Leicester City Council have found a novel way of adding to the local street furniture by placing plastic children on pavements. They are there in an attempt to make drivers cut their speeds but could such an idea really work or are the council members who conceived of the idea the real dummies.
Some drivers have already complained that the plastic replicas are spooky, scary and reminiscent of the Autons in the Doctor Who TV series. With wild staring eyes and expressionless faces the dummies are to be found on roads surrounding a local primary school.
When I was learning about road safety traffic lights were designed purely for motorists. For pedestrians there was neither a button to push nor a “little green man” to indicate that it was safe to cross. I still remember the confusion that the flashing yellow light caused for motorists when it was phased in. As pedestrians we just kept our eyes open and followed “the green cross code”. Looking back with the mindset of one of today’s road safety planners it is no doubt a wonder that we lived to tell the tale.
Today we have a residential speed limit of 20 mph, railings at places that are unsafe to cross and a plethora of other road safety measures. One would have thought that in conjunction with road safety education in schools children would be relatively safe.
If anything detracts from pedestrians’ safety today it is surely the abundance of “street furniture”. We have more road signs, utility junction boxes, CCTV camera posts, and other obstacles than ever before. Even our bus stops are super-sized; not that this stops ill-bread idiots standing right in the middle of the pavement so that those walking by need to step into the road to get by.
So whose crazy idea was it to add plastic dummies to the list of obstacles that pedestrians have to traverse? What do mothers with push chairs think about them I wonder, in a world where they already have to scrape by a multitude of objects to get anywhere. How about the elderly and partially sighted? It is easy to imagine some good potential comedy situations here but I will resist. Road safety is a serious matter after all.
Besides the obvious hazard of placing more obstacles in the way of pedestrians might not these dummies actually cause drivers to be less attentive? Their spooky faces are a sight to see. In addition there is the added possibility that drivers may become de-sensitised to them and mistake real children for them who are standing still at the side of the road patiently waiting to cross.
Thankfully I have no children but if I was a parent the very first important lesson of life would be to drive home the fact that we are born once, we have one life and then we die.
Specifically when it comes to road safety I would teach them the simple code that I learned when I was young.
The Green Cross Code.
- Find a safe place to cross where there are no parked cars and where you can clearly see oncoming traffic and just as importantly, a place where drivers are able to see you.
- Keep looking left and right while waiting for a suitable time to cross and wait for a time when there are no cars approaching from either direction.
- When it is safe to cross, do so but keep looking left and right all the time until you reach the other side.
I have no way of knowing exactly how many roads I’ve crossed in my lifetime of almost half a century but this system seems to have worked so far. I’ve never cut corners to catch a bus either. I’ve always remembered that it is better to wait for the next bus than loose the only life I have.
Children are not dummies and with the right education they don’t need plastic bollards in order to be safe on our roads.
See:
“The child bollards that are so lifelike they’re scaring motorists.”
(Daily Mail 16.08.09)
“The Green Cross Code with Kevin Keegan (1976)”
(Old Public Information Film at YouTube)
Filed under: News, Stupidity, Autons, Child Bollards, Doctor Who, Green Cross Code, Leicester City Council, Road Safety, Street Furniture
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