Canada deploying cardboard cops to nab speeders

0 Comments | AFP, June, 2008

OTTAWA (AFP) — Police in westernmost Canada are deploying life-size cardboard replicas of traffic cops pointing a radar gun at oncoming traffic to try to reduce speeding and road fatalities, authorities said.

And these mock-ups are so realistic that while being tested on a Vancouver street this week, "a tow-truck driver pulled up and started talking to it," Staff Sergeant Ralph Pauw told a press conference on Thursday.

Eight of the cut-outs will initially be deployed on city streets, Pauw said. And in case some drivers aren't fooled by the facsimiles, "there may or may not be a (real) police officer behind one of these cut-outs," he added.

The police initiative called Operation Silhouette follows similar trickery used elsewhere, including "bait cars" for...