Safe Speed Forums

Manchester paper today published a really sad story about Magda of Poland. Fluent in German - she and her husband travelled by coach to the UK where they secured employment in a hotel chain.

Magda - though - on auto looked to the right when crossing a road. and ..died under the wheels of a bus. The bus proved to have defective brakes though this was not deemed to be the cause of the incident.

Speed kills eh?

Magda was hit at just 14 mph and died from her head injuries

I feel for her and her family. She simply looked the wrong way as a result of her roots and for someone so obviously intelligent and much to offer... so tragic. If her family hit this site ... as a fellow Catholic .. a candle will be lit by me for her.

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Withe people getting killed by slow speed reversing injuries I think there is a "critical" speed. Above which you get pushed clear or go over the bonnet, below which you go under the wheels. Under the wheels can be far more dangerous.

We had an accident near me recently. A bus pulled out from a stop as a child on a bike was overtaking it. The bus was probably doing about 10-15 mph. The child went under the bus and was killed instantly. At a higher speed he may have been thrown clear.

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Speed camera policy Kills

Being the multicultural person that I am, I have pulled foreign friends from the path of cars because they looked the wrong way (I think it’s their being distracted by others in a group that causes this oopsie, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to survive on their own).

This is interesting because it highlights a shortcut that I think most of us have become accustomed to. People usually look only in the direction of oncoming cars in the lane they step into, saving the glance in the opposite direction for later; this usually works because it’s so rare to have a car at speed on the wrong side of the road in such pedestrianised areas.

One of my German friends now always continuously checks both ways before crossing (in both UK and DE) just in case she gets confused – just like the Green Cross Code used to recommend!

Just think what it warns us about contraflowing bus lanes.

See: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/pedrisk.html

Contains:



(The verticalis pedestrian fatality risk per 100 million vehicle kilometers)

And:

One very big point you left out of your list of why buses are dangerous to pedestrians is: people simply don't expect to see a bus in a bus lane. Bus lanes spend almost all of their time devoid of any traffic, except for the very occasional bus. This is not just my opinion, but that of many people I've spoken to who have had the experience of almost being hit by a bus. The most dangerous bus lanes are the contra flow ones in a one-way street, where people not only don't expect to see a bus, but they're looking in the wrong direction.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I have never been able to understand why people do this.
I can't think of any occasion when I would ever walk into a road after only having looked one way. I always look both ways, even if I know it's a one way street. (and if you don't know you have to assume it isn't, right?)
As most roads aren't one way streets the normal thing to do is to look both ways. You have to, cars are coming from both ways.

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Andrew.

Even on one way streets, some p*llock on a bike will be coming the wrong way anyway

And on Poole Quay there is a contraflow cycle lane so they're encouraged to do it!

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Andrew.

If it were only wrong-way cyclists we needed to watch out for, there wouldn't be much of a problem. It's the growing number motor vehicles being driven/ridden the wrong way that worries me... Sometimes the junction layout and/or quality of the no-entry signage is at least partly to blame, but increasingly I'm witnessing what I have to assume are deliberate acts of wrong-way motoring, in order to avoid a lengthy trek around a one-way system.

But yeah, as Ziltro says, looking both ways is just an ingrained habit now, because it's how I was always taught to cross the road - the direction of expected traffic flow never, AFAIR, came into it.

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Chris

Yeah, I must admit that I'm the same - I always look both ways. I also do this when in the car pulling out onto a 1 way street. You just never know and it takes no effort at all to look.

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Lots of people look right, start to cross, look left, wait on the centre line if necessary.

On busy roads such as the one outside my house I sometimes wait on the centre line as you have no hope of a gap in both directions. When driving onto that road and wanting to turn right, I instead turn left, then turn right into another residential road, do a 6 point turn then turn left onto the main road. It is MUCH quicker.

The point about contraflowing bus-lanes is a valid one. I have already postes about a 4-lane one way street in Reading that had sprouted bus lanes on either side, with the rightmost one going in the other direction despite the one-way signs. Of couse this had unlit cyclists going up it in the opposite direction to busses

No-one uses one-way streets correctly any more, no-one waits at the correct side of them when intending to turn right, and if you do you invariably get some twunt turn left and nearly hit you head on, then get all agressive as apparently you're on the wrong side of the road.

So yes, always look both ways when crossing a road, or when joining a major pavement lest you get hit by the lycra louts.

And then there are the numpties who seem to think traffic will simply come to a halt and let them cross regardless... on the way to work this morning, see a youngish bloke heading towards the edge of the pavement. It's a typical single carrigeway bidirectional urban road, the lane nearest us is nose to tail doing perhaps 10mph, the opposite lane is free-flowing at 30ish. Numpty briefly looks at the traffic nearest him, sees that it's still slow-moving, then turns his head and concentrates entirely on the opposite lane whilst stepping casually into the road about a yard in front of a car... No attempt to make eye contact with the driver, not even a hint of a wave/nod of acknowledgment for stopping, apparently just a blind belief that by walking in front of a slow-moving car they'd be perfectly safe.

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Chris

One thing I've noticed is that some pedestrians (often teenagers, but not always) do look before they cross the road, but they're not looking to make sure it's clear. They are only looking to check that the approaching driver has seen them and can stop in time: if so, they just walk straight out and force the car to stop.

I disagree. If a road is obviously one way with eg 2 lanes of steady traffic, I would only look one way in this situation. It's human nature to risk assess and do the least checks your brain will allow to give a level of safety.

Glasgow doesn't have many cyclists who think one-way signs don't apply to them, then?



The problem I have with this is, if people get used to the idea of only checking in the direction that's obvious, sooner or later some of those people will mistake a non-obvious scenario for an obvious one, fail to make the "unnecessary" check in the other direction, and walk straight out in front of something...

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Chris

I agree with you. It's bound to happen to someone sometime.
I'm not saying don't look both ways, I'm saying some people wont (like me on occasion). I just about got run over in hospital grounds by a car going the wrong way down a one way route. Yes, it was partly my fault for not doing as you say and checking both ways. But if I do this then others will as well, and road engineering must take this into consideration.