If you installed 700 unauthorized stop signs in Cranston, Rhode Island, would you please call the mayor?

Judges have been dismissing tickets written for running stop signs in Cranston because the city apparently doesn't know which signs are official and which aren't. The city has about 2,600 stop signs in all, but officials said they had no record of almost 700 of those and, after a six-month investigation, could not even figure out who put the things up in the first place.

At last report, they had decided that the state Department of Transportation had put up about one-third of the mystery signs, which still left almost 500 unaccounted for.

The mayor said his staff was researching whether an unofficial stop sign has any legal effect, but that the city would likely pass an ordinance to legitimize all the stop signs at once.