It seems that Con Edison is using car service drivers to guard people and pets from high voltage spots — like fences and manhole covers — around the city. So many hot spots have been discovered that Con Edison doesn’t have enough trucks to do it themselves.

And it happened right here on Third Street last week. One of the limestone buildings between 6th and 7th Avenues was discovered to have dangerous high voltage spots on their fence. Con Edison put cones around the building and had a livery driver parked there for two days. The black town car had an orange cone on its roof.

A Con Edison crew came with a crane and hooked up wires through the trees and down into their basement to ground the streetlights. That supposedly stopped the fence from being electrified. It grounded it (pictures from NWDP to come).

The use of livery drivers is, obviously, causing some controversy in the news today.