It’s easy to feel tired after a long journey but the one place you don’t want to take a pit stop is in the middle of the road.

When a mattress ended up discarded in the centre of a busy motorway, highways officials in Arizona had a sassy message to help people avoid the danger near Phoenix.

“This is not a rest area,” Arizona Department of Transport posted on Twitter while a team went to remove the item.

The tweet, including a picture of the offending item, garnered hundreds of likes and retweets.

They kept up the sleepy banter, later reporting that the mattress had been removed and “nap time is over”.

Followers were impressed with whoever is behind the transport authority’s Twitter account.

It’s not the first time the account has created a buzz on social media about furnishings ending up on the state’s roads.

Earlier in May, it called out the “bad feng shui” of placing a sofa and cushions on a busy state road.