Safe Speed Forums

The chicken and egg motif comes up time and again. It was good when people respected zebra crossings. When they ceased, a reaction happened, and now we have pelican crossings. It was good when drivers understood that people had to cross the mouths of junctions, and waited from them to cross. Now they have ceased with that goodwill gesture, so the pavements are being extended to remove the privilege from drivers. It was good when people broadly stayed within the limits in towns and villages out of common sense and because their cars were underpowered and petrol was relatively dear. Now that common sense is on the slide, petrol is dirt cheap and any Tom, Dick or Henriette can afford a fast Vectra or BWM , people have ceased to broadly stay within the limits, so they are being compelled to. All of this is very saddening but it is due to inevitable political reaction as different groups fight over rights and access to resources. SafeSpeed is a political reaction in the opposite direction. I expect a balance will be found (it always is).

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In that respect, any change is bad because it is confusing. That is a cost to changing any system - the shake up of a traditional way of doing things causes havoc for a while. If the benefits outweigh the cost of the change, eventually the new way of doing things will become traditional.

You might be right, I don't know. Only time will tell.

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Yep. Time will tell.
But mean time I will be telling my 9 y.o. to be even more careful at these junctions, it's just the sort of invitation he needs to run across without looking.

Oh... now I see why you are worried. You are right - I'd definitely do that.

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basingwerk - people surprisingly enough are drivers and drivers are people. If pedestrian people and motorised people were less of a problem to each other in times gone by then maybe the problem is more to do with ignorance than wickedness. And suprisingly education raises standards and can have far better results in general than the lowest common denominator restrictions and rules that you and others so favour.

But it requires 2 things

1 less of an arrogant elitist view of fellow man ( difficult I know soimetimes !)
2 Preparedness to spend ( invest ) more for the more substatial solution

Yes - ignorance of basic human motivating factors, fear and greed. Things are getting worse because people are more fearful and greedy, partly because the fabric of our society has been shot to shit by "thumb in bum, mind in neutral" consumerism.



I was once an idealist, and believed as you do, that knowledge was key. Now, I have become cynical, and I believe we are in this mess because we have not used enough stick. Look at this sorry story about drivers who go to cities and spend all day cruising around looking for a spot then go home having achieved nothing, then can’t find a place to park at home! The point is that we have to educate people about the full round trip costs of motoring, not just the price of used cars and petrol. This means high insurance costs through dangerous habits, no parking when you get there, noise and pollution, full road building costs, costs of accidents to NHS and the state, effects of all this rush on peoples serenity, depletion of resources, congestion caused by congestion etc. etc. In Cambridge, you can’t go to hospital because there is nowhere to stop the car when you get outside! You are (mostly) OK up there in Wales. You can still park for nothing in Flint, Buckley or Halkyn. But the rest of the country is going to pot quickly, Richard, and it is always “somebody else’s fault”, never the drivers themselves!

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On another forum I frequent, there are regularly threads where certain narrow minded and selfish individuals insist that children who knocked down by cars must in some way be at fault, as must their parents. The concept that small children are not aware of the dangers, and that parents cannot restrain children forcibly at all times, seems difficult for them to grasp.

Getting a small child to appreciate the dangers of traffic is no easy task. Getting them to recognise the difference between pavement and road, and that its ok to walk on one but dangerous to walk on the other, is non trivial, especially with the increasing trend for "pedestrianised areas". It is difficult for adults even, when both are block paving.

How then are we to instruct children that parts of these new "pavements" are actually roads? How are they to know where to stop, look and listen? What the hell happened to common sense in this country?

It's certainly difficult for me to grasp, considering that my own experience of growing up was full of my parents keeping a very close check on me when I really was too young to be safe on my own, and then full of road safety lessons via TV ads, teachers and parents when I was old enough to understand. I don't recall exactly how young I was when I started to grasp the concept of road safety, but since I used to walk to and from primary school on my own I suspect I can't have been any older than 7.

Granted, you can't keep your kids 100% safe, but it seems like some parents these days have abandoned all responsibility and expect everyone else to look out for their precious offspring. If a child manages somehow to wriggle out of the grasp of their parent, or does a Houdini act and gets free of their pushchair, and then ends up in front of a moving vehicle, then by all means criticise the driver if they don't stop in time. But if a child is being left free to run around without any attempt at restraint, with the parent fully aware that said child doesn't have a clear grasp of road safety, then why shouldn't the parent accept some of the blame?



Maybe not, but unless we're talking about a really small child then it's not impossible. It just needs the right teaching, but sadly these days that seems to be in perilously short supply. I don't know what the average school is doing to teach road safety, but I do know that the few TV ads that remain seem more interested in showing what can go wrong if you screw up, rather than how to do things right in the first place, and if the standards of road safety exhibited by a growing number of 20somethings is anything to go by I really fear for the quality of safety education they're giving their offspring, if indeed they bother to give any - if a parent is so clueless about safety that they're happy to step straight into the road without looking, or stand on the pavement and wheel their pushchair into the road to force traffic to stop, then just how much road safety education do you think their kids are getting at home?




Well yes, that's the big question...

I agree with what you say.
However, I detect a tone of anti-children here.

Victormeldrew put the dangers of these pavements nicely.
Who makes these decisions about road structure? I get the feeling there is no adult discussion, just "Oh, that sounds sensible lets do it." As discussion on this forum shows, if an idea is not thought through properly then often what seems like a good common sense idea can turn out to be dangerous in real life.

You mean the "precious offspring" bit? That was in reference to the aforementioned parents who'll happily let their kids run around without supervision, yet if anything happens to them as a result they'll be claiming that their kids are the most important things in their lives and that they'd never dream of doing anything that might cause them harm and that it's all the fault of the poor innocent individual who was simply unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when the child went and did something they shouldn't have done... the tone you should have detected is anti-bad-parenting.

Yep it was the "precious offspring" bit.

I have told my son about crossing the road to the best of my ability. I think it's the biggest danger he faces going to school. And when he knows I'm watching it's fine, look all round listen and cross straight. When he doesn't know I'm watching its charge don't look and run at an angle.

Anything that makes my job of keeping him safe more difficult ie stupid pavements across junctions just makes me angry.

There is an alternative approach of reducing the junctions to a very narrow lane and putting sturdy concrete pillars at the neck. You see them battered and paint streaked by boneheads who have tried to get through the narrow gap at speed. Why not campaign for that - the only disadvantage is on thier no-claims discounts?

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How do they work on two way streets?

And this is going to help safety, how?????

By making it possible for pedestrians to get from the pavement into the path of a car in less time than it's possible for the driver to get his foot onto the brake pedal? And then to ensure that the driver has absolutely no room to swerve out?

When are you going to wake up to the absolute b****y stupidity of your "anything that slows cars down is good for safety" nonsense?
In short, when are you actually going to use your intelligence and start thinking about things?

Sorry for the rant, but you had it coming.

Cheers
Peter

The idea is to make drivers feel vulnerable, so that they slow down to a snail's pace. Then they are harmless.



Well you should see what they have done near my place. People in cars (me too!) were avoiding jams on the by-pass by cutting through the school lane. I always drove slowly past the little children in their chairs, and their mothers, and the little people on their push bikes. But ALL the other drivers (including a lot of stupid looking blokes in big vans and things) would zoom through, frightening the little ones and their mums and dads on the way to school. So now, the whole road has had obstacles fitted to it, and narrowed, and the junctions changed to make the cut useless. It's very quiet there now, but we all have to sit and stew in the jams on the by-pass, thanks to those boneheaded drivers who could not stay slow!

My only source of satisfaction is that the stupid boneheads with heavy feet are buggered up too - misery loves company!

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Okay I can see you point about the driver not being provided with a potential escape route. But I can't understand why putting the bollards up would give the driver less time to brake? The pedestrians aren't going to walk faster because of the presence of the bollards, and if anything the driver would be travelling slower (to get through the bollards) so this would provide more time to brake, and less effort to brake to a suitable level. Wouldn't it?

You also see them battered and paint streaked by unfortunate drivers who, in trying to negotiate a corner which is now practically impossible to negotiate thanks to the combination of these stupid obstacles and the existing levels of on-street parking, end up clipping one despite driving slowly enough for it to barely register on their speedo. Let's not try and suggest that these obstacles only penalise the idiots out there, they can and DO catch out considerate, essentially law-abiding, motorists as well.

It's best to get your car a bit beaten up looking early on, because then you never have to shell out for bodywork after that! Better still, buy it already beaten up - you get a good discount as well!

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Three concrete pillars!

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I think the line of reasoning being followed by Pete is something like this:

On a normal turning into/out of a side road, you can usually make the turn without getting too close to the pavement. On one of these narrowed junctions, you have no choice but to get within inches of the pavement. If a pedestrian is stood at the kerbside on a normal junction and steps into the road without looking (or despite looking, seeing you, and then deciding to walk in front of you anyway and to hell with right of way or any other quaint concept like that), chances are they'll still have to cover a foot or so of road before they pass into your path. If a pedestrian is stood at the kerbside on a narrowed junction and steps out, they are almost certainly going to be right in your path as soon as they start moving forwards.

If these bollards are placed right at the junction rather than being set back into the side road, then they provide a minimal additional incentive to slow down beyond that which is already offered by the realisation that you're heading towards a give way/stop line and a major road - you may need to slow down marginally sooner to begin negotiating the bollarded area, but you're not likely to be driving along a significant stretch of the road any slower than you would have done in the absence of the bollards.

By extending the pavement out towards the centre of the road and installing bollards which may give the impression that this particular bit of pavement is better protected against vehicle incursion than any other bit of pavement in the vicinity, you may encourage pedestrians to alter their behaviour at such junctions - the extended pavement can give the illusion that it's safe to continue walking at normal pace beyond the point at which you'd normally be slowing down to look for traffic, and the bollards may give the illusion that vehicles will definitely be moving more slowly than at a normal junction (or may even, from some angles, give the impression that the junction is closed to vehicular traffic, leading to pedestrians not bothering to look for traffic at all).

Sticking additional obstacles at a junction makes the driver concentrate on not hitting the obstacles, when they'd normally be concentrating on looking out for other road users (which includes pedestrians).


I'm exceptionally wary of crossing a road in the vicinity of a speed camera, because I know that a significant number of drivers will be paying at least some attention to the camera, taking away from the amount of attention they're paying to looking out for pedestrians trying to cross the road. In the same way, I'm also very wary of crossing a road in the vicinity of artificially narrowed sections, because the extended kerbs, bollards and other street furniture used to create such sections are going to have pretty much the same effect on driver attention as the camera.