"Pac-Man is not a safety concern"

Those wacky Minnesotans are at it again!

They've started a project on some of the Minnesota Highways with white ovals painted on the road to slow tailgaters by showing drivers how far apart to stay. According to the Star Tribune, the 7-foot dots are 225 feet apart, the distance needed at the 55-mile-an-hour speed limit, to stop in three seconds without rear-ending the vehicle ahead. Accompanying signs tell drivers to keep two dots apart in the stretch, traveled by an average of 16,000 vehicles a day.Recently, someone took the time to draw in:

Pacman! My favorite quote in the article is by Tom Dumont, the area traffic engineer for the Department of Transportation. "Pac-Man is not a safety concern," he said, "except for the people who painted it and apparently have touched it up once or more."

"I'd hate to say positive things because I don't want to encourage people to try to paint something on a busy highway. But at least it's made the project a little more noteworthy," Dumont said.

You can read the rest of the article here.