School-Zone Sign Fury: 1 Sign With 6 Times Too Much for Detroit Area Drivers

Tim Thompson/The Oakland Press/AP

For Michigan resident Greg Smith, seeing a school-zone sign telling him to slow down  to 25 mph did not irk him the first time.

Nor did it bother him the second, third, fourth or fifth time either.

But when Smith saw that the one sign posted near his home in the Detroit suburb of White Lake listed six separate times that drivers had to step off the gas,  it was too much.

“You practically have to come to a stop to read it,” Smith told The Oakland Press about the sign erected on Jan. 12 to guide drivers around a nearby elementary, middle and high school.

“I’m thinking of printing out the speeds and attaching it to my dashboard,” he said.

The sign instructs drivers to slow down to 25 mph between 6:49-7:15, 7:52-8:22 and 8:37-9:07 during the morning and 2:03-2:33, 3:04-3:34 and 3:59-4:29 during the afternoon on school days.

Smith sent a picture of himself standing beside  the sign to the paper, which then posted it on its Facebook page.

More than 100 comments flowed in online saying the complicated sign was, among other things, a speed trap, driving hazard and not in sync with the start and finish times of the three nearby schools.

The citizen outrage also sparked a dispute among local officials.  White Lake officials said the township did not install the sign, while the county’s Road Commission blamed the school district for its unwillingness to pay for an electric sign that would eliminate the need for the printed time ranges.

The city’s police department has now organized a meeting between the White Lake Township supervisor, the school district and the county road commission to discuss the sign, the Press reports.

“We are aware of it and trying to resolve it,” Ed Harris, White Lake Police Chief, told the paper.