Safe Speed Forums

There's a road I drive along each day that has quite a few zebra crossings, and I've often thought that they are extremely dangerous in this particular context. Today, tragically, there was a police sign at one of them asking for information regarding a fatal accident that had occurred there. Unfortunately, I'm not surprised this has happened - the response will probably be more speed enforcement, but speed is not the problem IMO, it is the engineering of the crossings that needs to be changed.

To explain further, the problem I have with these crossings is that the pavement is relatively narrow next to them (perhaps two to three people deep), so if a pedestrian is walking along the pavement, it is very hard for a driver to know whether they will turn and walk onto the crossing or not. I have, on occasions, had to come to a complete halt for pedestrians who were not crossing, because they were walking on the pavement right next to the road, and happened to be right on the end of the crossing as I would have passed them. As they could, in a fraction of a second, have been in my path on the crossing, there is no alternative but to stop. However most car drivers don't do this - I have never, not once, observed another driver taking as much care as I do around these crossings.

Some of the crossings are even worse in that there is a river on one side of the road, with pedestrian access, and the crossings are positioned so that the pedestrian access to the river is right next to the crossing. There are trees and hedges at the side of the road that make pedestrians and cyclists completely invisible to road users when they're on the river bank, so they can, in a few steps, go from being completely hidden from car drivers, to being in the road, on the zebra crossing. I've seen joggers and cyclists hurtle out of the trees straight onto the crossings, and look somewhat taken aback when a car struggles to stop in the fraction of a second warning they've been given.

My solution would be a system of barriers in place to make people visible for much longer before they can access the crossing, and also to attempt to make it clearer to drivers when a pedestrian intends to use the crossing vs simply walking past it along the pavement.

Is this a general problem in other areas - are there more accidents where there are zebra crossings compared to making pedestrians take the responsibility for their safe crossing?

Road safety is the responsibility of ALL road users. This includes pedestrians of all ages.

Of course I regret every loss of life and I sypathise - but - judging from the post, I glean that the pedestrian has walked onto the crossing without giving the driver of the car the chance to stop.

It's alright teaching people cars OUGHT to stop so it's alright to walk out on a crossing is one thing - but what people OUGHT to do, what they SHOULD do and what they CAN do are different things entirely.

And before someone says "speed, speed, speed", even at 15 mph a car is covering 22 feet per second. Step out in front of one even at this speed once the driver has passed beyond the thinking then braking distance and you WILL be knocked over, right or wrong

I believe that zebra crossings are a recipe for disaster , not enough people are aware how they are meant to work .

I include myself in that statement , I was always under the impression that the pedestrian had to "start " to cross to signal for drivers to stop.This is in itself a hazard as it is assuming that said driver is paying attention and not changing tracks on the CD player , not always the case.

To add confusion , I work for a large un-named oil co. in Aberdeen who are positively anal about safety , and have a zebra crossing at the rear of the complex . The advice given out to each and every member of staff ,almost 3500 of us , is that you must wait at the pavement until a car stops . Could be there a while.

Its no surprise when there is so much conflicting advice given out (this guy is HSE BTW) that problems arise.

Absolutely right. TECNHICALLY you only have to give way if someone is actually ON the crossing - therefore it is the responsibility of the pedestrians to ensure that drivers have a) seen them and b) can safely stop BEFORE crossing.

I can't argue that re-engineering the road would probably make quite a difference in your specific example stevei, but you can't be held responsible for the negligent actions of others (ie walking into the path of a car that has no hope of stopping just because you have 'right of way')

At the end of the day, any situation where pedestrians and vehicles have to share the same space is going to pose a danger - a car running a red at a light contolled crossing is just as much of a problem as a driver not seeing someone waiting to cross a zebra crossing. It makes me furious when I see someone waiting for the little green man, only to step out onto the crossing without even looking to see if the traffic has stopped!

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

I might be confused about this, but if someone is near to the crossing, and could be on the crossing in a fraction of a second, wouldn't you have to stop just in case? If they do walk onto the crossing, then you will have to give way, so it's surely the driver's responsibility to always make sure they can stop if necessary?

My main source for this is from when Esther Rantzen was convicted of failing to accord precedence on a crossing, and this appeared to have been based on her vehicle having caused pedestrians to merely pause for a second or two as she passed. So if the path of your car would cause a pedestrian to interrupt their stride in the event of them turning and walking onto the crossing, as far as I can see you have to be ready to stop in time.

Further to this, it would therefore be the case that it is always the driver that is deemed at fault if they hit someone on a zebra crossing, no matter how little warning the pedestrian gave them. I'm just speculating, though, I would be interested to know if there have been court cases where someone has walked into a crossing right in front of a car, and what the outcome was.

One of my views which I have stated on here before is that most zebra crossings should be replaced by pelican crossings. Pelican crossings are better for 2 reasons:

1. Allow traffic to flow, particularly where the crossing is busy.
2. Easier for the driver to see when to stop. (Red lights are relatively bright).

I prefer the pelican-crossing with the flashing amber phase. With the new crossings there is a problem that some people take longer to cross than others so they stay red long enough to give the slowest people time to cross. That means that they are still red most of the time when everyone has crossed.

Pedestrians should watch out for themselves, but in a collision between a car and a pedestrian, it is very rare for the driver to suffer a heavy penalty, but common for a pedestrian. In other words, pedestrians account for the mistake, whoever is at fault.

If we choose, we can drive in a calm way that compensates for the inevitable mistakes pedestrians make, and for the inevitable mistakes we make ourselves as well. That’s good two times over, because we avoid accidents, and it makes us look good! If we, as a group, don’t drive that way, human nature suggests that we WILL be blamed for any accident, right or wrong.

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I stole this .sig

There's a particularly scary zebra crossing in Grange over Sands. The pavement on either side is no more than about 3 feet wide, but worse than that on one side a shop doorway is more or less opposite, so people can emerge from the shop and be on the crossing before a driver has a chance to react.

As far as I can make out, zebra crossings are such a legal paradox that they should never actually work! According to the Highway code...



But


In the days when road safety was based around common sense this was ok. But now that common sense has gone out of the window in favour of imposing the exact letter of the law I reluctantly agree that zebra crossings have thus become largely unworkable.

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

I don't have time right now to go into the subject in great depth, but I believe that zebra crossings are fundamentally a good design becuse they work through road user co-operation.

Maybe we have broken the earlier systems of co-operation. I hope not.

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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

Oooh I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently...

As a pedestrian...

I will always make sure that there is a safe gap or the cars have stopped at either kind of crossing.

At a pelican crossing:
Firstly you have to walk up to the button and press it. It's usually not where I want to cross the road. It might be sticky. I feel guilty for stopping the traffic, especially as I know the lights stay on longer than needed. If a car has to stop I try to avoid looking at them because I'm sure I've annoyed them. It wasn't their choice to stop, they were made to.
I quite often find myself in the situation where the red man is showing but some of the lanes of traffic are stopped. The other lane/s may well have a green light but there's nothing coming in those lanes. So I have to stand there waiting for the green man because I don't know what's coming next in the sequence, me green or the stopped lanes green.

At a zebra crossing:
You don't have to walk right up to the pole, you can be either side of it and the traffic will stop for you. If I'm in a good mood I might even smile at them as a way of saying thanks.


As a driver...

At a pelican crossing:
When approaching a pelican crossing with someone next to it I don't know when the lights will change. Will I have to stop? Won't I have to stop? I'm sure this will encourage some people to speed up to make sure they get through.
These lights where they've removed the flashing amber stage cause frustration. That and some other traffic light abuses have made me seriously concider ignoring the red light when I can see that all's clear.
I have seen a situation where due to angles of the road (hilly) and sun light the driver of the minibus I was in thought the lights were green when they were red. Fortunatly the child about to cross the road noticed the minibus hurtling towards them and didn't step out in front of it.

At a zebra crossing:
If there's someone waiting to cross I'll stop. If there isn't I won't. Quite simple.

And another thing... If there's a power cut, which one's better?

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Andrew.

But aren't most of our rules of the highway based around removing conflict by setting clear responsibilities in terms of who has right of way? Traffic lights, roundabouts, give ways at junctions, even the notion that each direction has a side of the road that is "theirs".


But what if you can't tell? What if someone is at the end of the crossing, but was walking along the pavement, and you don't know if they're going to carry on along the pavement, or turn and walk onto the crossing? What if as I described, someone can come from a place where they are completely hidden, and within a second, possibly even less, actually be on the road on the crossing? Perhaps I need to take a photo of a crossing with these problems to show the difficulties.

There was a time, not that long ago, when pedestrians approaching a zebra crossing stopped on the edge of the pavement and looked. If there was a car coming the driver almost always stopped (if it wasn't already too close to) even though they weren't strictly obliged to, and then the pedestrian crossed safely and everyone was happy.

What happened to change that?

Nowdays pedestrians simply step onto the crossing with barely a glance, and heaven help the poor driver who now has to stop dead from, say 15mph, in about two inches flat.

Cheers
Peter

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

I have to disagree here ( ) purely on the basis that they are no longer so common, and new drivers have so many different crossings to learn about that something has to give - often the older systems!
Also, I am certain that pedestrians are no longer at the standard of road awareness they once were, because they too have a wider range of crossings etc. to learn, AND nobody to teach them! (About time they had to pass a test, and take an MOT! )

Since starting the Bolisher Beacon thread in CSCP refugees, I have studied them in more detail.
The lights are not synchronised, and are insufficient to attract the attention of drivers, especially where the background clutter serves to camouflage them! Even the black and white stripes on the road are not as clear when there is traffic in front of you, the road surface is irregular and poorly repaired, and as pointed out in previous posts, the intentions of pedestrians are not always clear.
Better to spend £48,000 on the PELICAN and remove the uncertainty offered up around the ZEBRA's ..... they've had their day!
You can still co-operate at a PELICAN by not initiating the sequence if only a solitary car is approaching, until it has passed, or slowing and waiting patiently at a PELICAN in the same manner might be the case at a ZEBRA.
We should ALL smile at each other a lot more!

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

It makes me wonder how people fare when they go over to the continent - particularly places like France, where drivers completely ignore zebra crossings.
Perhaps they don't take the piss when they're on holiday because they know they won't get away with it.

Cheers
Peter

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Only when ideology, prejudice and dogma are set aside does the truth emerge - Kepler

Yes. That seems the most important thing.



Maybe I was being a bit simple there. If they look like they are going to cross then I'll stop. If they are walking up to the crossing and look like they might cross then I'll slow down.
If there appears to be nobody about but they are actually hiding waiting to pounce.... Hmm... I don't know. If they want to cross they should walk to the edge of the road and cross safely. I could make some comment about evolution by natural selection, but that might not be nice

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Andrew.

I seem to remember being taught, that is a moving vehicle is within the zig zags, then the vehicle has priority, only start to cross if there are no vehicles within the zig zags, they are there as a guide as to whether a vehicle travelling at up to the speed limit has the distance available to stop safely.
I was also taught that the pedestrian has to claim priority by stepping up to the crossing and making it clear that they wish to cross.
Loitering around a crossing was also taboo.
They ar there to facilitate a safe crossing point for a pedestrian, but also to allow a motorist the ability to maintain a safe speed and reduce congestion.
The trouble, as pointed out earlier, pedestrians are not educated properly about road use, and they appear to be bullet proof, whereas motorists are educated, some better than others, but are subjected to the full weight of the law, even when it could well have been the fault of a pedestrian.

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Semper in excreta, nur quantitat variat.

Ziltro - there is not one but many pedestrians, flowing across. Just as you think it's going to be clear to go another one steps out.

Try driving on Great Marlborough Street, W1 in a Westbound direction. If you dont' want to pay the congestion charge then do so just after 6:30 on a weekday. Just ahead of you there is a traffic light to cross Regent Street and straight over would be Maddox Street which is one-way in your direction so the traffic light is no problem really if you can reach it. There is also a bit of traffic about to merge from Kingly Street on your left.

If you finally get past that light then turn left into Regent Street and right into Conduit Street (next right) or go ahead then left then right to get into Conduit Street, it doesn't matter. Then continue along Conduit Street to Berkeley Square and see how easy it is to get on there.

Now of course Berkeley Square could be made simple with some signals to get on, preferably fairly frequently changing (about every 12-15 seconds or so) and pedestrians crossing could be phased in easily with that.

I always thought there was a rule in the Highway code which went something like "You should always aproach a pedestrian crossing in a manner which ensures that you can stop if you need to"

This, of course was widely ridiculed as it means, in effect, that your speed must be zero as your front bumper reaches the crossing whatever the circumstances. It shows the folly of trying to legislate for every eventuality!

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I'm not always right, but my score is higher than the government's

That's not right is it? If no pedestrians are near the crossing there's no need to stop.

If a pedestrian is -say- 3 seconds from the edge of the crossing you have plenty of time to stop from 20mph if the pedestrian suddenly heads for the crossing.

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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

Basingwerk, what about If we choose, as pedestrians, we can approach and use crossings in a calm, predicatable way that compensates for the inevitable mistakes some drivers make.

I agree with you entirely when you say that the pedestrian always pays with greater injuries in a collision: So what about teaching and reminding pedestrians that their use of a crossing may well be 'right' in the eyes of the law, but whether they are right or wrong, that if they go onto a crossing unexpectedly - no matter what the law says about who is 'right' - they could be hurt very badly?

There has to be a trade off between the benefits of travel and transport and the associated riskes of accidents. I have said this before - I have a way to guarantee that no more planes crash, ever! Ground all of them and don't let them fly. As history shows, there is no record of plane crashes and all the death and carnage therefrom before the Wright Brothers era.