Road Sign Hacking

We’ve all seen these on the side of the road and wondered how we could change the message. It turns out that it is actually pretty easy. There’s a keypad inside for programming that is often still set with a default password of “DOTS”. Even if the password has been changed, you can reset it right there pretty quickly. We shouldn’t even need to warn you that it is illegal to tamper with these, so unless there really are zombies ahead, you probably shouldn’t mess with it.

[via Neatorama]

159 thoughts on “Road Sign Hacking

  1. I beleave in information trade. But a 13 year old could kill people. If it just added a peace sign or smile face ok. But any thing else would be FF FF FF FF ED up.

  2. To everyone who’s saying that “oh that’s really dangerous” blah blah blah…

    if there’s a construction sign there in the first place, wouldn’t most people have the common sense to realize that there’s most likely something you need to be cautious about ahead? Just sayin’.

  3. I love this time capsule, but kinda hate it too. Sixteen years later, the discourse online is about the same. The “drive safe” $15k signs are still around, still static for lengths of time, still terrible reckless drivers that don’t care or look, and the signs are still just as easy to hack. I guess the change would be that there are so many more things to mess with like this? But honestly, some things are straight up regressing. And these signs are almost always just benign messages and make you wonder why they’re still in city budgets, Only solid uses I’ve ever seen are stadium lots information on game days and a weeks heads up on lane closures for the daily commuters that drive and should plan on significant delays.

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