Photo of melted traffic light wasn’t taken in Bulgaria

Thousands of people have shared a photo of a melting traffic light on Facebook, alongside claims it was taken in the town of Shumen, Bulgaria. 

The picture, which has been shared almost 3,000 times, shows a set of green traffic lights that appear to have been distorted by extreme heat, with the plastic covers collapsing over the lights themselves. 

Bulgaria is currently in the midst of an extreme heatwave that has affected large parts of southern Europe and North Africa, leading to record-breaking temperatures in a number of countries. Parts of Bulgaria were expected to reach up to 40 degrees Celsius on 19 July.

But this picture of a melting traffic light wasn’t taken in Bulgaria. As other fact checkers have previously pointed out, it was actually taken in Milan, Italy. 

In August 2022 Italian website Open reported on claims surrounding the same photo that a traffic light in Milan had melted as a result of a heatwave. 

However, the local fire and police services told reporters that the traffic light had melted as a result of a moped catching fire beneath it, not solely because of the weather. 

This is not the first time the picture has been wrongly attributed to a different location. In June, fact checkers in India published an article about claims that the traffic light had melted in the city of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, in the summer heat. 

Misleading images are one of the most common kinds of misinformation we see online, but they can sometimes be hard to spot. It’s always worth checking if a picture shows what the post says it does before you share it—we have written a guide on how to do so here.