Creative Highway Signs Get the Message Across to Rhode Island Drivers

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The messages, illuminated on signs above Rhode Island highways, started mundanely enough just after Thanksgiving.

"Designated drivers are your greatest friends." "Alcohol doesn't mix with holiday driving."

But as Christmas and New Year's Day approached, the tone of the R.I. Department of Transportation's campaign to prevent drunken driving grew a little quirkier and darker.

"Wrap Your Gifts, Not Your Car, Around a Tree," a Dec. 8 message on Rhode Island digital highway billboards read.

And, the one that really got people talking over New Year's weekend: "Let's Fill Pot Holes, Not Graves."

Signs getting the message across to Rhode Island drivers https://t.co/oxw2bhpAI1 @PatrickAnderso_ pic.twitter.com/GuzNn88pAL — Providence Journal (@projo) January 5, 2017

New England motorists have become familiar with idiosyncratic highway safety messages ever since Massachusetts began urging them to "Use Yah Blinkah" two years ago.

But the new Rhode Island billboards had some Rhode Islanders scratching their heads, in some cases as a matter of taste and others out of genuine confusion.

"I get what they are going for, but to me a lot of them came off as morbid," said Frank O'Donnell, 60, of North Providence, who does stand-up comedy in his spare time. "It conjures up highway death."

Facebook lit up with allusions to the state's aborted search for a tourism slogan last year.

After the popularity of "Use Yah Blinkah," Massachusetts held contests to gather ideas for digital billboard messages.

Who is writing Rhode Island's unusual billboard signs?

"It was a collaborative effort, involving police departments submitting suggestions as well as RIDOT's Highway Safety and Communications offices," wrote DOT Spokesman Charles St. Martin in an email Jan. 4, adding that he did not have details of which messages were written in-house or which were submitted by police.

In many cases, the text was shortened to fit on signs. (The pothole message, for example, was originally written as "We'd Rather be Filling Potholes Than Graves.")

Rhode Island launched the new series of attention-getting highway signs specifically for the holiday season.

Jan. 4's aggressively punctuated message, "You Drink! You Drive! = Handcuffs!" ended the program, for now.

St. Martin acknowledged that some Rhode Islanders had complained to the DOT about the "bluntness" and lack of optimism in some of the messages, but said standing out "against the background noise" is part of the point.

"Some people have not liked the more blunt messages but all of the messages have started conversations about safe driving," St. Martin wrote, adding that the state expects to "employ a similar messaging strategy in the future."

The messages were posted on 25 digital highway billboards across the state from the DOT's Transportation Management Center in Providence. The program does not carry any additional cost to the state.

Alcohol-related crashes killed 19 people in 2015, 17 people in 2014 and 23 people in 2013, according to DOT figures.