ELYRIA — It’s back.
New stickers have been found that can be used to update a sign that tallies county traffic fatalities outside the Elyria post of the State Highway Patrol. (CT photo by Steve Manheim.)
The small but much-noticed sign that tallies county traffic deaths is back on view at the Elyria post of the Ohio Highway Patrol.
“It went back up last week,” Lt. Travis Hughes, the post commander, said this week. “We found the numbers and enough of them so that we won’t run out again. We’re all set.”
The sign in question is a blue 3-by-3-foot fiberglass sign that displays the number of county traffic deaths in white numerals.
The sign was taken down after maintenance personnel discovered there weren’t enough useable peel-and-stick numbers that would properly adhere to the sign’s surface.
An effort to use computer paper printout numbers didn’t work.
Hughes never knew of the sign’s popularity until he became post commander a few years ago and it was taken down at that time.
The post received so many calls at the time about the missing placard that Hughes quickly realized it was worth maintaining.
“I got here, but we had so many calls about it, that I began to realize how many people looked at it as they drove by,” Hughes said.
A new sign was soon in place.
Hughes acknowledged no one has called since the sign went back up about a week ago.
“But I imagine had we kept it down that they would still be calling,” Hughes said.
The sign currently registers 19 traffic-related deaths on county roads so far in 2012, the most by far in years, and 12 more than a year ago at this time.
Contact Steve Fogarty at 329-7146 or sfogarty@chroniclet.com.
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