The latest in traffic calming: There is just something about this idea that is so The Matrix I can’t quite put my finger on it. Philadelphia is using plastic speed “humps” that are actually flat plastic formed into a 3-D fake hump in the road. I would love to have these in my neighborhood, because of the idiots who come to a full stop at all the massive and frequent speed humps instead of cruising over them at 25 m.p.h. like I do. Of course, said idiots would probably still come to a full stop at these, and most of the people in my neighborhood use the same cut-through roads daily and would not be deterred by these the second, third, and five-thousandth time they ran over them. They are a cool idea though; I can’t quite wrap my brain around what this is. Is it meta or not? I never quite get what the hell meta really means. Would it work better today because we are all so used to a virtual world that we react to this stuff in the real world just like we would on a flat screen playing Grand Theft Auto? Did I just take the blue pill or the red pill?

As for the pros, these cost about 25% of a traditional speed hump. They probably don’t get as torn up by the snowplow, they don’t mess up drainage patterns, and they don’t cause that annoying noise that people who live near real speed humps are always complaining about.

photo by Matt Rourke for The Associated Press as seen at NYTimes.com