Is jaywalking (dangerous pedestrian crossing) ever a crime in England?

unholyangel

boliston wrote: »

The traffic normally has to wait about 10 seconds at most and it does not make any difference to them if the wait those 10 seconds straight away or 3 minutes after the button press, it's still 10 seconds that they wait for.

And if you had a situation where the button being pressed led to the lights changing immediately you'd then have traffic backing up or possibly becoming gridlocked if you had a steady procession of people at certain intervals.

Does your 10 seconds account for the lights sequence and time the driver has to brake, slow to a stop then how long it takes them to get back up to the speed they were driving at? For example, the amber light is typically on for around 3 seconds to give traffic a warning that they'll need to stop.

boliston

unholyangel wrote: »

And if you had a situation where the button being pressed led to the lights changing immediately you'd then have traffic backing up or possibly becoming gridlocked if you had a steady procession of people at certain intervals. .....

It would be best if the lights changed straight away once pressed but with some rule built in that there needs to be a certain time (eg 2-3 minutes) between each light change. This crossing has very little pedestrian traffic (probably one person crosses every 10 minutes on average) so not much chance of any "steady procession of people".

SouthLondonUser

@boliston, I'm afraid it's a bit more complex than that, because traffic lights must all be linked together. You cannot change one without affecting a number of other lights.

unholyangel

boliston wrote: »

It would be best if the lights changed straight away once pressed but with some rule built in that there needs to be a certain time (eg 2-3 minutes) between each light change. This crossing has very little pedestrian traffic (probably one person crosses every 10 minutes on average) so not much chance of any "steady procession of people".

You'll probably find thats exactly what they do.

Or rather (taking into account southlondonusers answer), there will be certain points throughout the sequence that are suitable to allow pedestrians to cross and when you press the button, it will activate (for lack of a better word) on the next suitable time. Which is why sometimes you'll get it changing straight away almost and others might have to wait a few minutes.

Tbh I've never bothered when having to wait at a crossing. Although personally I'd say overpasses or underpasses are a lot better/safer for everyone involved, especially in areas of high traffic. Unfortunately, they also cost more to build.

boliston

unholyangel wrote: »

.....
Tbh I've never bothered when having to wait at a crossing. Although personally I'd say overpasses or underpasses are a lot better/safer for everyone involved, especially in areas of high traffic. Unfortunately, they also cost more to build.

They cost a lot more and create a massive eyesore - they are also not very nice things to have to use and quite a few are now being replaced with crossings.

Car_54

unholyangel wrote: »

Tbh I've never bothered when having to wait at a crossing. Although personally I'd say overpasses or underpasses are a lot better/safer for everyone involved, especially in areas of high traffic. Unfortunately, they also cost more to build.

Underpasses are obviously safe from motor traffic, but less safe from muggers, prostitutes, drug dealers, etc. As a consequence, pedestrians tend to avoid them at less busy times and take their chances with the traffic.

unholyangel

Car_54 wrote: »

Underpasses are obviously safe from motor traffic, but less safe from muggers, prostitutes, drug dealers, etc. As a consequence, pedestrians tend to avoid them at less busy times and take their chances with the traffic.

Anywhere out of view/dark a mugger can isolate you is more attractive to them (same reason burglars prefer side/back doors, out of view of people on the street). No reason we couldn't incorporate that knowledge into their design though.

We have a few underpasses here in the town centres and don't have any more trouble in them than you get on the street. Most of them are just designed to cross under a single road (so are only ever about 10m from the "street") but one in particular is a web of connecting underpasses. Although in that area, I reckon the muggers stay away as they'll be the ones who are safer on the street :rotfl:

NBLondon

SouthLondonUser wrote: »

@boliston, I'm afraid it's a bit more complex than that, because traffic lights must all be linked together. You cannot change one without affecting a number of other lights.

Speaking as a South London resident - this is key. When one light in a sequence fails or is disrupted by roadworks in can cause mayhem in the rest of the chain. Or in other cases - an adjustment to the timing at one junction causes queues elsewhere for weeks until enough people find alternative routes. I have seen a few cases where a failure has actually improved the traffic flow temporarily which might be a sign that the phasing was badly set - but it's a complex interconnected problem.

Ideally - you'd have real-time adjustment throughout the day that balances the traffic flows and the pedestrian flows but that would be a major investment. Plus Turin tried it in 1969 and it was disrupted by an English hacker to assist criminal activity

Back to the first topic - another situation I see closer to home is when the pedestrian crossing is offset from a key destination such as a railway station. For example, here https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4656884,0.009162,3a,75y,298.41h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1srj65veG2qaer-qo5mOUEdg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 ; in the morning rush hour, many pedestrians will take the shortest diagonal route from the source of their coffee to the station entrance, despite the railings and in the evening the reverse. Moderately aware drivers will be focusing on the traffic light at the pelican and the pedestrians there and not necessarily on extra pedestrians who apparently cannot walk an extra 3 to 5 metres to use the marked crossing.

SouthLondonUser

Look at what Paris came up with for jaywalking pedestrians: https://lbbonline.com/news/serviceplans-virtual-crash-billboard-gives-jaywalking-pedestrians-a-shock/

Unfortunately, I am afraid it would never fly here, whee the focus seems to be that vulnerable road users, like pedestrians and cyclists, should not be made responsible for their own safety - they're poor vulnerable snowflakes, so other road users should watch out for them, even when the snowflakes do something stupid and suicidal.

An excellent example is the successful campaign of the cycle lobby to have the "stay back" stickers at the back of buses and HGVs replaced with less offensive "take care". I find it simply crazy that a lobby dedicates more efforts to changing the wording of a sticker than to actually inform its members of the risks of that behaviour. And I say this as a motorcyclist (I don't own a car); guess what, the "stay back" sign does not offend me in the slightest, and staying the hell back from large vehicles, especially when approaching bends, is what I always do, out of self-preservation.

boliston

NBLondon wrote: »

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Back to the first topic - another situation I see closer to home is when the pedestrian crossing is offset from a key destination such as a railway station. For example, here https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4656884,0.009162,3a,75y,298.41h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1srj65veG2qaer-qo5mOUEdg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 ; in the morning rush hour, many pedestrians will take the shortest diagonal route from the source of their coffee to the station entrance, despite the railings and in the evening the reverse. Moderately aware drivers will be focusing on the traffic light at the pelican and the pedestrians there and not necessarily on extra pedestrians who apparently cannot walk an extra 3 to 5 metres to use the marked crossing.

quite a few councils are now removing that horrible cattle pen style guardrails as they are proven to increase vehicle speeds and make roads more rather than less dangerous - they also create an eye sore