Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Two car-to-pavement accidents on GL on Friday
Scarily there were two separate car accidents on Green Lanes on Friday, both involving the vehicle mounting the pavement;
(1). Before 8am a car somehow managed to smash into the pedestrian lights on opp side of Effingham Rd (on Green Lanes). Two pupils from HSG were injured as the the pole (holding pedestrian lights) hit them.
(2). Before 10pm car somehow mounted pavement and smashed into doorway of upstairs accommodation, next to Snug cafe, opp St Anns Rd.
All very scary and somewhat odd.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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Tfl think bringing pavements level with roads & taking railings away will make drivers slow down because pedestrians have been made to share their space. Cars as you say aren't slowing down and it only takes one vehicle to misjudge (take evasive action to avoid hitting another vehicle for example) and end up ploughing into pedestrians instead.
There will be many cases in future unfortunately where Tfl will end up in court with the judge asking them 'what on earth were you thinking' when you designed these death trap junctions. Ten/twenty years from now the railings will go back in.
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Permalink Reply by Abi on
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Railings were removed largely for cyclists, as I understand it. They can be extremely dangerous if you're on a bike and a vehicle gets too close.
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Yes that's what I understand too. But now pedestrians are vunerable. Borris & the CTC have a lot to answer for among others.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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A couple of years ago people on here were very happy to see the railings removed because they felt they infringed their right to cross the road wherever they felt like it.
Now they see the result.
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Permalink Reply by michaelw on
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This is a much more long term thing, pre-Boris & it's not just about cycling; e.g. see this study for TfL from 2003:
"The Living Streets Initiative (formerly the Pedestrians Association) and others have advocated reducing the use of railing to improve the character of the street. Guard rails can take pedestrians away from their ‘desire lines’ (preferred pedestrian routes from one location to another), may encourage higher vehicle speeds because of the lower perceived risk, can degrade the street scene and, in areas of high demand, take valuable footway space from the pedestrian. This latter effect is because guard railing has to be set back from the kerb edge to provide clearance from vehicles, reducing the effective width of the footway by much more than the thickness of the railing.
However, the are supposed to assess the risk and review the results.
Clearly at this junction something more is needed - maybe including a camera (with some prosecutions) as well as physical protection.
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Thanks for this Michael. Yes LS is also a big part of pushing for these changes. The thinking at the time perhaps understandable but the reality seems to be turning out to be very different. It's OK to do this in streets already given over to pedestrians and access only for vehicles but, major junctions where traffic is moving up to 30mph appears dangerous to me. It does work in Oxford Street because traffic barely moves above 10mph!
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It's the sad little humans who are unable to handle their vehicles who have a lot to answer for.
We need to stop pretending we can deal with poor driving by trying different ways to design roads in the hope somehow we find one that can accommodate it, and start dealing with poor driving by dealing with poor drivers. And that means monitoring roads and aggressively prosecuting the people who drive poorly when they do it and not just after they kill someone (unless we let them off even then because they reeeeaaaallllly need to keep their license y'honour, or because hey, no one should have to pay attention all the time just because they are piloting a tonne or so of moving metal around crowded streets)
Imagine someone proposed a new technology that solved all our transport problems but killed 700 people a year. It would never be allowed. Yet we already accept more than double that death rate as the cost of driving.
On average, 4 or 5 people are killed a day on UK roads, and another 60 seriously injured.
DRIVERS IN THE UK KILL OR SERIOUSLY INJURE ON AVERAGE 65 PEOPLE EVERY DAY.
We should all know this. Hell, we should have an annual remembrance ceremony thanking the victims for their sacrifice as the cost of our convenient personal and commercial transport.
Yet we have a huge collective blind spot such that any attempt to control or reduce the use of motor vehicles is hysterically labelled War on Motorists.
If any other group were killing 4 people in the UK every day, I think the public would expect a slightly stronger reaction than parking fines.
I'd happily pay double, treble, ten times my vehicle tax if it went into funding urban traffic enforcement with real teeth. Or even to fund a sustained media campaign associating bad driving with sexual impotence :)
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Permalink Reply by Mavic Starfish on
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Hear hear, well said
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Permalink Reply by Lauren on
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They need to open up a route the other side of Sainsburys going East. It's ludicrous having all the traffic on Green Lanes.
And invent a breathalyser that disables the engine when too much testosterone is detected.
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The Sainsbury's/Arena problem is going to be solved by getting rid of it, or at least radically downscaling the shopping centre; see this thread.
Note that the council now have a January 2016 'pre-submission' site allocations plan, which I think means it is almost final; see here:
http://www.haringey.gov.uk/sites/haringeygovuk/files/07-haringey-si...
This includes:
Parking should be managed down on this site due to the excellent local public transport connections. The parking requirements of the retail in the new scheme should be considered however.
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Permalink Reply by Sarah on
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There would be excellent public transport connections if there went so many cars slowing down traffic. When I look at them they almost always have only one occupant. We need to make car ownership far more expensive.
I lived in central London for seven years before moving here. I still can't believe how dangerously people (men) drive down Green Lanes.
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