OTTAWA - POLICE in westernmost Canada are deploying life-size cardboard replicas of traffic cops pointing a radar gun at oncoming traffic to try to reduce speeding and road fatalities, authorities said.

And these mock-ups are so realistic that while being tested on a Vancouver street this week, 'a tow-truck driver pulled up and started talking to it', Staff Sergeant Ralph Pauw told a press conference on Thursday.

Eight of the cut-outs will initially be deployed on city streets, Sgt Pauw said. And in case some drivers aren't fooled by the facsimiles, 'there may or may not be a (real) police officer behind one of these cut-outs', he added.

The police initiative called Operation Silhouette follows similar trickery used elsewhere, including 'bait cars' for thieves, fake intersection cameras and mechanical moose used by Canadian wildlife officers to nab poachers. -- AFP