Pranksters make targets of fluorescent warning signs

At a Natick day-care center, director Jennifer Cox set out the fluorescent-yellow plastic men to warn drivers that there were children nearby.

One by one, the figures met an unkind fate. Pranksters stood them on their heads, buried their red warning flags in the flower bed, and dumped them in the garbage. Others were run over by passing cars. When the toll hit 20, she stopped buying them.

In a Stoneham neighborhood besieged by cut-through traffic, residents flagged their block with seven of the figurines. Vandals knocked over or took all of them.

And in Dorchester, the pint-size plastic figure has long ago switched jobs, from traffic cop to an extra on a street hockey team. The "SLOW!" warning completely faded from his chest, he plays goalie, and his name is Steve.

"They do everything to it," said Dorchester resident Jay Broderick. "They kidnap it. The kids call me and tell me they won't let it go unless I buy them an ice cream. Actually, it's kind of comical."

On residential streets in and around Boston, worried parents have been buying the plastic figurines to slow down drivers for several years. But lately, the yellow figures have become so much suburban flotsam, targets of vandals or part of the everyday landscape.

Made by an Ohio company called Step2, KidAlert! figures came on the scene in 2002 as a novel and inexpensive tool ($24.99 at Toys 'R' Us) for average citizens to use to coax drivers to slow down when passing through neighborhoods.

The childlike 32-inch-tall figures convey the message instantly, and their fluorescence makes them easy to spot day or night, even from a few hundred feet away.

The figurines have become popular, though the company would not provide sales figures. In West Orange, N.J., 70 are stationed at crosswalks near elementary and middle schools; a family-oriented Florida hotel has scattered them throughout the parking lot; and many communities have held fund-raising drives to purchase figurines for their streets, according to Step2.

In addition to warning passing drivers, the figurines also remind children that they have reached the end of their driveway, said Dotti Foltz, vice president of marketing and communications for Step2. "Kids get engrossed in their play, a ball gets into a street, and off they go."

Law enforcement officials, child safety advocates, parents, and owners praise the idea, but no one, not even the manufacturer, has data proving the figurines slow down motorists.

"For the person who has no regard for speed signs anyway, I'm not sure that's going to stop that person," said Sergeant Robert Bettencourt of Danvers police.

Tom Everson -- founder of Keep Kids Alive Drive 25, a nonprofit group that tries to remind motorists to obey residential 25 mile -per-hour speed limits -- said the figurines can't replace a comprehensive, communitywide approach to controlling traffic.

"It can be looked at as a tool, but it's not a substitute for parental oversight and parents teaching kids where to play," Everson said .

The company suggests taking in the figures each night, both to avoid vandalism and so they are more effective. " People become accustomed to them, so they start ignoring them," Foltz said.

Owners often plop their figurines on the sidewalk or even in the street for maximum exposure. But almost all communities have regulations against blocking sidewalks, and it is illegal to put anything in the street that impedes traffic.

Fed up with speeders on his Stoneham street, Scott Spindler and his son had resorted to holding cardboard signs telling people to slow down and tossing tennis balls in front of speeding cars to surprise them into slamming on the brakes. About two months ago he purchased his first figurine, hanging it 6 feet high on the telephone pole in front of his house. He has since hung one for a neighbor on the next telephone pole.

"If I had my way, I'd buy one for every telephone pole on the street," he said. "They work, for the most part. As soon as they get to the first one, they start to slow down, and they cruise to the stop sign."

Josefina Silva of Malden bought one not because she has young children -- her daughters are in high school -- but because she has a blind driveway and it's dangerous for her children to back out the car when traffic is speeding by.

Others have been disappointed with the results from using the figures. Ken Hogan of Stoneham said that drivers eventually became blind to the army of figurines on his street. Last week, a lone figurine could be found stuck behind a bush on Wright Street, its face flush to the ground.

"It was a nice try, a nice idea," Hogan said. "But it didn't work."

Then there are the abductions, beatings, and other dangers the figurines face.

Lexington police get calls about little green men being transplanted, like garden trolls or pink flamingos, on the lawns of unsuspecting residents, said Lieutenant Joseph O'Leary.

"We'll pick them up and bring them to the station," he said. "We had one in our locker room for the longest time. Before it got to us, someone had actually dressed it up with a black magic marker and drew clothes on it."

Cox, of Tir Na Nog Childcare in Natick, said that while drivers definitely noticed the little men, they also kept smashing them to pieces.

"They were just getting clobbered," she said. "We still have one straggler out there. We'll see what happens. I don't even think he's green anymore; he's faded."