h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It is amazing what useless information one carries about, but here goes. The first 'roundabout' or rotary system was Columbus Circle, New York, New York, 1903. It was then copied for the Place de l'Etoile in Paris, 1907. You can read all about this fun and more in Carmen Hass-Klau's "The Pedestrian and City Traffic" from Belhaven Press, London.

Roundabouts are making a comeback to the US as part of the traffic calming movement. My favorite experience was having to rescue some friends from the center of a motorway roundabout outside of Brighton. They had made the third most fatal mistake (behind getting involved in a landwar in Asia and playing a game involving death with a Sicilian) - stopping in the center of a roundabout. I had a borrowed Citroen 2CV6 and had to buildup speed doing donuts in the center (excuse me "centre") before being able toour way back out into the loop.

Yes, goshoogoshoogosh, I do generally agree with you, but so many pedestrians just walk out knowing you will see them in time and slow down/stop - one day when I am feeling particularly tired I might not see them leap out to stop in time, but will have to bear the full weight of the consequences.

I have 4 children and have taught them that the road is the domain of the car and that, although motorists will slow down to avoid people in the road, you cannot rely upon them spotting you in time (and should not expect them to).

Some pedestrians cross the road with deliberate 'attitude', especially where they have no right of way.

They slow down.

They glance at you as if to say 'Yeah?'

Would I get into trouble if I used on them one of those kiddies' 'SupaSoaka' guns that shoot great amounts of water over surprising distances?

I have had just about enough of this 'pedestrian persecution'!!!

I am a pedestrian. I do not drive. My main concern is drivers that seem to beleive that 'pelican crossings' are a thing to be ignored, whether they are being used by pedesrians or not. And I simply HATE those drivers that believe that a single amber traffic light means 'Put your bloody foot down to the floor, FAST', instead of the STOP that it really means.

Yours in ANGER
'G'

I wondered how long it would be before an ANGRY pedestrian spoke out. Unfortunately the few 'bad' pedestrians give the rest a bad name. But remember, drivers are pedestrians too - last year I spent 5 months on crutches and had a terrible time trying to get across pelican crossings before the lights changed and I was mown down. I show great consideration for pedestrians who are legitimately and sensibliy crossing the road, but am greatly irritated by the careless and blatantly stupid ones.

Ok, Gandalf, here's a suggestion: you shoot all the bad pedestrians who are giving you a bad name (like the morons who wait until the traffic light turns green before crossing the road - doh!).

And I'll have a word with all the drivers who get twitchy on amber. Back home, we don't have amber, so you'd probably like it there!

Here in Preston, part of the town centre is 'pedestrianised' between 8am and 8pm. However, 'disabled' drivers can obtain a permit from the council to drive down these 'pedestrianised' roads. A lot of these 'morons' then procede to drive down them as if they were main roads, leaning on the horn all the time, scattering the poor pedestrians who hold precedence!!!!!

'G'

Because I drive a taxi I often come up against stupid drunk pedestrians late at night. They just wander across the road in their own sweet time. I always let them have right of way as I don't really want to kill anyone, and if they all drove there would be no work for me!
And also I let them cross as I feel guilty driving a car because of pollution, and I know that pedestrains don't cause any.

Someone very clever came up with the idea of cloverleaf junctions. Trouble is, you need big highways and lots of space.

Surely there must be an even cleverer h2g2 researcher out there who can come up with a compact version that's better than all these roundabouts.

I learned to drive comparatively late in life - I was nearly 30 by the time I passed my driving test. I spent the whole of that 20+ years as a pedestrian and, once or twice, did stupid things. Never got knocked down, though, more by luck than good judgement. In the years since I passed my test I haven't encountered any pedestrians doing anything suicidal. But it does bug me when a pedestrian just saunters across the road, oblivious of oncoming traffic and totally ignoring the nearby pedestrian crossing.

I'm quite prepared to make allowances for people who can't cross the road quickly, be they elderly, disabled, blind... I also accept that children aren't the most observant or careful creatures when anywhere near a road. I do get peeved, though, at the fact that pedestrians who also drive (and there are many) stop thinking about drivers and how much space and time they need to react when they (the pedestrians) get out of their cars. I also get peeved at drivers who don't think about pedestrians when I am one and they no longer are. Another thing that bugs me, as I've said before, is the attitude, 'A car doesn't get damaged when a pedestrian / cyclist / child gets knocked down, so it must be the driver's fault'. Yes, I know pedestrians and cyclists get knocked down by drivers who aren't concentrating on the job in hand, but it's also true that drivers sometimes don't have a chance to take avoiding action when a pedestrian or cyclist does something stupid.

I'm not saying that all pedestrians and cyclists are lame-brains. I just feel that we should all calm down, take a step back and take each case on its merits, rather than pointing the finger at one group or another.

Let's keep pedestrians and cars apart.
Stop cars going into town centres (unless the drivers can't walk that far) and make them pedestrianised.

Anybody been to Telford in Shropshire? Its a new town, -someone's vision in the sixties of a utopean future. Part of this vision was that nobody would walk anywhere, everyone would drive. Thus there is no centre of town, its a kind of homogeneous mass of shopping centres out-of-town type parks (except they're in town), factories, industrial estates etc. There are few pavements, to get across the town by foot you walk across car-parks- you see each of the institutions of the town have a big car park and they all, kind of, link up into oceans of tarmac. Of course there are big roads everywhere rather than there being a main street as would be identifiable in most towns, mostly with 50mph speed limits. There is a dual carriageway and a motorway going through the middle. This place may have one of the highest concentrations of roundabouts, -most junctions have one. There is at least one double roundabout -two roundabouts linked, with seven exits in total. There is an enormous roundabout with a shopping mall and pedestrianised area in the middle of it and eight or nine exits, (-it is possible to turn onto the roundabout itself). In out-lying areas there are many roundabouts with only two exits leaving space for further exits when new roads are needed or new buildings are erected.
Telford is hell. I'm glad I don't live there any more, but it was where I took my driving test.

Although you need to get to the shops, cars and shops in town centres make a recipe for chaos and discomfort.

Take Oxford Street in London, for example. It is hell. It takes forever to park, and you pay through the nose when you find a place (unless it's Sunday). Buses and taxis roam in polluting herds, as do the many tourists! If you walk from one end to the other, which is v. tiring, then decide to pick up that dress you saw right at the beginning, you've got to walk all the way back. It's *so* stressful.

Contrast that with a beautiful, modern shopping centre like Bluewater, just outside the M25 to the east of London. Easy to get to. Ample free parking. Plenty of nice shops in comfortable surroundings. It's just *so* civilised. (No, I'm not being paid for saying this.)

The trouble with pedestrianising town centres is the difficulty in parking and getting to where you want to go. I for one applaud the convenience of out-of-town shopping centres and supermarkets.

Of course, if you haven't got a car, that's a different matter...

Anybody who suggests keeping cars out of town centres hasn't seen Redditch. If you live in the older part of the town, as I do, you can walk into the town centre. It takes me 20 - 25 minutes. However, if you live on one of the newer estates, walking anywhere is impossible. Even cycling involves taking your life in your hands! So, while I agree in theory, there are a number of towns where the 'ban the car' idea would be impossible to put into practise.

It's because modern towns and housing estates are designed with the car in mind. You can only get to and from them by car, there are no amenities there. We can all come up with examples, bad planning I say if you have to have a car to get anywhere.

There's one particularly annoying hybrid of idiot driver and pedestrian - namely the people who don't bother checking for traffic before flinging open their car doors to get out, and who are too stupid to wait a couple of seconds for a safe lull before striding out into the road to get back into their cars, however narrow a street they may have parked in.

Or if you run a small business - the very things that give life, diversity, and interest to High Streets. The rents in places like Bluewater are out of the reach of most small business, which is why you will always find the same stores in places like Bluewater, Lakeside, Meadowhall, Arndale Centres, etc. It's becoming far too much like America - once you get out of a city like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, or a very small town which only has a handful of shops, there's little in the way of shopping choice apart from from malls, mini malls, strip malls, outlet malls. There's no such thing any more as the local butcher, baker, greengrocer, shoeshop, bookshop, cycle shop, toy shop. Everything is big, corporate, and a chain. Need toys? You have to go to Toys R Us. Need a screwdriver? You have to go to Home Depot. I'm lucky, I live in a town which has for some reason kept some of its small shops - until I discovered the wholefood co-op, I'd just about given up on ever tasting good bread again. And that's another example. In London, I could go to any number of small wholefood shops, but here, if it weren't for Wheatsville, I'd have to go to Wholefoods - another nationwide chain. To the best of my knowledge, those are the only two places in the whole of Austin (pop. 500,000) where I can get organic fruit and veg. When I was about 12, I stayed for a week with my Aunt in Chelsmford (Essex), and one day we took a bus to the town centre. We went to the local department store, but we also went to a whole bunch of other shops to buy what she needed. Each of them were individual businesses, in each of them she was known and recognised, in each of them she got genuine customer service (not the plastic kind that I was taught to give when I got a job in a shop here), and in each of them there were people who knew their business inside out. The prices in those shops were higher than those you will find in chains and supermarkets, but it's all relative really. From my point of view, it's not the small shops who are more expensive than the norm, it's the the big stores who are cheaper. Once you see it that way, it makes shopping at the smaller places and paying more, so much easier.

About a mile from us we have a 'B&Q' store - hardware, gardening, DIY products. Just down the road in our local shops we have a small ironmongers. They are more expensive for some things, but they have unusual items that B&Q don't stock. They're also a better place to go for small quantities of things like screws. They are a bit more expensive, but we happily pay the extra for the service they provide, and the fact that you can guarantee that they know what they're talking about. That's often not something you can say about the staff at the large national / multi-national stores.

This is just the point I try to make in my "Globetrotters Unite" - you are welcome to visit my space and see.

In London they come up with all sorts of ideas for stuff to put in the middle of roundabouts.

I've already mentioned a traffic light sculpture, but I've also seen giant barometers, suspended advertisng boards, a metal scorpion, flowers of course, small buildings whose function is not entirely obvious, and painted bicycles set in concrete.

Care to add to the list!