Safe Speed Forums

Eek... This morning I was going up the road past my school, at the bottom of the road there is a zebra crossing placed on a bend in the road... Was going along, just your normal A pillar blind spot incident, I failed to see an elderly lady crossing the road... Conditions weren't great, was raining, the road was wet, there was a car coming at me with fogs on, I genuinely didn't see her begin to cross... I was only doing 20 - 25 due to the nature of the road, and I know that people here have a tendancy to walk out in front of cars on the zebra crossing without checking, but by the time I saw her crossing it was too late to stop... She was on the right hand side crossing over, and my decision on this occasion was to continue going, as I reckon if I braked I would have probably hit her (at a low speed, but I'd rather not do that). At the point that I hit the zebra crossing she was only about halfway across the other lane... I don't know, if the guy on the other side of the road didn't have his fogs on I might have seen her...

I know in the highway code it says you MUST give way to the pedestrian on the zebra crossing... And it's not really something I make a habit of, but it happened...

I'm putting it down to my lack of observation and the blind spot with the front pillar... I'll remember to check a few more times next time... Is that reasonable enough?

Of course, if I had hit her I'd be a lot more disturbed about the whole thing, and I suppose to other drivers it would have looked better if I braked, but by the time I saw her I'm fairly sure I would have stopped around the same place she was going to be at...

Thanks, a fairly guilty Mike...

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Mike

was the guy on the other side stopped?

He had stopped, but his vision coming out of the bend is better to that side of the road... The bend is to the left as I was approaching it, and on my approach he was moving, but he did stop to let her over, but by that point I was at the point of no return, so to speak...

It's a funny place for a zebra crossing... Either way you come at it you have limited visibility to one side of it... Going the way I came you have little visibility to the right hand side, but you can see the left perfectly, coming the other way you get good visibility to what was my right, but you get little visibility to my left...

I see your point about watching for the vehicle on the other side of the road stopping and I do try to do that, but it's sometimes hard to know if they're going slowly because of someone on the crossing... There are many junctions in both directions, and people can go slowly because they've just come out of one of them...

After thinking, I suppose I should have tried the anchors, but the lady wasn't looking either way, so if I had gone onto the crossing, chances are she would have walked into me while I was still moving, which would be bad... Although on the other hand driving through the crossing with her on it was illegal, and someone probably took a note of my plates...

A while ago I was actually in her position on that crossing, I began to cross, but I tend to watch carefully at crossing because I know people don't always stop at them... Saw a car approaching on one side, didn't look like it was going to stop, and just as I thought 'I'm stopping here for a sec' she looked at me and mouthed a sorry and looked a bit worried...

I don't want to try and excuse what happened, but they could really do with moving the crossing away from that bend...

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Mike

Its a tricky one mike. Don't take this as a dig, but I appologise if it sounds a bit that way.

The first thing to ask is that if you were unable to stop then were you travelling too fast? - given that you say that you know that people often walk out onto the crossing without looking (another issue in itself). I would suggest that you take a bit more time to look around the A-pillar at this spot - a slight movement of your head can make a massive difference. As you approach the crossing, slow down and take the time to make absolutely sure that there is no one on the pavement near the crossing. (I assume that there is a clear view of the pavement from the road? If not you might consider writing to your local council).

The facts are that the car coming the other way shouldn't have had its fogs on, and your ped shouldn't really have committed herself to crossing before she KNEW both vehicles had stopped. You can't justify relying on either of these as excuses though - people are stupid and you must be capable of compensating for other peoples' mistakes.

All in all, you didn't hit her, which however you look at it is a good thing. You'll learn from it and hopefully next time you would have left yourself enough time to stop.

I wouldn't beat yourself up overly about it. You're obviously making the effort to learn from it which is all you can do. There's no point talking in 'whatiffs' since you can't actually change what happened. I guess you're just lucky that they haven't invented zebra crossing cameras yet !

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

Yea, well, no that doesn't really sound like a dig I WAS travelling too fast, but I didn't want to go much slower, because then if I had stopped I would have probably been rear ended... Visibility to the pavement isn't all that great, you have cars parked on one side of the road as far as I remember, and the crossing is about 5 yards from a junction on the left hand side...

Edit> Just had a think about that, I guess it's a choice of the lesser of 2 evils, a car rear ending me at that speed probably won't do much damage to me, but me hitting an elderly lady at any speed it going to hurt her seriously...

I drive this bit of road virtually every day I'm at school, both directions... In the past I've had a few scary moments on it... There was a cyclist one day, but due to him being higher up on the pavement and me travelling the other direction, I saw him and had time to do an emergency stop, but he had no care for his life at all, he just bolted out in front of me, no checks, just riding across the road...

I'd say in this case, inappropriate speed was a factor, and I will start to check a lot more around the A pillar...

And, yup, lucky we don't have zebra crossing cameras, yet...

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Mike

The most important thing you've done is to acknowledge you made a mistake. That means you are able to learn from it. Don't think it's just you. I'm sure many drivers make a similar mistake. I remember an occasion not so long ago when I drove over a zebra crossing just as a pedestrian (who was walking in the same direction as I was driving) set foot on it. There was no actual danger of hitting him or her but I remember thinking "I really should have stopped there". That was a failure of my observation - I should have anticipated that the pedestrian would wish to cross and reduced speed sufficiently to be able to do so.

I think the critical 'double check' here (and at all pedestrian crossings) is to observe the behaviour of the other vehicles. If they are stopping you'll likely need to stop too.

Obviously the first check is pedestrian behaviour, but when that fails for any reason, it's good to have a second string to your bow.

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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

Drove up the same road there today... Don't know how I didn't see her, my only thought is there is a small parking layby beside the crossing, perhaps there was a van or lorry parked in it, because I think that could have caused my visibility to be limited...

Also a possibility was a lapse of concentration on the road ahead due to a mirror check/speedo check.

Oh well, thanks anyway guys for the pointers as always More stuff to take on board

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Mike

One thing I find in my car is that the wipers don't go all the way to the edge of the screen. This means that when its raining, water collects at the edges of the screen effectively increasing the size of the a-pillar blind spot. Just a thought.

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

However much of an "unadvocate" of RainEx you may be, treating this strip surely has to be a good move?

I've got quite a wide one on the campervan (POSITIVELY no Rain-x), and for some reason that I'm just starting to ponder it causes me no trouble at all. Curious...

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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

At the risk of teaching a grandfather, it's all about angle subtended by the pillar, not its thickness per se. The screens on those are way forward of the tors, whereas on a car they rake steeply in and almost touch you at the top.

Sorry, it's an area unswept by the wipers...

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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

Ah

Unswept areas - even quite large ones - don't matter much for peripheral vision, because you're only interested in big stuff that's moving (at least that's all your subconscious is intereste in}. At the speed you approach junctions, you're going to obfuscate things going at a certain speed. Your subconscious will have worked that out. It will also have decided that anything travelling that fast will be big and visible - even through the crudded up gap of unswept windscreen - to sufficient degree to make you shift your head to get a better look.

Um, I never even heard of rainex - I take it it stops the water from settling on the glass? Might have a look, cheers Roger!

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

I remember reading the replies about rainex, etc... Just never got round to replying. I think that could possibly have been the reason for me failing to see said woman... I tend to see cars and stuff out the side, but pedestrians are quite difficult to see when its wet and the bit at the side of the windscreen is quite hard to see through...

Anyway, I haven't had any more incidents like this, and hopefully I won't.

I do think that a problem might have been that for some reason I'm never in and around towns and areas with pedestrians in the rain, although I get plenty of that during my longer drives around the place. It's probably just inexperience...

Thanks guys, you're all a fountain of knowledge and experience!

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Mike