Seamus

Sent to me today, comments?? (sorry it's quite long)

"Motorists, take a back seat. Pedestrians are the masters of the road. Mike Rutherford reports on a new scheme

Ask me to nominate a few measures that would reduce road deaths and injuries and I'd put the separation of vehicles and pedestrians close to the top of the list.
Sometimes vehicles leave the road and hit innocent people. Sometimes it's the other way round: people step off the pavement into the path of traffic.
So wherever possible we must create an environment where drivers and pedestrians move in separate areas. The more we do this the more we can reduce the potential for collisions.
But the Pedestrians Association couldn't disagree more. "That attitude is so Sixties," one of its spokesmen told me.
The London-based association, backed by the Government and some local authorities, is mad keen to allow pedestrians to have priority over vehicles on some roads. The master plan is to keep predominantly residential roads open to traffic, but force vehicles to crawl along at about 10mph.
"The trouble is, strictly speaking, there's no such thing as a 10mph speed limit. There's a technical problem with the legal status of a limit that low," the Pedestrians Association spokesman admitted.
"But the way the roads, dubbed `home zones', are being designed and managed will be such that vehicles will go sufficiently slowly. If there was a collision, it wouldn't have a very serious effect on the person who was hit.
"So the posted speed limit will be 20mph. But the way in which the roads will be redesigned and laid out will dramatically reduce speed. You'll have to keep negotiating chicanes and changing direction. There will be tree planting and reduced sight lines for drivers."
I cannot believe what I'm hearing. Does the Pedestrians Association really want countless millions of pounds spent on transforming straight, free-flowing roads into twisty obstacle courses? Highways designed and built specifically for vehicles and drivers will have new masters: the vulnerable toddler with the ball; the bored teenager with the skateboard; the intoxicated, swaying adult. Drivers will be of secondary importance. That's the way it is already working in trial areas, on the outskirts of Manchester, for example.
"The key point about these home zones is that they give priority to social activities, people chatting and sitting enjoying outside space," says the man from the PA.
"Residential streets are places where people want to live, where children want to play, where neighbours want to chat, or relax on a bench."
Fair enough, up to a point. But the place for that chat is on the pavement, down the local pub or in each other's homes, perhaps.
I'm all for children playing in their neighbourhood - at the park, in their bedrooms... anywhere that's appropriate and reasonably safe. The road surface doesn't qualify.
A person who makes the point of conducting a conversation with the neighbour in the middle of the road is either naive, daft, bloody-minded or quite possibly all three. One who's prepared to even contemplate children using roads as playgrounds is dangerously irresponsible.
Cue the Pedestrians Association spokesman once more: "I've got photographs of these sorts of schemes where two adults meet in the middle of the road and have a conversation."
But, I protest, they could take two or three steps and have the same conversation on the pavement. So why the hell don't they?
"Well, because they met in the middle of the road. If you bump into friends or neighbours in the road you know you can have a conversation about whether they can babysit or whatever without having to scurry to the side of the road."
I'll be blunt. This is nonsense. As things stand, motorists are legally obliged to give way to pedestrians. But it's dangerous and absurd to tell pedestrians that they have priority over vehicles and that it's acceptable to stand in the middle of the road. In fact, it's about as dangerous and absurd as suggesting that cars should have priority over pedestrians on pavements.
My apologies if the following transport tips for the modern world sound obvious, but some people apparently need to have such things spelt out for them. Railways are for people on trains. Runways are for people on aeroplanes. Bus lanes are for people in buses and taxis. Roads are for people in, or on, motorised and non-motorised vehicles. Just about everything else on the planet is for people on foot: houses, gardens, parks, footpaths, zebra and pelican crossings, pavements"

Hmmmmmmmm

GazP

Surely this can't be for real? Is it a wind up? If so I find it pretty funny! Surely their must be someone out their who will stand up for motorists and not put up with all this anti car $hit we get all the time. I mean, who the hell stands in the road for a conversation? Only people out of their minds thats who.

This whole country is going to the dogs...

jon hill

sounds fine to me, if used in the right place - two examples spring to mind

1. soho / covent garden - is it just me or is it completely insane having folk driving up & down through there, all thinking they have "right of way" over the pedestrians when the pavement is too crowded to walk on ?

2. outside my flat - i live in a long cul-de-sac, but that doesnt stop folk from getting up to 50 mph through the parked cars. Some tank traps and barbed wire and the knowledge that cars dont have right of way on the street would be a good thing. And I dont have kids...

Got to agree that if the M4 is turned into a 20mph residential zone, then I would be somewhat dissappointed, but i'll also agree that the idea of segregation is very Bracknell / East Kilbride and stuck in the 60's (or maybe the early 70's... )

jon

nom

I think it must actually be a joke too...
In Norfolk, though, I have noticed that many villages have a 20mph limit. Mind you, most of these you'd be lucky to do 20 in anyway as they're all blind corners & walls.
If it really is real, I can't imagine it would get anywhere as there's the phycological problem (or is it just a learning problem?) with children - if they grow up where they can drift all over the road because it's a pavement extension, then when they come to a real road they'll do the same. i.e. get dead. Oddly, a fact which never seems to be mentioned is that pedestrian deaths(particularly children) shot up when the government stopped doing those ads on TV and teaching sessions at school for 'things to not do on the road'. Remember a long time ago we had (for some reason) Darth Vader crossing the road with children? A very long time ago, must have been late 70s... but anyway, that was good stuff. Safety-wise, anyway. Why on earth did they stop it?

Jerome

nom,

I think you mean David Prowse playing the Green Cross Code man (he also played Darth Vader). I've read that they stopped doing those adverts etc because research had found that - plain and simple - children do not have road sense. Road sense is only gained later on. For example, a child chasing a ball is so fixated on the ball they don't notice traffic, a child who has just bought an ice cream from a van is more interested in the ice cream than the traffic and so on.

The bottom line is that kids can't be taught road sense and it's down to drivers to watch out for them.

boultsy

He also played the Jolly Green Giant.

Next they'll be suggesting we bring the Red Flags back.

nom

Well, I was close! I think Darth Vader was probably more memorable to me at the time
Funny, isn't it, how different 'sources' say different things? There's a group out there campaigning for children to be taught about roads because, they say, it worked so well. I think you're right in that the ball is probably more important than getting run over, but when threre's no ball, surely they might look then? It would help a bit.. but then again I really haven't got the first clue!!