Road workers misspell slow, painting ‘SLOM’ in four foot letters in Risby, Bury St Edmunds

Council paints SLOM on road instead of SLOW near Risby, Bury St Edmunds.

Mystery workmen might want to take it “slom” in future, after they managed to paint a four-foot-high spelling mistake onto the road.

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Workers in Risby, off the A14, intended to paint helpful advice on the slip road, telling drivers to slow down ahead of a junction.

They got the S down with aplomb, the L could not look better and the O was flawless – but that tricky W, it ended up doing a pretty good impression of an M.

The resulting “SLOM”, which in Croatian means ‘breakdown’, has been on Newmarket Road, outside Claas, for at least two weeks, when it was pointed out by a Facebook user on Spotted in Bury St Edmunds.

Suffolk County Council and the Highways Agency, after much deliberation, have both stated the offending stretch of road is not their responsibility.

Of course, these unknown workmen are not the first to make such mistakes, and it could definitely be worse.

In Swansea, council workers committed to installing a bilingual road sign telling motorists: “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.”

The resulting Welsh translation underneath read: “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.”

Sticking with the travails of Welsh councils, in Cardiff confused pedestrians did not know where to look when a bilingual sign told them to “look left” in Welsh and to “look right” in English.

From a “SUS STOP” in east London, to a warning to “KEEP-CELAR” in Kettering, road-workers’ spelling sometimes loses its way.

Of course, we all make mistakes, it just happens that those committed to signs or road are harder to rectify.

Our political class are not exempt from this either, and signs are a prominent feature in the course of an election.

UKIP’s Douglas Carswell MP, at October’s Clacton by-election, fell foul when he proudly stood in front of a sign demanding “More GPS”.

The benefits of sat-nav systems aside, Mr Carswell was apparently intending to stand on the ‘more doctors at local surgeries’ ticket.

Julian Read, a Risby parish councillor, said: “It is very unfortunate that a mistake has been made.

“As a parish council we spend a lot of time pushing for road surface improvements, and now they might have to go back and spend time to correct this mistake.”