American road rules (From Bucks Free Press)

In America’s Footsteps

5:09pm Monday 24th January 2011

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Years ago I read an article about the very Englishness of the roundabout. It could only work here because of the English character. We give way to the right, we wait and allow drivers to pass. We just do it. And there’s an element of tolerance that comes with this road courtesy.

We further exhibit our tolerance by letting pedestrians cross a foot off the zebra crossing, on an amber light, when the green man’s flashing frantically. We’re nice like that even if we’re muttering onto our steering wheels, ‘Get a move on, you coffee-carrying fruitcake.'

But I draw the line at what the American’s call ‘jaywalking’. Ambling across the road wherever you damn well please. At a painfully slow speed. With a buggy and sometimes a toddler trailing behind.

It most often happens at the junction with Chesham Road and Hill Avenue as I come out of Rectory Hill.

Yep. As I near the top, I can spot the mum and her family and shopping on the kerb. They’re the ones. They’re going to cross when I’m on the mini roundabout with a concrete mixer breathing down my neck.

It’s as though Lloyds or the YMCA have a supply of disobedient locals lined up which they throw out onto the road as my car’s approaching that mini roundabout.

Worse, a senior person will start crossing. She will be wearing a plastic rain bonnet and pulling a shopping trolley. Or pushing a wheelchair.

Senior couples do it too. Holding hands and going as quickly as they can but not in a straight line either. They trace a path diagonally between the two kerbs.

So I’m all for a law against jaywalking. I’m not sure what the punishment in the USA for this is – possibly electrocution – but something less severe could be applied here. Weights stitched into the lining of coats, a fast car computer game where they are eternally stuck behind jaywalkers… Hah! Did you lose?

It’s most annoying. Other drivers are bad enough; the Amersham folk who give way to the left, the owners of those off-road marvels which the lovely lady/male drivers can neither put into reverse on a single-lane dirt track nor park properly.

The youngsters with their commitment to simultaneous steering, texting, fiddling with their iPods and smoking and the slow drivers (like the car doing 20mph up the Amersham Road – the ‘fast’ road from Chesham – on Saturday).

When I finally get to a parking space outside Iceland I step out, cross the road right there in a diagonal fashion to get to HSBC. Naturally.

I want to cross when and where I decide. Not walk half a mile up or down the street obeying some town planner’s notion of where I can and can’t cross.

Sue me. But I am bag free and nifty. I will run when there’s a suitable gap. And that seems to be the problem – or maybe I’m simplifying it.

I suspect it’s the non-drivers who have the relaxed attitude to crossing. How would they know what it’s like to be behind the wheel? Of course they’re more important walking.

After all, they’re not polluting the air for those out in it, they’re staying fit, they’re able to admire the buildings and scenery because they’re walking – all those details you miss in a car.

It's all true of course. We drivers should learn more tolerance, more acceptance of other road users, be more patient...

I'll try doing this if walkers don’t use road space to exhibit their virtuous 'walking not driving' lifestyle. Thanks.

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