for now. Maybe the flashing sign was illegal and couldn't be used YET, otherwise there was the risk of court cases (and if someone did crash and claimed to crash because of the distraction of flashing sign, they'd win with the laws as they were) but everyone agreed it was a Good Idea, and had to get it done properly so they could use the sign. Bureaucracy knows one thing the public doesn't - how bad actors can exploit the bureaucracy to do harm. And they HATE that, because they constantly deal with said people looking to exploit the system. If people wouldn't do jerky things to require the bureaucracy to be so bureaucratic, the bureaucracy wouldn't have to be so inertial.
my uncle owned a paint and body shop in an industrial area. Across the street was a cannery. Cannery workers would park right infront of his shop and he could not get his gate open to let cars in or out. One day my uncle paints the curb red infront of his shop for about 15 feet in each direction. Over time he even saw cops writing tickets. One day he sees a crew from the city looking at the curb and he thinks he is busted, nope, the city crew repainted the curb with a new coat of paint.
Someone needs to do this on I-35 southbound through Austin. The highway splits, and the right two lanes turn into an overpass, and the left two turn into an underpass. The problem is, most people intuitively think the overpass is the way to pass through the city without exiting, but in reality, the overpass is designed for drivers to exit downtown and they have to merge back over to the left and it has created a traffic jam for decades at this point. all you have to do is mark the overpass "exit downtown" or something
AAA Magazine says Texas is notorious for 'underposting'. So many times if you are no on the main highway (like 35) there is no sign for the street you are about to cross. You turn down the road and drive a few blocks before you can find out what street name it is. They assume everyone is using digital assistants to tel them when to turn. This of course often makes people stare at the phone instead of out the windshield.
@@robgfmb1814 probably, I-35 is one branch of the so called "Pan-American" highway. so any traffic jams there are compounded and probably ultimately effect Mexico-Canada commerce too.
I agree, they need to indicate which streets are available from the upper deck and which streets are available from the lower deck. I live right next to that split and folks are crazy crossing lanes of traffic, from either direction to get to the other deck.
I moved to LA near this sign in 2000 and I routinely was in the wrong lane because I wasn't familiar with the directions. I did notice when the sign changed and at the time figured it was a routine correction! Bless this man.
I went to LA on holiday in 2000 and remember the cab driver saying "you wouldn't believe the accidents before they installed that sign" "It's just a sign" was my response. Like it didn't change the 1 lane turn off, the actual problem, but w/e it worked!
I read about this years ago. Between the time that Ankrum installed the sign and he leaked out that he installed it, apparently local Caltrans "divisions" thought neighbouring divisions had put the "5 North" addition on to that sign.
Yeah, I noticed that too. Makes me wonder how caltrans would have done it any safer? I mean, he even used the guardrails LOL. Perhaps caltrans would have made it safer by shutting down the freeway to one lane for a week while the workers sat up there and drank their iced frappuccinos LOL 🤣
Yes. How ironic. Worried about safety for one man instead of safety for all those drivers crossing over multiple lanes of heavy traffic to not miss their exit. 🤦🏻♀️
It's an attempt to save face, sure, but they can't go around encouraging people to improve signs themselves… Somebody might do a poor job; if the sign is not attached properly, it could fall down one day, causing an accident.
Is ANY THING, any agency or govt office in California "competent"? 😩😩 California literally seems like the state with the most taxes, that spends the most on govt "projects" & bureaucracy, but still gets the least done and people get the least in return! It just gets worse and worse every week, month and year. There is so much corruption and cronyism in California, God help us all, because that attitude and "way" of doing business is spreading across the country and the world. 😢😢😢
What was the fault here? The transition is 2.5 miles away. And there was already a sign a quarter mile AFTER this sign. This sign was not needed here. And this artist has been milking this stunt for 30+ years.
My building manager put up an incorrect sign that caused me a few years worth of lost mail, angry delivery assholes and losing a day at work having to fix a snafu with my bank from lost mail (complicated), so I went and repainted the sign myself. No problems since. This guy is my new found patron saint! Never underestimate your own ability to fix a problem!
@troybaxter I live by this daily now. Most of the skills I know is quite literally because of the "fine, I'll do it myself" mindset. I'm in the middle of one, having to learn 3D rigging since none of the free models I've found were properly done. Apparently it's one of the things that most people who work in that field hates to do lol
A couple of my neighbors went through this. I kept getting their packages and take them over. One lady said she was gonna put a sign up showing the numbers which she did. I said I thought it was the gravel lane, it dips down and back up. They had it paved. I now only get their packages during bad snow. They both have ring doorbells so I just set it and leave.
Yes, but my recollection was the 5 North was a single lane (not the two lanes it is now and in this vid) and traffic would back up in the fast lane from last minute people that innocently did not move over or those drivers that simply refuse to get in the line and keep that traffic flowing better and being a significant contributor to the problem in the first place.
@@justletters7230 : Yes, that's how I remember it. I think that this video glosses over (or didn't know about) the switch from one lane to two lanes, which explains why they put in a new sign (and why the new sign looks different).
Indeed, but we don't want to encourage that kind of behavior. I remember other videos with people building stairs or fixing roads. Imagine : -someone does a sloppy job. It breaks and leads to injuries/property damage. -after a few years, it breaks (maybe not this particular one, but something similar) and injures someone. -there is an accident involving this, and the insurance refuses to pay since it way not made up to code. -it damages or obstruct access to something else, possibly hidden (underground pipes, for example) (again, maybe not this particular one). The solution is not having random resident try to solve a particular problem themselves. It's finding a way have an easy and definitive way to point to a person in charge for that job, and hold them accountable if said job is not done. The problem, is that the administration is really good at protecting itself : by being complex, it becomes impossible to point to a singular person in charge, therefore making any problem everyone's (and, therefore, no one's) responsbility.
@@ChibiNyanThis guy did not do a sloppy job so encouraging him is kind of the opposite of what you’re whining about. The government would love you though
My father did something more dangerous when he was a kid. At the years 1970 in Brazil under a dictatorship, his street used to food every time when it rained. He made a sing wrote: "Proibido pescar", something like "fishing is forbidden" or "do not fish", and planted the sign at the middle of the flooded street. Mad people from mayor came knocking at neighbor house, where his old uncle lived. My father was concerned because all the family was affiliated with the (kinda) opposition party and sometimes police just cared to protect the regime party. The guys asked to my uncle "who did put that sign?". But our uncle was an old badass and just replied "I DON'T WANNA KNOW who put that sign! instead of asking that, you should just go and FIX THE STREET". Later, mayor build better drainage, and we still live at the same street. Sometimes the street floods again but now it's because weather is considerable worse than it used to be.
@@AfonsoBucco Speaking of Brazil reminds me of the movie Brazil where Robert DeNiro plays a guerilla appliance repairman in a future that is a bureaucratic nightmare where very little gets done :-)
@@unmesh59 "(1985) Brazil" is a great movie. Nothing something very specific about the country itself, but yes it fits in Brazil in far and general perspective. In certain point of view we are the newest power in planet, so it's interesting to see a try to portrait some of our problems in a dystopian future. Another movie about dystopian future is "Rio 2096: A Story of Love and Fury" also called "The Immortal Warrior". This movie talks about many other of our problems.
I drove the 110 North many, many times. I rarely needed to merge onto the 5 North, but I knew to be extra cautious as that ramp. It was not uncommon to see drivers swerve across 3 lanes of traffic as they saw the 5 North sign at the last minute. Thank you, Richard, for doing what the government should have done without your prompting.
I remember when this happened and I travel that route often. When Caltrans changed the sign, I think it was because they were replacing them all with a reflective, brighter tone of green so they could eliminate the lights, which they did. If they were not changing sign types, his work might still be up there.
Yeah, I noticed in the video that the new sign is a brighter shade of green than the old one. Glad that Caltrans didn't remove Ankrom's improvement simply because Caltrans hadn't done it themselves.
Three things: 1. It’s only “the” [insert freeway number,” in Southern California. For those of us up north we just call it the number. 2. I live an L.A. for two year fender commuted daily on the 110 or the 710. Now I live in the Bay Area. We don’t know how to drive? You come make it through the County on the 5 or the 110 or the 710 or the 20 and then you can talk. 3. San Pee-dro? No, it’s San Pey-dro.
Yeah, I’m sure you thought it looked a little “off”, that’s why you never said anything to anyone about it until you learned it was installed by a vandal. 🤣 Give me a freaking break!
@@samueltaylor4989 if you saw the sign when it was initially up, it looked off. weirdly off center and had some odd weather damage probably related to the adhesive used to alter the sign.
Love this! Reminds me of a sign issue on an expressway near where I live (Washington DC suburbs, near Dulles airport). There was a green overhead highway sign which identified an upcoming exit ramp, with a smaller sign attached underneath it, saying, "LAST EXIT BEFORE TOLL". One would normally think that if you took this exit, you would not be paying a toll -- as opposed to continuing forward on the same road. But guess what... when you took this exit, there was a toll booth!! And you could not exit without paying a toll! It turns out that if you looked REALLY closely at that attached sign (which NO ONE can do, travelling at highway speeds) -- there was an unrecognizable symbol (which I'll show here as "}{" ) between the words "BEFORE" and "TOLL". That symbol, which no one would understand (or even see), represented the Dulles Greenway -- which is a toll road directly connected to the same expressway you were already on -- and has a very pricey toll of its own. Who would know that? So in reality, the sign WAS accurate: if you took that exit, it truly was the "LAST EXIT BEFORE THE UPCOMING GREENWAY TOLL". But the sign said "LAST EXIT BEFORE "}{" TOLL". Who would understand that? And that exit ramp had a toll of its own, which you was evident as you rounded the curve of the ramp and were faced with a toll booth! Much too confusing when you are driving at high speeds -- and especially if you don't know the area well. I wrote to the Virginia DOT regarding this misleading signage. Much to my surprise, that confusing sign was removed a few months later. Not nearly as exciting as the story you posted here.... but at least it shows that once in a while, a government organization may actually listen.
Artists are hard to work with in a rigid institutional structure. Still some form of "Thank You" seems appropriate. Now, some years later his ideas seem to have been improved upon with indication on the road surface of which road a vehicle will be on after the next interchange.
Are you from LA? He didn't save countless lives and I've never heard of anyone having a hard time with that exit. It has always had a designated lane for that exit.
I remember hearing about this story a while ago. He did such a great job that he exceeded every written standard that they used for road signs, which says something about the level of detail he put into it. Caltrans should hire this guy to improve their signage because it's awful.
CA is the only state I've driven in where so much signage just appears to be...missing. Sure the DOT elsewhere misses things here and there, but in CA basic info is missing for nearly every exit.
@@jblyon2 It's not so much the signage in California as it is about the lack of direction - especially with anything other than a conventional offramp. Above that, directional arrows seem to be an afterthought at best compared to the East Coast. So many of the Thruways and other highways give you a good idea of where you will go depending on what lane you choose with giant road signs with a simple map of the upcoming interchange on them. Not so much in California or the other two states on the West Coast.
I first commuted through there in 2003, and even with Robert’s improvement, initially I missed the interchange because it’s a hole in the wall and tons of traffic to the right of it. Thank you, Robert!!!
Месяц назад
He probably saved lives and helped avoid crashes, bravo to him!!
YES! The infrastructure would be safer and probably 100 times less expensive if it was privately owned. Coercive govt. is an extremely bad mistake, "The Most Dangerous Superstition".
@@1voluntaryist Can't trust "big gubment" so hand it over to big corporation we can't trust either. Clown take. You realize all those privatized toll roads and railroads we had in the 19th century were such an expensive burdensome nightmare for travelers that we collectively solved that. But ignore all that for your libertarian bogus agenda.
@@1voluntaryist I guarantee you that it would not be 100 times less expensive. If it was privately owned, it would probably be chintzy and someone would charge you money to use it.
@@1voluntaryist No. No it would not. Certain things are beneficial to be privately owned. Public infrastructure is not one of them. This has been proven time and time again. Private companies in these cases will cut corners to save money, not institute safety procedures to save money, and it would be a complete clusterfk. And even then, oftentimes government intervention is needed. Just look at auto manufacturers. The government and insurance companies had to force them to improve and implement many safety features we take for granted in our cars. Another example is pipeline construction and factory waste dumping. The government had to force them to improve because they refused to do it on their own.
"There is a safety issue" - Leaves it up for 8 Years - I guess it wasnt that much of an issue lol Also got to love her expression, she looks like a bad teacher
As a native Angeleno, the 110 is dangerous. It's so narrow, the on and off ramps our way too short, but I must say, when you master it, you feel very impowered. It kinda prepares you for driving in NYC. Now that's crazy!! When you master that, you feel very very impowered.
We live on Taylor St in Vista, CA. They widened the road right up to my front yard and the 35 mph street is now blasted with cars all doing 50! We spent $10,000 putting one of our Australian Shepard dog's hip back together after she got hit by a car. We paid a PEOPLE SURGEON to fix "Checkers" up and she lived to be a ripe old age. Sooooo ... I went to the swap meet and bought a REAL 25 mph speed limit sign and swapped it out for the ignored 35 mph sign. WOW! It changed our lives for the better for a quiet 2 months. Then they took it down. A little school boy was almost killed soon after. They put in speed bumps 10 years later and that finally worked, though it took 34 years to make the road safe.
I remember when Vista was just orange groves and avocado fields with one main street and mostly dirt roads. It sure was nice back then... glad I was born early enough to see it.
and this just proves how much people bury their head in the sand and do not want to deal with anything that's wrong with the planet or say anything about that the injustice of it
I wonder how many lives Ankrum saved with his substantial effort. When there isn't sufficient notice, drivers become confused. That was a great public service.
Moved into a “bad” neighborhood and noticed lots of low tree limbs blocking sight lines and making normal activities look suspicious. Went around and trimmed a bunch of low hanging branches. Changed the whole neighborhood, made it way less “scary” feeling because of better sight lines, and three years later families and dog owners are out every night enjoying a walk or the near by park.
@@user-wg2vw3mz1v The city employee responsible for putting out the order to trim the trees probably doesn't live in that neighbourhood. How are they supposed to know this is needed if nobody calls it in? Most people probably didn't even realise what made it feel scary/unsafe, so they didn't know what to call in for. OP did a good thing, which the city should've done, no doubt about that but OP was pro-active and decided to do it himself. Nothing wrong with that. Doesn't make paying taxes bullshit, as there are still roads, street signs, police, hospitals and a government.
My buddy trimmed a tree branch obscuring the road sign, and german authorities dragged him through the court without conviction. Talk about no good deed unpunished.
This man is a hero! I don't want to think about how many accidents occur in LA due to poor signage. It took EIGHT YEARS after his fix, for CalTrans to do their job. 🤦🏻♀️ Although, today with all the social medy, they'd had to have fixed it and FAST!
There is a gentleman in the US northeast that goes by the name Post10 on RU-vid. He travels around cleaning clogged pipes under roads, or storm drains that are blocked from draining. He films the process. He has been trained to do this and warns others in his videos not to do the same. He has likely saved hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in property damage and road repairs. Occasionally the police have stopped and asked what he is doing, and after he explains they have basically said, "Carry on". Lately he's having to work harder to find problem spots which tells me he's been doing a great job, and perhaps others are also helping as a result. It may also be that the road agencies in the states where he does his cleaning are doing a better job as well, either because they are embarrassed or they are motivated.
Posty is the man! Idiots in excavators ( and Beavers) are his nemesis. He is definitely the Richard Ankrom of Maine. His videos are strangely cathartic as well. Great comment.
That time his exploits raised awareness about a massive structural liability and potential collapse of critical infrastructure pretty much solidified his value to the authorities in his area. At this point, they know better than to obstruct him in any way. The most impressive part about that was that he refused to use his real name when the local news interviewed him, and only identified himself as his channel name. At that point, you knew he was just in it because he genuinely cares - he doesn't want any personal recognition.
We have a wooden pedestrian bridge nearby where some of the wood on the railing was damaged and for several years nothing happened. A small kid or animal could have fit through. There was also a small tree growing out of the planks already. It was a mess. I had two small brass signs engraved "This bridge is cared for by the city ...." and "We grow this tree right here on the bridge to be able to use it's timber for repairs some day." and attached them next to the tree and the damage. It took less than two weeks and everything was repaired and the signs removed.
There was a massive pothole in the very busy turn lane years ago at UCM in Missouri, it was always full of muddy water and you couldn't avoid driving down in it when you turned and was such a hassle when using the crosswalk to go to classes. It was there for a really long time with no fixing until one day someone had posted a tall "No Fishing" sign right in the pothole. The area was completely repaved and smooth the next day!!🎉
The man is quite frankly a legend in his own right for doing this. Who the heck takes it upon themselves to personally update a sign? And to put all that work into it too that no one seems to notice it wasn’t mandated by the company! Huge respect! I wish him lots of success!
I live in Monterey. According to google map, it only takes me 4 hrs 45 mins to 5 hours to go see my parents. Wrong...if I don't leave Monterey before 8 AM... then I won't see my parents until 5-6pm. That is freaking crazy. Hit traffics as soon as I go over Tejon Pass. I dread driving through LA.
7:55- "We feel he had a good idea." But instead of leaving the work for free, we're going to spend thousands of your tax dollars to do work all over again. You're welcome Los Angeles.
This man is a good citizen. I wonder how many accidents he has preventeted, and indeed how many lives he has saved.We need people like him.Stay crazy. God bless you sir.
Yes, sometimes GPS isn't accurate and you just miss your exit because it tells you too late. When the exits are so sharp or quickly coming like in this case you really need signage to help instead.
we have almost the same where i live. The are just 2 signs for the airport turnoff just says "for airport follow 42". One 3 miles from the junction, but not an the overhead gantry, its off to the side on a road where HGV's regularly overtake, and then a second one after the last sign for "42", at which point when you see the next 42 sign, you have passed the junction. And its not like the gantry signs don't have PLENTY of room for a picture of an airport!!! and what is worse, when you do then take the correct exit, all existence of signs pointing towards the airport, the biggest one in 60 miles, there are no more signs until after you go through 4 major intersections / junctions. madness
At the very least, it was far less expensive. I recently managed to escape that state. If you spend your entire life there, you never realize the degree to which public works projects in California are little more than vehicles to launder tax money into private pockets.
Supposedly they did an inspection of the sign he installed and found that it basically met the strict standards set by the state (and the federal government, because it's an Interstate), such as dimensions, visibility, font, and all kinds of nitpicky shit, and let it stay. They replaced it 8 years later because the sign panel itself was ageing, new fonts and misc signage standards over the years, etc, and they replaced the entire thing altogether. But his addition was basically formalized.
There’s this guy in the UK who gets pissed with shop signs that omit the apostrophe. He goes round in the middle of the night painting apostrophes on these signs !! Another Hero !!
Road signs are not obsolete. If you’re gonna follow the instructions on your maps application, you still have to visually identify the exit yourself and turn the steering wheel so you get to it!
For the amount of potential lives this saved due to possible accidents people have when they cut across lanes to make their exit this guy is a hero and should be recognized as such by the city.
I agree with you and another poster I've scrolled past who suggested naming the exit after him. I live in a *much* different place, the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area (and always laughed that the "Cincinnati" airport is in Florence, Ky). One day, the residents on a side street got notices from Rumpke that they would have to drag their garbage cans and recycle bins to a specific intersection, some as far as 3 blocks away, because the road was in such a state of disrepair that they refused to risk a 5th full size garbage truck breaking an axle and the extra cost in towing because the layout of the area meant special equipment had to be brought in to move the broken down vehicle safely. The problem lies in geography and topography. This is an excessively hilly area! And this causes both roads to snake and curve and straight lines drawn very clearly on maps to determine which of the government's pockets pays for which stretch of road to be repaired to get rather blurred when you actually go look at it in person. Basically, it was a 5 way argument and nobody wanted to be the one to pay. Everybody agreed the worked needed to be done right away; they just thought the other entities should pay for it basically. It made the 10 o'clock news when several of the neighbors got together with family members, pooled money and equipment and started paving the road themselves. The cops came by, told them to stop. There were enough of them sick and tired of it that they basically (and very colorfully) told them to go fly a kite because their families were going to have a safe road whether the city liked it or not. The City attorney served a cease and desist order. They kept working till the sun went down. The next morning, after looking bad on TV, the city had a road crew out there to finish the job and it was done in 1 day. As far as I'm aware, not a single politician involved got reelected when their term was up. What a pity 😂
Not just lives saved. Relationships as well. "It's left up here", "No honey, there isn't a sign", "It's LEFT dumb ass", "I still don't see... oh....." [screeching tyres], "Didn't I say left. Where you sleeping tonight?".
I f-ing LOVE heroic stories like this! My friends and I used to go around at night rearranging signs that had removable letters. I'd write down the original placement, get out a Scrabble set and study what those letters could make that was funny. We'd always go at dusk, when traffic was most focused on driving home, and we wouldn't stand out. Eventually the removable signs along our favorite routes were replaced with fixed signs, but oh what FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN! I can feel Mr. Ankrom's thrill, in knowing he's changing something for the better!
Bad signage is one of those things that will have people cutting across a half-dozen lanes at the last minute, so in a way doing something about it is actually improving public safety. A lot of civil engineers and transportation planners still seem to miss this kind of thing for some unknown reason though.
@@joeysplats3209*desparate drivers in a rush and can't afford to miss a turn they didn't know would be so soon. Yeah a bad way to drive but it could be the only act of poor driving behavior some people perpetrate and only bc there was so little warning.
@@joeysplats3209 It sets up the situation for it to occur more likely, since people panic when there isn't a good opportunity to turn around or go in the right direction for another 20 miles. The people who don't think about this when designing infrastructure are just serving drivers a crap sandwich they don't want, and it's not entirely the fault of situational awareness because no good cues are being provided in the first place.
Often it's bureaucrats at the upper levels in the Capital who aren't familiar with local traffic. Some years ago my little somewhat touristy hometown -- on a river that flows out from an entire Great Lake, and is divided by a small river that flows into the big river -- got State bucks to enhance tourism through roadwork. For some reason the State planners insisted on turning the first (or last) street past (or before) the drawbridge over the little river into a one way coming _from_ the big river tourist attractions. Citizens who had lived in the area for years, if not their whole lives, got so confused! The farmers market is in that area, so there's a lot of traffic on those days, along with all the tourist traffic in summer. Needless to say, there's a drawbridge over the little river because of sailboats and big cruising yachts. So there you are sitting in sweltering summer heat, running the AC, using up fuel, spewing out actual pollution plus carbon, waiting for the line of boats to go past as the drawbridge is raised, all because you missed your chance to turn before you got to the drawbridge. And that's including the lifelong residents who had always taken that turn at the drawbridge. I don't know how long it took for us to get permission to change that design, but it was years, and required more tax dollars to change the signage and street layout again. What a waste! All because of bureaucrats who are unfamiliar with this town.
I just had to comment being born and raised in So Cal, Huntington Beach. I did underground CATV construction all over LA driving from the Valley, Rancho Cucamonga for years. What was only a 45 mile drive could take 2 hours. It was so critical to hit the freeway at a certain time or else you were caught. Literally a 5 minute difference in the time you left could make or break you. At one point I was riding a motorcycle and zipping between traffic. You only have to have 1 time a car cuts you off because it's pissed you're zipping past and they nose their car over enough to push you into another car taking off side mirrors and breaking hands. I remember that exit very well. I had to laugh a little at the end though. Here's a man doing a service for a large community. I reflected back to my younger drinking days and walking home from a bar close to my house. I collected street signs. I carried a crescent wrench with me for the walk.
I think he waited until the statute of limitations ran out for arrest. This would have been, at best, a misdemeanor which has a very low SOL threshold compared to felonies.
@@louisbouchard6869 this was a big one. But he claims to have done others that have not been disclosed. While CalTrans would have had a big PR black eye if they went after him back then other locations may well treat it differently.
I understand what he did was technically illegal, but nobody got hurt, he didn’t infringe on anyone’s rights, and he didn’t destroy property, he made it better. This man did nothing wrong at all, hats off to him.
CalTrans should've hired this guy!!! He took the job he was doing just as seriously as the state agency would've. Bravo sir, thanks for helping your community
The fact that you think California's goverment actually gives two flying Fs. I mean he planned it for 2 years and then they said "F it, it got done" and they let it sit for 8 more years so it was well known for over 2 years before hand.
