Button Township Highway Commissioner Ron Hilligoss just might be on to something out in Paxton, Illinois. Located in Ford County, Paxton is your usual middle-American small town, all except for one newly-installed roadside sign.
After Mr. Hilligoss’ nephew texted him a photo of a traffic sign taken out in Colorado, referring to the local deer as “suicidal”, he decided Ford County might be able to use them as well.
“My nephew sent me a picture of one of these signs out in Colorado about six months ago,” Hilligoss told The Paxton Record. “He texted it to me, and I thought it was really a good thing because it gets your attention. So we had had a Ford County Highway Department meeting and I said, ‘Can you get me these signs?’”
With a reported 33 vehicular collisions with deer at the Ford County Sheriff’s Office in 2015, Hilligoss is confident these signs will catch the driver’s eye and make them more mindful of their surroundings when traveling along high deer traffic corridors. In total, four of the “suicidal deer” signs were purchased with a price tag of just $42 a piece, but at the time of publication, only the one sign had been installed.
“A lot of people see it,” Hilligoss said. “If you ask anybody where a deer crossing sign is, they couldn’t tell you, but they know where that one is at.”
He was also happy to announce that so far in 2016, the county does not have one single accident involving deer that has been reported.
