SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — As you drive on Illinois interstates throughout the holiday season, you’ll probably notice some creative and witty signs above the road as you travel.
These digital message signs, or DMSs, have featured sayings such as “Cousin Eddie says Twitter’s full” or “OMG are you texting? I can’t even.”
The creative signs have had many areas of inspiration.
IDOT held a contest last year that asked for input from the public, and some of those ideas were put to use.
In addition, IDOT develops sign ideas every few months to make sure the messages are timely with whatever may be going on at the time whether that be Christmas, big events, or drunk driving awareness month.
IDOT director of communications Guy Tridgell said that the main purpose of the signs is to relay information to people on the roads with information such as drive times, construction zones, and Amber alerts. However, the lighter messages are also mixed in to support safety on the roads.
“Over the last three years in Illinois we have seen over 1,000 fatalities on our highway system, and anything we can do to call attention to that and focus on driving behavior is something that we are always interested in doing,” said Tridgell.
Although the messages may be light-hearted, Tridgell said that he hopes the signs can remind people that driving is one of the most dangerous things that people do everyday; and the actions that one takes behind the wheel can have serious consequences.
The Illinois Department of Transportation began the campaign in 2016 to make the signs more attention getting, said Tridgell. However, that effort has been increased in recent years.
“We stepped up that effort in 2018 in direct response to the increase in fatalities we were seeing on our highway systems,” said Tridgell.
So far this year, traffic fatalities are trending downward. While this could be due to numerous factors, Tridgell said that he hopes among them are public outreach and education.
According to IDOT data, there have been 958 fatalities from crashes in 2019. If that number remains below 1,000, it would be the first time since 2015 that there were less than 1,000 fatalities resulting from accidents on Illinois roadways.
