A police officer teaches pupils to recognize traffic signs at the No.1 Primary School of Boxing County in Binzhou City, east China's Shandong Province, June 27, 2019. Safety education activities are held across China to help raise students' awareness about safety for a safe summer vacation. (Xinhua/Chen Bin)

Improperly set road signs became the target of a backlash on China's social media after netizens found that a surveillance camera had captured hundreds of thousands of traffic violations over the past year. 

The traffic signs and markings near a highway fork in Foshan, South China's Guangdong Province, were so unclear that an alleged 620,000 traffic violations were reported there over the past year, local media reported Monday. 

Many local drivers complained that they were not able to change lanes in the dotted line section in time when they needed to take the correct fork due to the unreasonable road signs, leading to repeated fines.

Local traffic police clarified on Monday evening that the actual accumulated number of traffic violations caught at this site was 184,383, and not 620,000, as of April 1.

Meanwhile, the highway administration has started to improve the traffic signs and markings at this section, in order to avoid similar complaints in the future. 

Global Times