Safe Speed Forums

How safe are zebra crossings these days? Personally I can't think of one that I know where pedestrian controlled lights wouldn't be more appropriate. I'm also curious about what proportion of pedestrian injuries occur on zebra crossings. There's a reason I've been thinking about this.

A couple of years ago I saw a learner driver run someone over on a zebra crossing in west London. I'd been following the learner for a couple of miles or so, feeling very glad that they were ahead of me as they were pretty erratic. Sometimes in the gutter, sometimes on the central white lines, and speed highly variable without any real need. Needless to say this wasn't a proper dual-control learner car with a real instructor, but that's a different issue that I could go on about at equal length so I'll do a seperate post. When we got to the zebra crossing the car slowed down, and a pedestrian seeing this assumed (as did everyone I spoke to while waiting for the police and an ambulance) that it was stopping to let her cross. Next thing the car accelerated and sent the poor woman flying. I was shocked, if not altogether surprised, to notice that the brake lights didn't come on until after the impact. Fortunately the learner didn't seem to know what half the gearbox was for, so the speed was fairly low, certainly under 30. Still, the way she bounced up off of the windscreen and landed in the road looked pretty nasty. (She made a full recovery by the way - I met her at court over a year later though I didn't her recognise without being covered in blood.)

Now up till then, as poor as the learner's driving was, stopping for red lights didn't seem to be a problem. Maybe if the zebra crossing had been a pelican/toucan crossing a nice bright red light would have prevented the whole thing. I’ve seen a quite a few near misses on zebra crossings in the London area. This usually seems to be in heavy traffic, especially when oncoming vehicles have passed the crossing before being forced to stop. This inevitably tends to obstruct a driver’s view of any pedestrians crossing from the right, admittedly to a lesser extent if it’s a Fiesta or something blocking your view. But the problem gets progressively worse with larger cars, doubly so with smaller pedestrians (i.e. children). As for child pedestrians obscured by vans, lutons and trucks… In these circumstances I find myself creeping across in 1st, knowing that sooner or later I’ll have to brake late for a pedestrian I couldn’t see before, and hope like hell the guy behind is awake enough not to park in my boot and ram me right over the poor sod who’s crossing. On the other hand, any form of pedestrian controlled lights lets everyone know where they stand. Red man for you and green light for me means you stay on the pavement and I keep going. Green man for you and amber or red light for me means I stop and you cross the road. And as it's stuck up on a big pole I'll see the red light, even if you're hidden behind an artic on the other side of the road.

Anyway, since then I've begun to think that zebra crossings have probably outlived their usefulness on our roads and should be replaced by other types. I'm sure they used to do the job whenever they were introduced, but the levels of traffic were so much lower then. Anybody know how many cars were on the road when the first zebras were put in? I've also begun to wonder recently if as many lives could be saved by binning all the zebra crossings as by sticking gatso cameras all over the place. Like others here I'm far from convinced that gatsos save any lives at all, so I suspect that improving crossings will have a much more beneficial effect on road safety. However, I can't prove it and don't know where to start. Does anyone have stats for locations of pedestrian injuries and crossing types, or alternatively know where I could find them? Or have I let one incident colour my thinking, and zebra crossing are okay after all? I'd be interested to know what you think.

Just adding some thoughts to this.

I really dislike using zebra crossings as a pedestrian, it feels unsafe because of the assumptions made about what drivers will do, and the transfer of responsibility to someone else.

I think you have a point. Zebra crossings aren't a problem in small towns/villages, but in built-up areas it seems a very strange way of doing things. On the road up to the station in Lancaster, they put in two crossings a few months back. One is a puffin crossing (or it might be a regular pelican), and the other is a zebra. In the mornings, there are so many pedestrians about that I see large queues forming at the zebra crossing, as there's often a stream of people crossing one way or the other. Would be much better if they'd made it a crossing with lights. As you say, it lets people know where they stand.

Perhaps cost is an issue? (Although they could gladly stop spending money on this bloody pointless 'street furniture' and put it on sensible ideas like this!)

_________________
-mike[F]
Caught in the rush of the crowd, lost in a wall of sound..

Zebra Crossings with its flashing belisha beacons, zig zag zones painted on the road, and black and white crossing, are easily visible and far more efficient than traffic lights which stay red for far too long causing needless traffic, especially where there is a pelican crossing facility which seem to have 3 minute pedestrian crossing times these days. At least they do where I live. If you see a Zebra crossing zone you should be doing a slow enough speed to be able to stop your car very quickly anyway, if you are an observant and alert driver.
And of course, with pelica crossings pedestrians press the button, immediately cross when there is a gap inthe traffic before the lights react to the button and turn red, then cars stop and wait whilst no-one crosses the road. Pointless.
Traffic Lights suck. Roundabouts and zebra crossings rule.

Binky, this is where puffin crossings come in.

_________________
-mike[F]
Caught in the rush of the crowd, lost in a wall of sound..