Resident Fed Up With Cars Puts Up Fake Traffic Sign

An Australian man fed up with hundreds of cars surging through tiny Albert Road each morning to avoid another clogged mainroad took matters into his own hands.

"The sign appeared about six months ago," resident Mark Ratcliffe on the road says in an interview. "I was driving home along Beecroft and I was like, 'What the hell?'"

The sign, stating that "no left turn" was permitted between the hours of 7:30 am and 9:30 am, had been expertly nailed into a power pole on the corner of Beecroft and Albert roads.

It turns out the sign was a fake, erected without the knowledge of the authorities.

But residents and parents of children who attend nearby Arden Anglican School, who have campaigned for a decade to install such a sign, thought their prayers had been answered.

"Seven or eight years ago my parents wrote a letter to the council saying Albert Road needs to be made one way because it's a hazard," says Ratcliffe. "It's so small and with the primary school, parents were coming out of the street and the rat runners were turning in and it was just chaos."

But even after the sign, the cars kept coming since it was barely visible from far away so residents, assuming the sign was real, called police.

The kicker? The police came out and started fining people because they assumed the sign was genuine too.

About 200 motorists were hit with tickets over a three-month period, each of them fined $175.

It is unclear who first figured out the sign should not have been there, but the sign is now gone.

No one knows who installed it, but many residents are calling the man a hero and plan on taking their plea for a legitimate traffic sign to the authorities.

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