On 05/09/18 10:36, Bruce 'Not Glug' Lee wrote:
NY wrote:
On 04/09/18 21:37, TMS320 wrote:
On 04/09/18 21:30, NY wrote:
On 04/09/18 21:24, TMS320 wrote:

When walking left/right, the pavement ought to be be treated as
continuous just as the carriageway is continuous for vehicles going
left/right.

It is continuous except for the implied give way "line" at every kerb
edge, including the point at which the pedestrian crosses the side road
and then continues along the main road.

The "implied give way" is for drivers crossing the pavement.

I wonder if it would help in enforcing the
driver-gives-way-to-pedestrians anomaly if the pavement was continued
across the side road at the same level, and cars had to drive over a
speed hump consisting of that pavement, as a reminder that they have to
give way in this special case.

What is needed is a complete inversion of the current system, whereby the
minority imposes its will on the majority by sheer threat of blunt force
trauma. That needs to change. Pedestrians should be given free reign
over the entirety of the public space, and car drivers should have to press
a button to get permission to pass. The pedestrians then stop for a short
period, the car passes and the space then becomes 100% pedestrianised after
that.

What you need is a system that requires the least technology and the
least planning-ahead, and causes the least disruption and queuing to all
the road users (pedestrians, drivers, cyclists).

I think the system we have is the least-worst one. If cars had to
request permission to pass pedestrians, you'd need to confine
pedestrians to cross only at designated places where they could be
temporarily be prohibited while cars (temporarily) have priority. And
you'd need to enforce that. My perception is that pedestrians are much
less willing to obey rules that car drivers don't think twice about (eg
travelling only on one side of the road (pavement), people emerging from
a shop doorway giving way to people passing on the pavement). If people
drove with the same ill-discipline that they walked on a pavement, there
would be crashes every few seconds.

Whatever system you have, it needs to conform to one overriding rule: at
any instant or any place, only *one* road user (or series of road users)
has absolute priority, with this being clearly understood by everyone.
That's why shared-road-usage schemes are a nightmare to drive in,
because you never know who has to give way to whom. I don't mind having
to wait my turn, but I want to know that when it *is* my turn, I
shouldn't have to expect anyone to get in my way. Road junctions such as
roundabouts and major/minor junctions convey priority by position (give
way to traffic from the right, minor road always gives way to major
road); traffic lights do it by time (all roads have exclusive priority,
at different times).


When I'm cycling, I obey the same rules as if I was driving: if something
ahead is blocking me, I wait (patiently or impatiently) behind it or else
I overtake on the opposite side to the way it is indicating if it is safe
to do so; I *always* obey zebra crossings and traffic lights. I think I'm
very much in the minority with this.

You think wrong.

Maybe I only notice the cyclists who fail to conform to the rules, and
ignore the (small? large?) proportion who obey and are therefore less
noticeable. But I do notice, both as a driver and a cyclist, that I'm
more aware of cyclists who break the rules, as opposed to drivers. For
example at traffic lights, cars etc may sometimes go through lights just
as they turn red or just before they turn green - it is rare to see a
car go through lights which have been red for some time, when there is
actually conflicting traffic going across the junction. In contrast,
there is a section of the cycling community which goes through lights,
no matter if they have been red for some time, as if they feel that a
red light doesn't apply to them and that other drivers will (and must?)
give way to them.

The only two very serious near-misses that I've seen on zebra crossings
involved cyclists. On one occasion I was a pedestrian walking near the
zebra and in the other case I was a cyclist who was approaching a zebra.

In the first case, a woman was pushing a pushchair across a zebra. All
the cars in one direction had stopped (because the crossing was divided
by an island, traffic in the other direction was still moving until she
reached the island). A cyclist came whizzing past all the stationary
traffic, swerved between the lead car and a traffic island, lost control
as he tried to swerve around the woman and pushchair and ended up
sliding across the road towards the wheels of an oncoming lorry. When he
picked himself up, he went to attack the woman for "daring" to cross on
a zebra crossing and "causing" him to injure himself. Fortunately a
large burly man restrained the cyclist and "persuaded" him to calm down,
and held him until the police arrived. I never heard the end of that
story, but I hope the police threw the book at him.

In the second case, I was approaching a crossing. There was a large
group of tourists which had started to cross, so I slowed down gently,
intending to stop and wait for them to pass. Suddenly I heard a shout of
"out of my f-ing way" as another cyclist overtook me (his rucksack
jogged my shoulder, so he passed very close to me) and rode full-tilt at
the group of pedestrians, scattering them left and right, and leaving
them very shocked. I happened to see a policeman a hundred yards further
on, so I asked how I reported the incident officially, but he wasn't at
all interested. If only cyclists were required to display number plates,
that would have made it easy to trace him and would probably discourage
"bad cycling". As a cyclist myself, I'd be glad to do this because I
know that I have nothing to hide.