Saw this on the news last night, people hacking road signs.
This one is a little hard to read, but says RAPTORS AHEAD!
Ray Cortopassi/Eyewitness News
Carmel - Road crews in Hamilton County are looking for tech-savvy pranksters who are creating potentially dangerous roadside distractions. The prehistoric prank is now over, but traffic sign tampering has become a tri-state epidemic.
In the film Jurassic Park, everyone ran from raptors. But earlier this week, a traffic sign warned motorists of "raptors ahead."
"As far as we know, we don't have any record of any dinosaurs being loose. All we have is an interchange under construction," said Jeremy Kashman, Keystone project manager.
But the traffic sign on Keystone north of 116th Street in Carmel said otherwise. What was supposed to read "street closed" instead read "raptors...caution ahead."
"We don't exactly know who changed the sign. Our guess is someone within the community thought it'd be funny to pull a funny prank over the weekend," said Kashman.
Turns out this is something of a national trend in prank-pulling. In Austin Texas last month, someone changed the signs to read "zombies ahead." The same thing happened in Illinois this week. On YouTube, you'll find others who put themselves on camera showing how they use laptop computers to hack into traffic networks to put in any message they like.
The trend that's been happening around the country actually involves changing the message remotely. But in the case of the Carmel sign, the street department thinks that somebody got access to the control box and changed the content going out to commuters.
"Each one on these signs has an area that controls the message. They got in there," said Kashman. "They have locks some of them. I'm not sure if this had one on it. It does now though."
The result may have been funny, but playing with important traffic information is criminal and dangerous.
"You could be endangering lives of construction workers or potentially send someone into a hazardous situation," Kashman said.
With a lot more work scheduled along Keystone, if someone gets the idea to make the prank malicious, sending traffic the wrong way perhaps, they'll be the ones that will become the prey.
This one is a little hard to read, but says RAPTORS AHEAD!
Ray Cortopassi/Eyewitness News
Carmel - Road crews in Hamilton County are looking for tech-savvy pranksters who are creating potentially dangerous roadside distractions. The prehistoric prank is now over, but traffic sign tampering has become a tri-state epidemic.
In the film Jurassic Park, everyone ran from raptors. But earlier this week, a traffic sign warned motorists of "raptors ahead."
"As far as we know, we don't have any record of any dinosaurs being loose. All we have is an interchange under construction," said Jeremy Kashman, Keystone project manager.
But the traffic sign on Keystone north of 116th Street in Carmel said otherwise. What was supposed to read "street closed" instead read "raptors...caution ahead."
"We don't exactly know who changed the sign. Our guess is someone within the community thought it'd be funny to pull a funny prank over the weekend," said Kashman.
Turns out this is something of a national trend in prank-pulling. In Austin Texas last month, someone changed the signs to read "zombies ahead." The same thing happened in Illinois this week. On YouTube, you'll find others who put themselves on camera showing how they use laptop computers to hack into traffic networks to put in any message they like.
The trend that's been happening around the country actually involves changing the message remotely. But in the case of the Carmel sign, the street department thinks that somebody got access to the control box and changed the content going out to commuters.
"Each one on these signs has an area that controls the message. They got in there," said Kashman. "They have locks some of them. I'm not sure if this had one on it. It does now though."
The result may have been funny, but playing with important traffic information is criminal and dangerous.
"You could be endangering lives of construction workers or potentially send someone into a hazardous situation," Kashman said.
With a lot more work scheduled along Keystone, if someone gets the idea to make the prank malicious, sending traffic the wrong way perhaps, they'll be the ones that will become the prey.
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