General Chat

Dear All

Hello


Hope you are okay.

This is a serious question.

In the area you live, do you have to use a lot of Zebra crossings?


Do they allow enough time for your to safely get from one side of the road
to the other?

Or do you feel that you get half way across and the lights change to green?


Take gentle care
Best wishes
Elizabeth,
xx

I think you're getting zebra crossings and pelican crossings muddled up ;-)

Where I live there isn't much demand for either. There isn't as much traffic as there is elsewhere.

When I have to go into town for something I usually find pelican crossings are pretty useless. By the time the lights change, there's no traffic to stop. :-)

There's one in the village, but to be honest I only use it when the car is in for a service - the garage is on the opposite side of the road to everything else. There is plenty of time, but like Graham, there has usually been a big gap in the traffic to safely cross.

We do occasionally use one in the town. I think its a con to make you feel you have some control over the traffic flow as its a 3 way junction with traffic lights anyway!

The pelican crossing on the main road near an island here crosses 4 lanes to the middle and then 3 lanes to the far side. I must say found it a bit hard to get across the 4 lanes to the middle before the lights changed after I'd had an operation and couldn't walk fast. The traffic roars off like a Brands Hatch start when the lights change as well. It did make me wonder how mums with toddlers in tow and the very elderly manage.

dunno about the pedestrian side,


but some of the traffic lights around here only give around 11 seconds of green

get a dawdler op front and he's the only one that gets across!!

Bob

Far too quick in Winchester.
What is extremely annoying is, on the one-way system, there are traffic lights at the top of a junction. The traffic turning right is usually okay, but those that turn left, then have a bus stop (which effectively closes one lane when the bus is there), and traffic lights a few yards further
on.
There is a pelican crossing at the top of the junction. When the traffic is jammed, following cars can see it's jammed, but just squeeze behind the jam, effectively blocking the crossing, so pedestrians have to squeeze in between the cars.
Then, when the traffic further up starts moving, even if people are crossing, they think they can just move on - s*d the pedestrians! This must save them, oooo 20 seconds at the most, but makes it bl**dy difficult for pushchairs.

When they were first invented, and I was still fit, I still thought there was far too little time for anyone to cross comfortably - and now I use a wheelie walker or just a stick there are no safe time margins at all.

None at all where I live.

But it's a small town, not even one set of traffic lights.

As a motorist, can assure you that green light means "proceed if crossing is clear". Almost all motorists tut if their light is green, and crossing not clear. But they do know that rule.

Always wise to have a stone to throw at any driver who shuffles forward on green once pedestrian has started their manoevre. Breaking the windscreen or deflating tyres is acceptable in Highway Code. (no, it's not - but should be)

Same rules apply to vehicles at traffic lights. Green means "Proceed if clear" - not "Put your boot down on accelerator as hard as possible. :-) ;-)

I don't like the ones that change, from the motorist's point of view, straight from red to green - prefer the flashing amber. The time to cross for pedestrians seems quite short. We have a crossing on the main road now, there was call for one for years but nothing happened until somebody got killed crossing the road about 5 years ago.

Where I live there is a [sort of] staggered crossroads, the main road turns right, but to go straight on you turn left first......

Add to that on the main road there is a zebra crossing about 20 yds before this odd junction and then another about 10 yards after the junction!! the parish council also recently decided to widen the footpaths so the road is narrower than before.

And as this is the diversionary route when the A1 is shut for any reason it causes more than a few headaches!!!!