At a time when recent child traffic deaths have focused the attention of Encinitas on its roadways, someone is hacking a safety sign.
Encinitas has about a dozen variable message boards, or VMS, around the city. One of them was tampered with, and the message changed to explicit pictures and words.
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Encinitas leadership believes someone waited for the cover of darkness to reveal an explicit message.
“It’s not funny because it is obscene,” Encinitas Mayor Bruce Ehlers said.
Ehlers was just as strongly offended by a certain part of the male anatomy programmed into the same sign.
“My assumption is they view it as a prank, and pranks often go wrong, and we want to stop it before the pranks go wrong,” the mayor said.
The VMS isn’t owned by the city. Ehlers says an Encinitas-hired subcontractor brought the VMS to use for repairs near the corner of Saxony Road and Leucadia Boulevard.
Someone broke the lock, got control of the keyboard and then changed the message.
The sign hack came to light during a city council recess Wednesday night when someone in the gallery approached District 2 Councilman Jim Ohara and showed him the video. O’Hara says the city went right to work on a fix.
“I would hope certainly these are pranks and not people who intend to harm people or cause harm,” O’Hara said.
The prank comes at time when some Encinitas neighbors are calling for a roadway emergency traffic declaration. The death of 12-year-old Emery Chalekian was a wake-up call. She was killed in a crosswalk, collateral damage of a two-car crash on Encinitas Boulevard.
Since then, O’Hara initiated the proposal that led to more VMS around the city to slow traffic and cut down on distracted driving.
Ehlers says the city hired two more traffic deputies, and once a month, they conduct maximum enforcement days.
“Unfortunately, we have had a couple of fatalities, children killed in last couple years. We just need it to stop,” Ehlers said.
Who did it is really anybody’s guess. So far, they have no clues or suspects. Both the mayor and councilman believe it is a younger community member.
“Sometimes they take that edginess and they do stunts or things like this. In this case, they’ve gone little too far,” O’Hara said.
The city’s message boards are secured with new tamper-proof locks. Outside contractors were asked to use the same locks on their signs.
City leadership is glad the potential for calamity was averted — just a few red-faced drivers who saw it.
Besides the counter measures and tamper-proof locks, road deputies are keeping a closer eye on the message boards.
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