For several hours early Monday morning, motorists driving south on Foothills Parkway in Boulder received an unnerving warning from an electric road-construction sign: “Zombies ahead.”
“We decided that we ought to be especially alert since it was 4 a.m.,” said Rick Barron, 66, of Boulder, who was driving his wife and her sister to the airport when he spotted the sign. “We all three just cracked up.”
Barron said he kept an eye out for the undead all the way to Denver International Airport and back. “I couldn’t verify that I saw any.”
Zombie-loving hackers have been breaking into programmable electronic road signs across the country for years and posting the warning about the fictional horror characters. Some include additional instructions such as “Run!”
This is the first time the sign at Foothills Parkway and Baseline Road has been hacked, said Gerry Padilla, Colorado Department of Transportation project engineer. He said the sign has been reprogrammed to read: “Shoulder work Feb. 28 through June.”
Crews working at the scene were reprimanded for not locking the message-entry box on the sign to keep pranksters away, Padilla said.
Padilla said motorists won’t see any more zombie warnings at projects he’s overseeing. “We are putting locks on them as we speak.” Daily Camera
