An almost accident

Just this morning I stopped at the Bridge Street island as a car at the junction with York Street wasn't signalling. Yes 99 times out of a hundred they're turning left, but it would be my fault if the 1 who wasn't hit me. So I always stop.

In this case they were going straight across to New Street, they passed across me, I continued into High Street, and then heard a screech of tyres from that direction.


As I was stopped in a queue I looked to my left and saw the car that had passed me stopped just at the entrance to New Street with a kid on a bike in the middle of their lane. My guess is that the kid just tried to cross the road pavement to pavement without looking to see if anything was coming. In this instance he was lucky that the car managed to stop in time.

So why am I bothering to mention this non-accident. Well is it just me or is this sort of thing happening more often? Travelling through town I find myself having to be more aware of what pedestrians are doing. If one of the crossings has changed to red I find myself slowing down earlier than I normally would because experience now informs me that someone on my side of the crossing will try to cross the road assuming the traffic at that point has also stopped.

If it's a side-road that I want to turn down and someone is approaching it despite having priority I wait to ensure they've seen me because I've watched people just step out into the road and maybe then look to see if anything was coming.

I've watched parents dragging their children across roads while standing ten yards away from a crossing. I've watched people in the same position standing and waiting to cross the road on occasion glancing at the crossing to see if someone else is going to use it and stop the traffic for them.

I can't even say it's just the 'young' as I've seen people of all ages doing this. What is wrong with these people?