Cycling UK Forum

In some (many?) European countries there are zebras at traffic lights & cars turning on a green light are expected to (& they actually do) give way to pedestrians travelling in the same direction as the green light.

If it isn't a problem there, why should it be a problem here with giving similar priority?

Zebras crossing the carriageway, not at a junction, need some sort of advance warning of their presence. In the UK the Belishas are the recognised (currently required) warning. What do other countries do?

The DfT response to Chris Boardman's suggestion was slightly amusing.

DfT wrote:... any potential regulation change would need to be based on robust research and supported by off-road trials.

Should be quite easy - put a zebra without Belishas in a field, get people to walk across it & observe if any (non-existent) cars fail to stop!

Zebra on a UK road outside a primary school without Belisha beacons.


It's been there without Belisha beacons for as long as I can remember, let's say 40 years. Of course it's probably been there longer.

Available sources (2005-17) show no recorded collisions at the location.

Trial over?

As far as I am aware zebra crossings in the rest of Europe just have the paint on the road. In my relatively limited experience pedestrians in Belgium are a bit cautious using them, and pedestrians in The Netherlands never expect cyclists to stop at them although they seem to be OK with cars. The issue with cyclists might have something to do with woefully substandard brakes on Dutch bikes.

Last June, Boardman’s team painted an “implied zebra“ on a side road in Salford, supported by the local council. Officers monitored how the crossing was used and confirmed it worked, said Catriona Swanson, who was the borough’s cycling officer at the time. But the DfT ordered the council to paint over it after a few months, according to Brian Deegan, Boardman’s technical adviser.

It sounds as though the Dept for (motorised) Transport is determined to prevent the collection of evidence that the beacons and zigzags are not actually necessary.

gaz wrote:Zebra on a UK road outside a primary school without Belisha beacons.

zebra.png
It's been there without Belisha beacons for as long as I can remember, let's say 40 years. Of course it's probably been there longer.

Available sources (2005-17) show no recorded collisions at the location.

Trial over?

Don't tell the DfT, they'll have it painted out before you know it.

Wanlock Dod wrote:As far as I am aware zebra crossings in the rest of Europe just have the paint on the road.

I was thinking along the lines of signs like this

as an alternative to lights in on-carriageway, no junction, no traffic lights situations. Its been a while since I've travelled much abroad so my recollection is somewhat old & vague (a bit like me ).

Zebra crossings are rubbish
Motrons slow down, are reluctant to stop, often try to wave one across, whizz off again missing one by a whisker, they even wait and try to wave cyclists across where motors have priority (one infamous zebra near me where PoFs have priority but PoBs do not, grr)
What the law says interests nobody
Islands are better so one may wait for a gap, except on very busy roads
..
Here is a sick 'joke'
Two snails were waiting to cross a road
'Not sure if this is a good place', bleated Speedy, 'look what happened to that zebra'

Cyril Haearn wrote:Zebra crossings are rubbish
Motrons slow down, are reluctant to stop, often try to wave one across, whizz off again missing one by a whisker, they even wait and try to wave cyclists across where motors have priority (one infamous zebra near me where PoFs have priority but PoBs do not, grr)
What the law says interests nobody
Islands are better so one may wait for a gap, except on very busy roads
..
Here is a sick 'joke'
Two snails were waiting to cross a road
'Not sure if this is a good place', said Speedy, 'look what happened to that zebra'

Zebra crossings are fine things, although in Blighty they need to come with a large repository on the kerbsides from which to take out & put back the hammers. These will be ball peen hammers with 6 foot handles (or even 2 metres) which the pedestrians crossing may use to intimidate would-be non-stoppers in their stinking tin cans. WALLOP WALLOP WALLOP on the roof with the Stop Now hammer.

Soon the car-borne Blighters with an impatient streak would be very wary of the Zebras as none of them (the Blighters not the zebras) like ball peen dints in the roof of their pride and joy.

Sometimes drastic social remedies are necessary to bring about a change in the behaviour of the massed herds of humans.

Now, you like a mad campaign (I reference your pushing of the Pelican's button) so perhaps you could try this ball-peen hammer experiment on a zebra crossing near you?

Cugel, trying out Behaviourism (a defunct social "science" known for mad experiments).

Cyril Haearn wrote:Zebra crossings are rubbish

Islands are better so one may wait for a gap, except on very busy roads

Islands can be very dangerous for cyclists. There should be a minimum road width for any traffic islands. Not all cyclists have the confidence to take up primary position when approaching these often narrow pinch points, and even those who do can risk injury if motorists are driving too close to each other to be able to take up primary position safely.

soapbox wrote:
Islands can be very dangerous for cyclists. There should be a minimum road width for any traffic islands.

They should either be very wide - ( > 4.5m) which is sufficient for a car to overtake a cyclist
OR very narrow ( < 3m) which makes it obvious even to the dumbest driver that they won't fit.
It is the widths in between that are the problem.

Pete Owens wrote:
They should either be very wide - ( > 4.5m) which is sufficient for a car to overtake a cyclist
OR very narrow ( < 3m) which makes it obvious even to the dumbest driver that they won't fit.
It is the widths in between that are the problem.

Is there a legal/statutory width or is is just left to councils? There are a lot of dumb drivers out there to whom things like that aren't obvious at all.

I'm going off-topic slightly here, but some years ago I was riding in Scotland and noticed that some traffic islands were complimented by a very wide painted cycle lane, that left nobody in any doubt as to who had priority. In some cases the painted cycle lane was so wide that there was less than a cycle lane width of unpainted tarmac. It always seemed SUCH a good idea that I've often wondered why it isn't replicated throughout the UK at every traffic island pinch point. Instead, we usually get 'end of a cycle lane' painted on the road at exactly the point where the cycle lane is most needed.

atlas_shrugged wrote:Chris Boardman who is campaigning on this issue is an absolute hero........

And is raging against a tide of authoritarian lunacy which favours car travel above anyother means of transport.

Wanlock Dod wrote:How much would a continuous footway cost per junction?

I think the figure of £750 per metre average for tarmac was given about 10 years ago, including everything except relocating services put in the verge (which used to be how they ran services on the cheap but rarely used now). Cycleways were not much more expensive at £1000/m, while an unbound narrow macadam "trod" was massively cheaper at £40/metre average IIRC but they can often be very hard work or unsuitable for wheelchairs, pushchairs and prams.

RickH wrote:In some (many?) European countries there are zebras at traffic lights & cars turning on a green light are expected to (& they actually do) give way to pedestrians travelling in the same direction as the green light.

If it isn't a problem there, why should it be a problem here with giving similar priority?

I don't recall coming across zebras at traffic lights, but certainly in many countries when N-S traffic has a green light, pedestrians have the green man to walk in the same direction, ie over the E and W arms of the junction. And it does seem to work, presumably because a green man light has the force of law.

A quick look on a random street in Paris (Rue des Archives) showed zebras at a set of traffic light (& 4 way zebras at another junction on the same road that didn't appear to have any other traffic controls)

link to Streetview

Trying the same in Barcelona just had 2 rows of squares marking the edges of the crossing where I looked.

I haven't been to Paris for a long time so I don't know exactly how it works, but aren't those stripes just the pedestrian crossing markings? Looking at the same junction from a different viewpoint clearly shows red and green man symbols in the lights. Stripes do not a zebra make!
https://goo.gl/maps/55iakYVnho5oYi5b6

Which isn't to say zebras at signal-controlled junctions can't exist elsewhere.

Pete Owens wrote:

soapbox wrote:
Islands can be very dangerous for cyclists. There should be a minimum road width for any traffic islands.

They should either be very wide - ( > 4.5m) which is sufficient for a car to overtake a cyclist
OR very narrow ( < 3m) which makes it obvious even to the dumbest driver that they won't fit.
It is the widths in between that are the problem.

I am far too scared to cycle on the road