It saved my life.
I grew up in an area where there are a lot of parking lots (no, not apartment complex... condo/townhouses complexs) so I usually bicycled around with neighborhood kids and whatnot.
I do have vivid memories of cars almost running me down-- and their angry faces as they shouted at me but I couldn't understand them. I haven't mastered the lipreading skills (I was only 6-8 years old...!) My Deaf friend got hit and run over by a car and got a cast for his broken leg when I was seven years old. This alarmed my mother and appealed to the city coucil to put one near the main street.
After that, I think it saved a lot lives who rode on the streets because our street is a down-hill so a lot of cars just turned onto at a high speed which put everybody at risk (even a jogger!) so the second they saw the sign, they braked and looked around... Today, people still braked and pulled into our street carefully.
I don't hate it. I liked it.
It is like spreading awareness about Deafness. Because the neighbors will wonder: "Which one of those brats is Deaf? All of them look normal!" You know? It still stands to-day even though I am overgrown for bicycling around and too old to be called a "child." There are *still* Deaf kids (in middle-school or nearby high school) in my community so the sign will be here indefinitely.
One drawback about the sign: when a Deaf visitor/resident saw this sign, they set out on a hunt to find ME. I had some Deaf strangers coming to my house and said: "I saw the 'Deaf Child' sign so I asked around my friends for who lived in this area, and finally I found out that where you lived so I want to come by and say hi and that I live *over there*"
... I was like : "oh ok. good. see you around." They were much OLDER so I was like: who cares-- I was a teenager who just wanted to hang out with teenaged friends, not adults. Oh well.
