Hero Image Drift Guard — Daily Run

Date: 2026-06-05 (Fri)

Result: Heroes clean. No drift alert sent to Sam.

Source: WP REST API, context=edit, Cloudflare UA header.

What was checked

12 hero images via cva-hero__img (and sa-split-results-hero__bg for Lexington 6911). Each filename checked for the bokeh_effect highway placeholder, the sal-office-building-exterior generic, and vehicle/topic mismatch.

ID Page Hero file Verdict
6891 Louisville Car Louisville-Skyline-5-6.webp OK (city page; skyline acceptable, a crash image would convert better)
6911 Lexington lexington-downtown-street.webp OK (location page)
6899 Motorcycle motorcycle-crash-road-scene-1.webp On-topic
10228 Truck Causes Truck-Underride-Accident.jpeg On-topic
61282 Semi-Truck semi-truck-closeup-highway-dusk.webp On-topic
61364 UPS ups-delivery-truck-front-hero.webp On-topic
61285 Uber/Lyft uber-lyft-accident-kentucky-hero.jpg On-topic
61287 ATV ATV_Accident.webp On-topic
61284 Hit-and-Run hit-and-run-car-accident-kentucky-hero.jpg On-topic
61289 Insurance Bad Faith bad-faith-v2.webp On-topic
61288 Moped moped-accident-kentucky-hero.webp On-topic (correctly moped, not motorcycle)
61371 Delivery Fatigue Fatigued-Delivery-Driver.webp On-topic

Drift found

None in any hero. No iMessage/Teams alert sent, per task rule.

Notable finding (not a hero, no alert)

A full-body scan found the bokeh_effect_with_plenty_of_blur__highway_seen__not_too_much.webp placeholder on 11 of 12 pages, but it lives in the .sa-res-ticker (Sidebar Results Ticker) background, not the hero. It sits under a linear-gradient(rgba(11,33,45,0.93), ...) overlay, so it renders as a near-solid navy panel and is not visibly a placeholder. UPS (61364) is the only page without it. This is the same placeholder file the guard watches for in heroes, just in a different element. Low visual impact, but worth a one-time cleanup so the file stops appearing in scans.

Mobile heroes

Only the Motorcycle page (6899) has a distinct sa-m-hero, and it uses the same on-topic motorcycle image. The other 11 use a single responsive hero. No mobile drift.

Actions taken

Read-only guard. No live pages changed. No backup needed.

Recommended next actions (optional, for Sam)

  1. Expand this guard to also flag the Results Ticker background, since the placeholder is hiding there sitewide.
  2. One-time swap of the ticker bokeh_effect background for a branded navy texture or a real Louisville/Lexington dusk image on the 11 affected pages (low priority, near-invisible today).
  3. Add the UPS ticker bg as the known-good reference for the swap.