For some time now I have scrutinized the behaviours of people making their way through the various crossings at Sloane Square. From the absurd ‘shared’ space outside the tube station, already commented on in a previous blog, to the mixtures of zebra and pelican crossings at the other extremities of the square. I tell you it’s a Traffic Management PhD’s wet dream. From my observations it seems that the zebra crossings are the safest (yes I mean this) and most favoured places to negotiate the traffic – mainly because of location, traffic flow, vision – and most importantly lack of congestion . Now as there are more of these than pelican crossings, it seems the majority of locals choose to treat the pelican crossings (button operated with flashing green man) as if they were zebra crossings (black and white stripes on the road). Confused? Hey, spare a thought for me, I’m on a tube train writing this, with a squawking kid next to me.
The evidence is that in addition to many previous occasions, I noticed this morning that people are happy to follow the heard, mustering around the crossing like cows at the dairy ready to be milked before darting out to play with the traffic. There’s the odd young alpha male who legs it across in front of a bus glancing over his shoulder seeking danger cred. as he heads off, the stroppy, perennially spotty teenage girl who minces over in her skinny jeans clutching her A4 file of lecture notes – head down ignoring the traffic, the professional man/woman loaded with laptop/gymbag/handbag who makes a calculated effort to cross only to have to abort and do a 180 to return to the safety of the kerb edge desperately hiding their embarrassment – actually that’s me!
All this could generally be avoided if somebody just pushed the button..really.

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Filed under: Sloane Square

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