Might

Junction beside a school, Perth 

There are many forms of force, control, imposition:  sexual, social, even conversational. 

Any doubt as to how prevalent people imposing their will on others is, can be dispelled by considering our streets. The Highway code changed on 29 January 2022. There is now a "hierarchy of road users". The idea is to make clearer, to lend more weight to the obvious idea that some people are more vulnerable than others and that we need to take care of them. Pedestrians are clearly more vulnerable than someone inside a ton of metal and among pedestrians, children, and anyone with physical limitations are the more vulnerable "road users". 

My street, on our town's ring road.  To the right, a park.

So far, so straightforward. Why is spelling this out in the Highway Code necessary? Because there are many who refuse to acknowledge it and are even angered by the concept of anything but cars on a road.

In the UK, road fatalities have been dropping for decades, currently under 2000 a year.  But 2000 is quite a lot.  

PeteEastern, Wikipedia

If we include those seriously injured, that number jumps to 27,500 (in 2021), according to data released by the Department for Transport. Some 5,400 of those killed or seriously injured (KSIs) were pedestrians, and more than 4,400 cyclists. (Citymonitor) That's 35%.

Tolerable? If the military were suffering that annually, would we tolerate it?  What are the military's casualty figures, out of interest? In 2022, 67 soldiers died. 

 

The Highway Code now says “At a junction you should give way to pedestrians crossing or waiting to cross a road into which or from which you are turning.” Previously, drivers were only supposed to give way when a pedestrian had started to cross a road. It's a gesture, but even in 2023 in the UK, in my town certainly, drivers take precedence all the time, as a rule in fact, even when children are trying to cross the road.

I took the headline picture of this piece while campaigning during 2021 to try to get this junction near my boys' school improved for kids walking to school. For ten minutes at the beginning and end of every day about 100 pupils and between 50 and 60 vehicles battle it out on this junction, with between a fifth and a quarter of of vehicles failing to give way even when there are large groups trying to cross.  The children on the road had been in the middle of crossing but were forced back by the van, which took priority. The black car also failed to give way even though there are ten children waiting to cross and two still on the road. I cannot emphasise how common this is.  Besides being dangerous and selfish towards vulnerable people who also don't pollute our shared air, it teaches our children to perpetuate this behaviour.

I saw countless cars going round this roundabout the wrong way or cutting the corner.  I saw another van go round the roundabout the wrong way and drive straight at a group of kids like the one above.  I saw my own son nearly end up on the bonnet of a car that drove straight at him and his friends. They all froze, believing they were going to be hit. I had picked this spot on his nearly two mile journey because he himself had said it was the most dangerous point. 

Even buses don't always give way. These kids were already on the road when the bus took priority - because it can.

Unfortunately, despite having a campaign group, despite recording statistics of pedestrians and traffic in detail over time, despite photo and video evidence of many near misses, despite engaging road safety organisations, despite someone from the council coming out to assess the junction and despite agreement that it was not ideal, nothing has been done about this junction.

Strangely, on zebra crossings a driver is still not obliged to give way to someone waiting to cross (though many do), only when someone has started to cross. I was already in the middle of this zebra crossing with my dog last week when a woman driver approaching exactly like this black car, clearly saw me and simply chose not stop. I am well aware of the behaviour of a minority of drivers on this crossing and took preventative action. I know a pedestrian however who has been maimed for life from coming off worst, as all pedestrians do, when she was hit by a vehicle.

The kind of motorist behaviour exhibited on the crossing or at that school junction is a black distillation of arrogance and egocentricity but it is as common as blinking. It is when it becomes automatic that it is most iniquitous.  While some road users will, when not curbed, give free reign to their baser instincts, having zero regard for vulnerable road users is not something hardwired in humans - it is spread through cultural tolerance. 

Spain is an example of a car-loving culture which nevertheless uses zebra crossings to a far greater extent than the UK and which respects pedestrians, to the point where I would rather my kids cross roads in Spain, than the UK:

In the Netherlands, of course, respect for all kinds of road users is so normal it is built into their infrastructure:

Road use is just an analogy for  something that happens in many contexts:  the imposition of will on someone else, especially someone more vulnerable. I suppose the first step is being aware of those behaviours, in others as well as in ourselves, the second is doing something about it. There are few better and quieter catalysts for change than good models: seeing someone else behaving in an admirable way, or seeing respect for such behaviour in someone we ourselves respect.

This blog is about lessons I have learnt about life through the lens of the milonga, or sometimes the other way around. At a certain point, one sees each as reflections of the other. Apart from a good physical environment for dancing, is there anything more essential to good dancing than awareness of, care of our partner and of the other dancers in the ronda?  Awareness of the music, too.  Awareness is a term that is often interchangeable with listening, in its broadest sense.  An article in Psychology Today suggests that coffee is not the hardest thing to give up.