OTTAWA: Police in westernmost Canada are deploying life-size cardboard replicas of traffic cops pointing a radar gun at oncoming traffic to try to reduce speeding and road fatalities, authorities said.
And these mock-ups are so realistic that while being tested on a Vancouver street this week, “a tow-truck driver pulled up and started talking to it,” Staff Sergeant Ralph Pauw told a press conference on Thursday.
Eight of the cut-outs will initially be deployed on city streets, Pauw said. And in case some drivers aren’t fooled by the facsimiles, “there may or may not be a (real) police officer behind one of these cut-outs,” he added.
The police initiative called Operation Silhouette follows similar trickery used elsewhere, including “bait cars” for thieves, fake intersection cameras and mechanical moose used by Canadian wildlife officers to nab poachers.
