Guerrilla Sign Campaign Tells Cleveland Drivers to 'Slow The F*ck Down' as Pedestrian/Cyclist Accidents Climb

One of two dozen signs urging awareness from drivers is hung up here on Columbus Rd. in Ohio City. Credit: Mark Oprea

After some 20 years of riding his bike daily, a Cleveland cyclist was hit by a driver in a car.

It was the middle of October, and he was heading home from work, traveling south on Fulton Rd. As he crossed Lorain Ave., a car sailed eastward at 25 MPH through a red light, clipping his back tire. He flew to the concrete.

“I just caught them out of the corner of my eye—a split second before they wiped me out,” the cyclist, who asked to remain anonymous, recalled. “They just kept going.” Fortunately, after a visit to the emergency room, doctors sent him home a few hours later with whiplash and—incredibly—no broken bones.

Though he’s considered himself a “radicalized” cyclist since his teens, this was his first major experience in a crash and led him once again into advocacy territory. Last week, fueled by both a perceived apathy from City Hall and a kind of guerrilla mindset, he posted two dozen signs around Cleveland’s inner ring.

The call is pretty, well, straightforward: “Slow The F*ck Down.”

His tactical urbanism, as some have blatantly called it, is vitally appropriate given a recent spike in crashes.

In January, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that fatal crashes involving cyclists and pedestrians went up 8 and 2 percent respectively, from 2021 to 2022. Cyclist deaths, caused primarily by distracted and speeding drivers, had reached a 40-year high, according to NHTSA.

Conscious of this spike in danger for cyclists and pedestrians alike, Mayor Bibb and Councilman Kerry McCormack succeeded last June in updating the city’s lagging 11-year Complete and Green Streets ordinance. The renewal, which aims to decrease hit-and-runs with smarter street design, has led to a series of traffic-slowing additions to Cleveland streets.

In 2022, the Bibb administration installed ten pilot speed tables across town, to sort of test the waters. (Urbanists and neighbors installed their own DIY speed bump at W. 50th and Clark last year after a reckless driver struck and killed a 5-year-old.)

For the sign-maker, an ordinance overhaul and hodgepodge efforts from the city aren’t enough.

“Oh God, I think [they’re] way too slow, not nearly comprehensive enough,” he said. Among the supposed “cheap and fast” fixes he sees as doable this year: curbs for preexisting bike lanes, small Jersey barriers, more speed tables and even chicanes — thin curvatures in roads used as traffic calmers.

Still feeling pain from his October accident, along with witnessing three car accidents in front of his job in the last week, gave impetus to create deploy his own tacts.

“I mean, it’s just like a bureaucratic quagmire to try and get anything done in Cleveland,” he said. “I’m not a politician. And I’m not a bureaucrat. But just get it fucking done already.”

While Bibb and city council have yet to announce their latest safe streets project, he hopes his work will save some an ER bill. Even their lives.

“Hopefully it’s something eye catching,” he said. “I guess I just wanted to get people’s attention, to just be punchy.”

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