Workers mess up freshly painted road sign – can you spot the error?

The mistake in these freshly painted road markings could not be more ‘celar’ (Picture: Backgrid)

Drivers are amused at a council’s spelling blunder every time they drive over the freshly painted road marking.

You might find yourself confused as you drive towards the junction of Marton Road and Newlands Road in Middlesbrough.

There you’ll see a sign in big, bold letters telling you to ‘KEEP CELAR’ at the junction near the town centre, TeessideLive reported.

It appears council workers swapped the L and the E when trying to tell drivers to ‘keep clear’ at the junction.

People snapped photos of the erroneous road markings as they passed through central Middlesbrough (Picture: Backgrid)

‘Is this for real? Yer jokin’ arn ya’, one person asked as residents of the North Yorkshire town took to social media to poke fun at the ‘hilarious’ error.

Another said: ‘Someone needs a lesson in spelling.’

One saw the light in it, saying: ‘Aw everyone makes mistakes, at least it’s made people smile.’

Another commented: ‘How about this, great to see Middlesbrough contractors can give us a giggle.’

This is not the first time councils have sparked laughter with their road marking mishaps.

People in Penge, south London, were left scratching their heads after road workers painted the word ‘SLOW’ backwards on the tarmac in January.

Bemused local Kim Cooper-Grindle, who spotted the men at work, asked: ‘Why would you need to go slow looking in your rear-view mirror, you’ve already passed?’

Chelmsford in Essex got a rebranding when the ‘f’ was dropped from a road sign along the A131, leading to a prompt apology from the council.

Essex Highways said the sign would be replaced as soon as possible, telling the the BBC: ‘We apologise to local residents about this unfortunate mistake.’

In 2022 the word ‘school’ was, ironically, spelled incorrectly on road markings outside a school in Brighton, leading to suggestions that whoever painted it needed to go back to school themselves.

And last year a new road sign on the A167 told drivers that North Aycliffe, a town which doesn’t actually exist, was only five miles away.

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