FROM the clamour that has resounded since the first of
the Belisha beacons reared its head on a London street one plain fact emerges. The walker must be taught from the beginning how to get about without endangering himself and other people. I detest the word pedestrian as much as the word motorist. Motorists, espeeially in _ London, are at least as much pedestrians, and there are very few pedestrians left who do not use a car, of some kind or another, at one trine or another—and.„ in the act, assume the motorist's point of view, as the motorist, when he is on foot, regards the world from the pedestrian's point. I suppose cyclists still claim to be a separate section of the public, if one can judge by the ill- judged protests that are raised when the question arises of protecting them from the dangers of the road. A great many people who sometimes drive cars, and sometimes walk, also sometimes ride bicycles, but neither " motorists " nor " pedestrians " are so different from others as " cyclists." This perpetual classification of road-users is foolish. We are all travellers today and all subject to the risk of injury or death when we leave our homes.
The Minister of Transport has been the butt of every sort of criticism and a certain amount of indifferent wit since the day he first patterned the streets with whitewash and starred them with studs. Some of the criticism was-deserved, but one cannot withhold sincere sympathy from him when he turned on the more fatuous of his critics and in a stinging exposure of their futility asked for a little more time for his schemes to be proved failures. Destructive criticism has been hurled about promiscuously but, as he pointed out, very little of the other sort, the sort that is helpful and not merely spiteful. I think, judging from the success of The plan in other coun- tries but particularly in France, that we have far too many crossings. I must here look upon the question as a "motorist," that is somebody who happens to be driving a car and not either walking or riding a bicycle. 1• do not know on what considered plan, if any, those crossings were laid down, but it was a very haphazard business, and the result in several busy parts of London is definitely dangerous. On a winter evening the studs or painted marks themselves are practically invisible when the-roadway is clear, absolutely so when there is traffic in any quantity. I believe the beacons are officially supposed to be warnings to wheeled traffic rather than indications to walkers, but I am not very sure. At all events. they are
difficult to pick out on an open stretch when one has the help of street and shop lights, impossible in a crowd. They are too high for the driver of the modern low-roofed car to see unless he is a considerable distance away from them.
We, the most law-abiding people in the world, are easily the most difficult to discipline in any matter affecting our personal comfort. In Paris, for instance, the people who travel on foot invariably use the crossings, partly, no doubt, because of the prosecution that inevitably follows a breach of the exceedingly strict traffic regulations, but chiefly because they have been taught that they have no special privileges such as we, on no identifiable grounds, believe ourselves to enjoy. In London you see people use the crossings once for every three times they " chance " the open road. They object to being told that they must walk here or there and, If they give the matter a passing thought at all, they sub- consciously ridicule the idea that they cannot look after them- selves or—a legacy of the horse-days, peculiar to the Londoner —that they run any real risk of being touched. They have been taught to regard the London streets as the safest in the world, as they were in their grandparents' time.
We have got to learn to cross the road at the right plat:* and at no other, and the best way, I believe, of driving that home is first of all to reduce the number of crossings and secondly to follow the Paris scheme more faithfully. The walker who takes, and therefore makes, a risk must be dealt with in an exemplary manner. The Home Secretary said last week that he is going, to use plain-clothes men to enforce the regulations at crossings, but he gave no hint that any but car-drivers were to be the object of this special attention. The stereotyped reply followed a question by a Member on that point, that he could add nothing to his statement. I think it high time that the same question be asked in respect not only of walkers but of cyclists, whether on plain bicycles or on delivery box-tricycles. I have seen more dangerous and inconsiderate behaviour at the Belisha crossings in the past month on the part of the last two types of road-users than by anyone else. The average cyclist in London is the bully of the streets. He seems to consider that the ringing of his bell gives him the same rights that the driver of a fire- engine has. If you don't get out of his way you deserve all you get. His manners are the worst of all.
- And there-again-is an outstanding example of the pernicious effect of this arbitrary classification. I speak of cyclists " when I should, clumsily but fairly, speak of road-users tem- porarily on bicycles. I fall into my own pit, so to speak. It cannot be helped. It is the fact that, so far as my own observation goes, the cyclist in London and ,most towns is often potentially the greatest source of danger. He rides as if he were alone in the world, takes risks of which he may quite possibly have, no idea at all but which may lead to an infinity of trouble and danger to other road-users, and he almost invariably gets off scot-free. How often -does one hear of a cyclist being had up for dangerous -riding ? He disappears round the corner, still ringing his bell, leaving behind him frightened and angry people and the elements of disaster.
There should be fewer safety-lanes and, if I may make what I believe to be a constructive suggestion, they should be laid down well short of cross-streets. In many places now, in the Fulham Road, for example, in Sloane Street, in Piccadilly; everywhere for all I know, the lanes are at the exact junction. This means that traffic emerging from a side street into a main road may be held up indefinitely. The lanes should be laid well back from the inter- sections so that both walkers and drivers can carry on without interfering with each other. Driver should have a reasonable length left of Side Street itself and at least the same length 'of Main Road before he is faced with Walker once more. As it is, he can be hemmed in forever between two rows of, walkers, at right angles to each other. He is, very rightly, going to be dealt with severely for endangering people in occupation of the lanes. That is one of the main safeguards- of the new traffic-stream. The other should be that the walker be made to understand, by' means of memorable penalties if necessary, that, as a road-user, he is always a potential source of danger to others as well as to himself. I shall always be glad to haire seen an example of the Paris method, At the junction of the Rue Royale and the Place de la Concorde, when the wheeled traffic was in occupation 'of the street a rash walker stepped off the pavement at my elbow. Instantly, and in the most pointed terms, it was explained to him by a policeman that he was of no importance save as a dead body. Did he propose to endanger the public and, by being run over, to delay the circulation While his corpse' was removed ? _ The speech was received by the lookers-on in respectful and approving silence. ..I thought of the Strand and sighed.
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