Thousands of pounds of damage caused by traffic light vandal
Two sets of Sleaford traffic lights were targeted last week, with repairs costing Lincolnshire County Council around £8,000 to fix.
A conspiracy theorist group calling themselves ‘Blade Runners’ has claimed responsibility on social media, saying that they damaged the lights deliberately in order to be: “Fighting off intrusive technology to wake up humanity.”
The equipment damaged in the attack included 10 sensors that are used to help manage traffic flow and aid pedestrians crossing the road.
Anthony Gent, Principal Engineer (Traffic Signals) at LCC said: “The claims made by this group are outlandish at best, ridiculous at worst.
“The sensors are used to make people's journeys better, easier and safer by detecting vehicles as they approach junctions and crossings. They help to get people safely across the road.
“By vandalising these sensors, it’s basically making this junction work very, very inefficiently.”
He added that the technology has been in use for years, and poses no risk to the public.
“It’s the sort of technology used in most modern cars. If you have adaptive cruise control, it uses exactly the same technology,” he added: “Unfortunately in this case it looks like people have picked up on something which is utterly false and are then using it as justification to go and vandalise traffic lights at great cost to us.
“By making the junction less efficient, people may be tempted to run a red signal, so there's a whole host of issues that can snowball from this. It’s important that we get the message out there that this equipment we're using is totally safe and there is no danger to the public whatsoever.”
In one video appearing to show a light being tampered with, a man makes the unverified claim the group is “finding phased array weaponry on our streets”, adding: “We’ve decided to take the units down, remove them, make it safe for everybody.”
Phased array technology is typically used in military settings for tracking, targeting and electronic warfare.
The damage in Sleaford follows similar incidents in Cambridgeshire, where around 200 traffic light detector units have been vandalised in recent weeks.
Lincolnshire Police said the incidents are a concern, a spokesperson said: “These incidents of criminal damage are of real concern and could be dangerous. This is clearly such an irresponsible thing to do.
“Anyone who has any further video footage or knows anything about this should get in touch with us.”