Running red lights, I wanna take action

ollyshaw

Hi,

In the last few years I have seen a rapid rise in the number of motorists behaving appallingly on pedestrian crossings (pelican and zebra). This seems to happen every time I walk in a town or city and I am getting sick of it.

Examples
* Driving through a crossing on a red light while on the phone. Going 30-40mph
* Going bumper to bumper, not leaving any space and completely blocking crossings
* Following the last driver through, ie driver in front went through on amber. Driver behind thinks "if they made it so can I". Result driving through red light
* Driving too fast and not looking if anyone is waiting to cross a zebra crossing.

I can't believe there are so many selfish people doing this. Is there anything I can do to stop it? I was thinking of petitioning the council on certian problem crossings or taking photos to shame the drivers. Any better ideas?

Many thanks,

Olly

PS I am not anti car, I drive myself.

reduceditem

In a city I know well in Romania they replaced normal lights with 'countdown' lights a couple of years ago. Basically, as you wait at the lights they literally count down (in red) to zero then the number changes to green to show how long it is until its red again (I hope this is making sense!). What I can say having driven a lot in the city before and after these lights were installed is that jumping lights etc (endemic in Romania) has been dramatically reduced. I think the reason is that people are less frustrated when they can see exactly how much time they've got.

balsingh

reduceditem wrote: »

In a city I know well in Romania they replaced normal lights with 'countdown' lights a couple of years ago. Basically, as you wait at the lights they literally count down (in red) to zero then the number changes to green to show how long it is until its red again (I hope this is making sense!). What I can say having driven a lot in the city before and after these lights were installed is that jumping lights etc (endemic in Romania) has been dramatically reduced. I think the reason is that people are less frustrated when they can see exactly how much time they've got.

They have those lights in many countries and all I can see it doing is encouraging people to go even faster to get through before the time runs out.

Poppycat

Yes I seen this increase too, but pedestrians are just as bad, often seen them dodging cars between 2 lanes of traffic at a set of lights

Also plenty of young kids riding bikes up the wrong side of the road and bumping up kerbs doing stunts, this isn't always on side street but main roads, parents should take more control.

Conor_3

ollyshaw wrote: »

I can't believe there are so many selfish people doing this. Is there anything I can do to stop it? I was thinking of petitioning the council on certian problem crossings or taking photos to shame the drivers. Any better ideas?

Yeah...sort your own driving out first before you start having a go at others.

moonrakerz

Become a special constable - or a traffic warden ?

mjr600

This picture is a composite of deep field shots from the Hubble Space Telescope.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/96664main_galaxy_string_4.jpg

Each area of light is an entire galaxy and it can take 100,000 light years to travel from one side to another. There is maybe a billion light years of travel from the left to right of your screen

The Earth would be so small compared to the expanse of space shown here that it could reasonably be measured at the subatomic level.

The photo is often referred to as 'the God killer' with good reason in my view.

I trust that this puts the problem you describe into perspective.

Move on and stop worrying.

Markyt

Conor wrote: »

Yeah...sort your own driving out first before you start having a go at others.

Become a Knight of the Road HGV driver?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6764859.stm

rdwarr

mjr600 wrote: »

This picture is a composite of deep field shots from the Hubble Space Telescope.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/96664main_galaxy_string_4.jpg

Each area of light is an entire galaxy and it can take 100,000 light years to travel from one side to another. There is maybe a billion light years of travel from the left to right of your screen

The Earth would be so small compared to the expanse of space shown here that it could reasonably be measured at the subatomic level.

The photo is often referred to as 'the God killer' with good reason in my view.

I trust that this puts the problem you describe into perspective.

Move on and stop worrying.

That's an interesting philosophy. Are you saying that nothing on Earth is worth worrying about as it's much smaller than the whole Universe?

Mind you, it's a great pic!

mjr600

We will all end up as dust floating around in space at some time in the future, in the event that I could look back at the life I had for a fleeting moment I would want to remember the love of my wife, my children and my family, friends, holidays,the beauty of nature, good times.

To worry so deeply about what could be considered such a trivial situation is I think quite sad.

Carl Sagan puts it better than I ever could, listen to his words and tell me that the issues which so trouble ollyshaw are worthy of wasting even a second of ones life trying to sort them out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M

tomstickland

Careful though, because there's a risk that the council will tell you that all of the problems will go away if they just lower the speed limit a bit more and maybe paint a thousand gallon's worth of paint in the form of hatchings out and about the place.

Jumping red lights has become noticeably worse over the last few years. On some large roundabouts I'll be moving off on the Green and cars will still be filtering onto the roundabout from the side. And lorries!