Contributed by Jesse Sumner, Candidate for Mat-Su Borough Assembly District 6 Election
Recently, I was contacted by a borough resident who had concerns that my campaign might be taking down and destroying another candidates’ 4x8 signs. I would never destroy someone else’s property or condone that sort of activity, and it seems obvious to me that the true perpetrator in this case was the recent wind storm we had. The signs in question merely had sand bags leaned against them, and now have been put back up with only sandbags taped to them. The whole situation got me thinking about the dangers of the large 4x8 political signs in the right-of-way.
A quick calculation can show that, disregarding leeward suction and angle for simplicity, a 35-mph gust will exert 100 lbs. of force on a 4x8 surface enough to counter balance two 50 lbs. sand bags. The situation becomes even worse for the higher wind gust speeds that we often get here in the Mat-Su, since the wind force increases as the square of the wind velocity.
A study by AAA showed that in a 3-year period from 2011-2014 over 200,000 traffic accidents, 39,000 injuries and 500 deaths were caused by road debris. Many candidates have been upset this year by DOT’s flagging and removal of political signs from the ROW, but there are legitimate safety concerns here.
If candidates are going to be placing large signs in the ROW, they must take extreme care to insure adequate anchorage to the ground and not to obstruct fields of vision. I would never be able to live with myself if one of my signs caused an accident resulting in injury or fatality, so I am removing the potentially-risky 4x8 signs which I placed within the ROW. I would encourage all other political candidates this year to do the same or barring that at least insure their signs have adequate anchorage. Winning a political campaign is never worth risking lives.
Thank you,
Jesse Sumner