Vulnerable road users

daveyjp

It will take years to become custom and practice, if ever.

The one area where this is very dodgy is roundabouts.  If someone is waiting to cross the entrance to a roundabout its a brave driver who stops on the roundabout to let them cross, especially if the roundabout has exits to a motorway sliproad and the roundabout has a 60 limit.

I was in Poland recently and without question in cities cars stopped to let you cross at junctions and even on streets if they saw you close to the kerb drivers would stop to let you cross.

facade

ontheroad1970 said:

facade said:

From my experience it hasn't made any difference.

Presumably the drivers who never look where they are going have never looked at rule 170 either.

As a pedestrian, you have to be very careful.  I stopped to let someone across by a dropped pavement and the car next to me almost didn't stop.  The pedestrian seemed to be aware of the rule change.

The gamechanger would be if rule 170 was enforced properly- e.g. if you don't give way to a pedestrian, you and 3 generations of your family are immediately executed, until that happens you still have to be ready to start running when you are crossing at a junction.

The big problem is that some drivers can only process one thing at a time, so they try to turn right into a junction on two wheels right under the wheels of an oncoming car, fully focussed on "beating it" but don't notice the pedestrian who has been perfectly visible while walking towards the junction and is now well across the road because they think only a total idiot would try to make the turn now when the road is clear for miles behind that oncoming car.

They don't even notice that there is a car coming towards them on "their" side overtaking the badly parked car near the junction, or that the car who turned in in front of them has come to a stop......