The Road Safety Druid

It's not often you'll see the words 'road', 'safety' and 'druid' in the same line, so let's take just a few moments to treasure this rare time.

Yes, the Australian Road Safety Druid has made the headlines!

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/827498-druids-use-rock-and-magnets-to-stop-road-accidents

As well as using quartz standing stones to restore the area’s ‘natural energy’, the druids have come up with a cheaper modern-day option – burying plastic slates with magnets in the ground.

Arch druid Ilmar Tessmann was called in as a last resort after a high number of fatal accidents were reported on a straight stretch of motorway near Salzburg.

He said the crashes were caused by radiation from a nearby mobile phone mast disrupting the area’s normal ‘terrestrial’ radiation.

Installing the monoliths has successfully counteracted that, he claimed.

Austrian motorway authority ASFINAG said it was sceptical at first and kept the project a secret. But it went public after the druids’ efforts cut the number of deaths at the notorious crash site from six a year to zero in two years.

Mr Tessmann said: ‘Plastic was not available in ancient times but it seems to work well.’

But he warned: ‘It is a big job. These masts are now spreading negative radiation over 120 to 200 miles.’

Scientists, however, are not convinced.

‘Natural sciences need evidence. ‘Whatever can’t be measured, does not exist,’ Dr Georg Walach from the geophysics department at Leoben University in southern Austria said.

‘These energy lines and their flow cannot be grasped or measured therefore their existence is rejected by scientists.’

But Mr Tessmann claims the proof is in the results. ‘If you ask me to give you a scientific explanation, I can’t, I just know it works, and even critics can’t argue with our success rate,’ he said.


A road safety expert I know suggests that any reduction may be due to 'regression to the mean'. Aother road safety person commented that some road safety speed camera partnerships claim that installing cameras - which look strangely like grey stone monoliths - often achieve a reduction in accidents.

Perhaps the colour is what's important . . . ? ;)



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