At one of Sculeni’s busiest pedestrian crossings, on the Ștefan cel Mare road, two flashing amber signals have appeared — the kind of lamp that blinks without pause to pull a driver’s eyes toward the zebra crossing. At night, when the crossing is hardest to see, its asphalt is washed in light from a red projector. The work was carried out by the commune hall, which says it wants extra safety „for all citizens, especially children, the elderly and the people who cross this area daily”.
The signals do not direct traffic; they only warn. They do not stop cars, but they announce, from a distance, that a place where people cross lies ahead. In the night-time footage published by the commune hall, each lamp is topped by a small solar panel — so they run off-grid — and the projector’s red light turns the whole crossing into a patch visible long before you reach it.
The third reinforced crossing in the commune — each time a different method
In about a month, Sculeni has become a kind of local road-safety laboratory, where each crossing gets its own solution.
In June, on the R16 national road, by the Gherman gymnasium in the same commune, a pedestrian crossing was marked out — but a flat one, only paint, signs and a 30 km/h limit. Just the day before, at the junction by the Sculeni theoretical lyceum, where 578 pupils study, a raised crossing was built — the bump that physically forces cars to brake. Now, on Ștefan cel Mare, the intervention is of a third type: not an obstacle and not just paint, but light signalling that bets on visibility.
The three sit on a scale of „hardness”. Paint asks the driver to brake; the flashing signal makes them notice; the bump forces them to slow. On a busy road, where speed is the problem, the blinking lamp and the red crossing at night remain a warning — useful, but still dependent on the driver’s foot.
Why these measures are piling up now
District statistics show why such works are not a whim. In 2024, road accidents in the Ungheni district left 5 people dead and 23 injured, and in 2023 — 11 dead and 35 injured, according to General Police Inspectorate data relayed by the National Bureau of Statistics. Every more visible crossing, in the places where children and the elderly gather daily, nudges a few of those figures in the right direction.
The announcement, photos and video come from the Sculeni commune hall; the district road-accident data are from the National Bureau of Statistics. The cost of the work, the exact date the signals were installed and the specific stretch of street were not made public.