Needham, Massachusetts
Town Manager Kate Fitzpatrick was teaching a civics lesson to eighth graders at a nearby school when she had a brainstorm.
She wanted to get the students more engaged with their community. Why not put them to work on a long-standing problem in Needham, MA, (pop. 28,886) — speeding on neighborhood roads.
Traditional “Slow” or “Slow Children” signs weren’t effective. Other efforts to get people to slow down hadn’t worked either.
Fitzpatrick wanted to try a new approach. She asked the students to design their own traffic signs — ones that would appeal to their parents and older siblings.
The result was eye-catching signs with a lot of personality. One had blazing red and orange flames and asked, “Where’s the fire? Slow down!” Another warned, “Time or a life? It’s your choice,” with a graphic of a clock.
The signs worked. They grabbed at motorists’ emotions to plead with them to slow down by communicating that their daughters and sons and other children feared for their lives, and cared about road safety.
“People often think of government as a big bureaucracy,” says Fitzpatrick, “but in local government it’s about putting up signs and trying to get people to drive more slowly—it couldn’t be more basic.”
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