More Than Living

Four wheels, two legs — both good?

The eternal war between ped­es­trian and motor­ist. Of course, it’s not really a war, or at least not a very fair one.

The auto­mobile won that battle a long time ago.

Now, although I prefer to walk most places around town, and now walk the 6 mile round trip to work, I am also a driver, and can under­stand there are people who don’t see the world this way. If people want to drive, then let them drive.

But what I hate as a ped­es­trian is the superi­or­ity the motor­ist assumes for them­selves over those on foot. Even when the driver is a dis­tant second on the scene, with a ped­es­trian already halfway across a junc­tion, the driver often assumes a weirdly self-​​righteous approach.

Rev­ving of the engine to ‘make a point’ – I don’t know which one, as the High­way Code gives pri­or­ity to the ped­es­trian – or driv­ing unne­ces­sar­ily close to emphas­ise the walker’s folly in encroach­ing on the cars’ ter­rit­ory. All have become, if not quite ‘accept­able’, then to some extent the de facto rule of the road. Any­thing which slows up the flow of the traffic is deemed to be bad and will be acknowledged.

I have a solu­tion. The umbrella I carry becomes my beacon and my stout staff, beam­ing out its mes­sage of respect between fellow road users with its cerise lining. And an ener­get­ic­ally bran­dished umbrella soon gets the mes­sage across, even if I need to explain my point to the enraged driver who is ini­tially exas­per­ated and uncom­pre­hend­ing at a lowly biped draw­ing atten­tion to himself.

I have a prized little mental port­fo­lio of these incid­ents now, all of them fea­tur­ing the same blink­ing, lack of com­pre­hen­sion on the part of the driver. But I would like to think they had their per­cep­tions subtly changed thanks to my Boots ladies’ auto­matic extend­ing umbrella.

The truth is it will prob­ably take a gen­er­a­tion or more for atti­tudes to change in favour of the poor defence­less walker.

But a pro­ject which is being tri­alled in Ash­ford may point the way to the future.

This road safety scheme is the first example of a ’shared space’, a traffic concept which does away with the tra­di­tional ways of sep­ar­at­ing cars, ped­es­tri­ans and cyc­lists, hope­fully pro­du­cing a system where every­one reg­u­lates their beha­viour and respects each other.

Cars no longer have ‘right of way’, and all road users have equal pri­or­ity. Drivers are no longer able to pick on the lowly walker.

It’s a crazy idea, but in the long run it might just work.

IMAGES by Flickr users

zbowling and magnetbox

Sim­ilar Posts:

• Get in the saddle for one of the great Gov­ern­ment cycling schemes
• Tree­hug­ger on green driving
• The UK’s strangest safety tips
• The AA on green driving
• Cold hands — warm hearts

Ori­gin­ally posted 2008-​​11-​​26 21:21:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

Posted in Uncategorized | View Comments