So you’re driving around the parking garage half paying attention, when lo, a little girl leaps out in front of you, chasing her bright pink ball, and you slam on your brakes, but it’s too late! You’ve already rolled right over her.

The good news: She’s a 2D “speed bump” painted on the pavement to look like a real child.

The bad news: She’s a 2D “speed bump” painted on the pavement to look like a real child.

The idea, apparently, is to put drivers on red alert at high-speed intersections. But it’s a dirty trick — the traffic equivalent of those anti-abortion posters, the ones with the bloody fetuses that are supposed to horrify you into keeping your clothes on. And once someone gets used to these things, what’s to stop them from speeding anyway?

Pavement Patty, as they call it, is the invention of the British Columbia Automobile Association Traffic Safety Foundation and the Community Against Preventable Injuries (which sounds like a group dedicated to raising kids to wear elbow pads at all times and put corks on their fork tines). The $15,000 painting is actually being tested near an elementary School in Vancouver this week.

Something so absurd can’t possibly catch on, can it? Besides, isn’t it distracting to the point of being dangerous? Picture the headlines: Driver Thinks He Ran Over Child, Dies of Heart Attack; Driver Thinks He Ran Over Child, Causes Massive Car Crash; Driver Thinks He Ran Over Child, Runs Over Real Child.

What’s wrong with a big, regular speed bump?