Anyone see that thing on TV 'bout Sweedish Traffic rules?

[JamesAC]

I remember being a pedestrian in a town in Norway a few years ago. I was idly dawlding along the pavement, stopping to gaze at the stunning scenery of the fjords and the mountains and so on. Then I was aware that if I stopped near a pedestrian crossing, all the motor traffic stopped and politely waited for me to cross! I had to slink away with embarrassement

Compare that with London: if you wait at a crossing to cross, you will wait all day, cos no motorist will stop. If you excercise your right as a pedestrian to cross the road on a crossing, you take your life in your hands.

On the other hand, in Witney there are hardly any zebra type crossings. But if you are trying to cross a junction, cars actually slow up as they are turning to create an opportunity for you

I think, on the whole, that de-regulating the roads will not help anyone other than the drivers of large heavy vehicles.

 

[NickM]

...Compare that with London: if you wait at a crossing to cross, you will wait all day, cos no motorist will stop. If you excercise your right as a pedestrian to cross the road on a crossing, you take your life in your hands...

But deregulation could be made to work in London. If cyclists and pedestrians were issued with sidearms and licensed to kill motorists.

 

[ChrisKH]

One of the items on Newsnight last night was taking out traffic lights. Perhaps that was what programme people were thinking of?

Whether for economical reasons or otherwise, they have already partly done this in London in places. I used to be able to sit at the white stop line at most junctions and look forward to the light placed on the other side of the junction. A lot of these have been taken out now forcing you to crane your neck to see the light at the stop line.

 

[bobg]

Better set all the lights to red.

Try the Merseyside approach, continue crossing on red until motorists coming in from either side start to move I've never seen it anywhere else in the country... even visitors from as close as Manchester ( not that there's many) Leeds etc., are amazed/horrified ....

 

[Arch]

Odd - most of the evidence I've seen shows that it works really well. Shared road space schemes have been trialled in Sweden, Holland, Belgium, Denmark and Germany - all with good results. There is a plan to trial it in London (on Exhibition Road).

Yeah, that was what I thought.. But this chap reckons cyclists get more bullied than normal. I suppose it might be just his local scheme - maybe it's an area populated by bullies....

 

[User169]

Here's an example of a shared space scheme in the NL. The guy explaining it all is, I believe, Hans Monderman.

 

[Monty Dog]

Groningen in Holland is where they've done the trial - maybe it's been copied in Sweden. I'm all for removing the clutter of road signs, lights, barriers etc. In busy town centres, the traffic's crawling anyway and the sheer volume of traffic dictates the pace.

 

[John the Monkey]

Odd - most of the evidence I've seen shows that it works really well. Shared road space schemes have been trialled in Sweden, Holland, Belgium, Denmark and Germany - all with good results. There is a plan to trial it in London (on Exhibition Road).

I think those are countries where drivers have a vastly different attitude to other road users though, and I think therein lies the problem with transplanting such schemes to the UK.