Safe Speed Forums

In the north of Glasgow pavements are being extended across side streets that lead onto main roads. They usually lower the height of the pavement and often use monobloc.

I think these are dangerous. Who has right of way, pedestrian or car?

I can see a pedestrian thinking "I have right of way I,ll not even look" - WHAM!

The pavements show what has always been the case - once pedestrians have started to cross at a junction, they have priority over cars, which must give way. Of course, pedestrians should look out for themselves. You'd be surprised how many drivers are ignorant of the simple highway code rule that they have to wait for people if they start to cross before they make their turn.

_________________
I stole this .sig

Hold the phone, I agree with basingwerk. Hardly anyone believes me when I tell them about that rule, but it is a fair rule IMO.

But it is important to note that the rule only applies once pedestrians have started crossing a side road. There is no requirement for turning vehicles to stop for pedestrians who are waiting to cross the road.

_________________
"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Yes, PeterE, but madly, there is no requirement for pedestrians to wait for cars that have not started to turn, only ones that are already turning. Once no car is actually turning, pedestrians are free to start, and subsequent cars MUST stop. Trying testing that, and you’ll end up in A&E, though, so we need some ‘give and take’ here, don’t we?

Here’s some technical/philosophical guff. Waiting is the prelude to crossing, but is waiting the start of the act, or the start of the lead up to the act? It’s a common race condition in systems which require access rights to shared resources.

A standard technical solution (which is unfortunately beyond the comprehension of the lay-driver) is to extend the lock period back to the start of the wait period, thus including the waiting as part of the act of crossing. This is apparently how zebra crossings “should” work, although the “MUST” clause is reserved for people with their foot actually on the crossing. Zebra crossings are a thing of the past now - replaced by more forceful traffic lights because some drivers refused to stop at them! I never did – I always respected Zebra crossings, but some boneheads just ploughed straight through, so now they put Pelican crossings everywhere, making the roads even slower, and all because many drivers are not calm and reasonable – again, like cameras, it is drivers’ own fault.

This is throwing strawberries to donkeys for some of our simple minded driver community, who just want to zoom along, thumb in bum, mind in neutral, pretending pedestrians aren’t there!

_________________
I stole this .sig

I think these trends are every dangerous.

We've had a finely evolved and effective priority scheme evolved over 100 years of motorised road use. The priority scheme has depended, not only on rules, but also on behaviours.

Now we're blurring the borders for rather sad, unrealistic and hopeless ideological reasons. It'll all end in tears, mark my words.

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

I think simple is good and complicated bad. Everyone will agree with this.

These new "pavements" complicate. I can see a lot more dangerous scenarios arising than the one I mentioned.

I wasn't aware of the highway code rule about pedestrians crossing, these pavements just confuse me more.

They must encourage pedestrians to just walk out without care as there is no obvious delineation between pavement and road.

That's a very interesting point about Zebra crossings. If you examine the legislation covering them, and even the advice given in the highway code, then in theory they shouldn't work at all - the only time a pedestrian can cross is when there is no traffic coming, ie the same as if there were no crossing at all!

Yet in practice they've worked, and this is solely because of the give and take relationship that has existed between road users, a bit like when two vehicles meet on a narrow road. In situations like this legislation is hopeless and we need to fall back on more basic human nature for a workable solution.

So the whole thing swings on courtesy and consideration, which as you point out seems to be on the decline. It's easy to pin this onto falling standards in society generally, but I don't think this is entirely fair - we've always had inconsiderate people (the elderly are some of the worst offenders, and they weren't brought up in Nineties Britain!). We've always had reckless young tearaways etc.

No, something else has changed which has definitely made Zebra crossings less effective.

Could it be the dumbing down of driving enforcement generally, the replacement of reasonable and sensible rules with mechanical prescriptive ones? If we encourage people to "drive by numbers" then they will tend to apply rules instead of discretion when they arrive at a zebra crossing, which as we've said earlier, makes them fail completely.

_________________
CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

The borders started to blur as cars changed from curiosities to nice-to-haves and eventually became ubiquitous. We have tried to gear up society on the assumption that this is a universally good thing, but at each step, the culture of the car has had adverse effects as well as desirable ones. Look at that other post about parking - people go back home after cruising city streets for hours looking for a spot!

Now that max-congestion is being reached in some places at certain times of day, everybody is angry, stressed out and driving badly. As the resource wars continue, and max-congestion becomes as ubiquitous as cars have, it will get worse. Steps to avert max-congestion just result in people choosing longer commutes, which take up more bandwidth and return us to a max-congestion condition! Look at the M56 – any improvement in throughput just puts up the house prices in Wales for a while, with no overall change! Could we be in a hopeless Malthusian clinch? You are right, it'll all end in tears, for some of us anyway.

_________________
I stole this .sig

I thought the driving test sorted this type of thing out. How are people getting through the net?

If I don't know the rule, then I am part of the problem. I would never give way to a pedestrian if I didn't know that he had the right to cross, would I?

_________________
I stole this .sig

There is no encouragement for people to read the highway code and be completely fluent with it's content?

Most people I stop have not picked up a highway code since the night before their driving test.

It's another reason for regular retraining, including testing on knowledge of the highway code.

_________________
Fixed ideas are like cramp, for instance in the foot, yet the best remedy is to step on them.

Ian

Perhaps instead of banning people (and I don't mean for drinking, but for other, petty things) we should give them the option of taking a tough test? That's one way to drum it into them.

_________________
I stole this .sig

By Jove, I do believe he's got it!

_________________
CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Come on, I'm a reasonable person, but I mean an instruction course and a proper test, not just a quick check to see if they know what a red light means!

_________________
I stole this .sig

basingwerk wrote:


True.
But, in defence, I wouldn't plough through a pedestrian just because I was ignorant of the highway code.

How do these pavements help? I just can't see it.

If you don't know from the highway code about other people's rights, you'd never guess that you were in the wrong if there was no sign or symbol or something to tell you. You'd never know that drivers have lower priority than pedestrians who have started to cross -- but these pavements made you ask the question, so now you do know.

Arguably, that might or might not matter. In my opinion, for the system to work safely, people should know how to use it properly.

_________________
I stole this .sig

I would argue that this underlines what I said a few posts back, about safety relying not on a published set of intricate rules, but on the "back stop" of care, consideration, and common sense. Fergl doesn't need a law to tell him not to mow down a pedestrian who has started to cross, the combination of basic common sense, allied with sufficient consideration not to start revving his engine and blowing his horn, and the end result is the same.

Rules are great for sorting out blame after the event, but for preventing the event from happening there's nothing as effective as reinforcing basic respect and consideration. But that has to work both ways - the motorist needs to be afforded respect to start with in order for him to repay it.

_________________
CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

In reply to basingwerk:

OK, yes it made me think (a good thing). But it also confused me.

All in all possibly these pavements make some car drivers safer, maybe even me. However some may fixate on the new pavement rather than the pedestrian (bad).

From the pedestrian point of view, I still think the sense of confidence given by these pavements, at the expense of care, will prove ultimately to result in more accidents. Surely this is true.

Not sure. The procedures in the highway code appear to be constructively ambiguous in some parts, e.g. zebra crossings. In fact, anywhere concerning access contention (e.g. narrow roads, as you suggest, or unmarked crossroads) seems to leave a little room for imagination, which might be OK - I expect it is because of the vast range of people it has to be interpreted by. In all of these situations, it is hoped that low (enough) speed and due care can work around the fault lines.

I sincerely hope that in areas of medium risk but with random eventualities and large contention, such as villages and towns etc., people can see the value of a speed limit (and I mean “limit”) rather than a guideline. On m-ways and the open road – well that’s a different kettle of fish as far as I am concerned, although I keep within the limit myself.

_________________
I stole this .sig

We seem to have a government with a penchant for legislating common sense (or in fact legislating against it in a lot of cases). I see this as an ever-decreasing spiral - once you remove that basic trust and impose a rule, then you need to impose another rule for the exceptions that the first creates, and so on. A bit like trying to squash a balloon with your hands!

Motoring is a case in point. Some people use mobile phones inconsiderately, so instead of targeting them we get a blanket ban. But the ban has to have exceptions to deal with specific situations, which in themselves are worse than the situation the ban was trying to deal with in the first place!

My belief is that in a situation like road safety, where rules cannot possiby even begin to address all possible situations, what we need is respect, trust, empowerment, and responsibility, rather than nannying rules.

_________________
CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!