GROSSING PLACES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 111, 6 November 1937, Page 10

GROSSING PLACES

SLIGHT IMPROVEMENT

THE OUTRAGE OF DIGNITY

THAT STATION LANE

Pedestrian crossing rules and marked lanes and safety zones have been in for quite long enough for everyone lo be used to them. Everyone knows what is expected, but not nearly everyone does what is expected, and the reason for non-observance, on both sides, is probably no more than follows ■ from that dignified feeling. Dignity is everything. The motorist with two, three, four hundred pounds worth of machinery on wheels has her or his car's heavy dignity to uphold—council bus drivers possess terrific weight of dignity and are not commonly known to stop—and the pedestrian realises what his dignity would amount to, flat on the road, fiat in the ambulance, and painfully in hospital. So too many drivers ignore the crossing rules, and those who would observe them and pull up see pedestrians in doubt, and drive over in front of them, grumbling in - their beards and windscreens. Still, there is some improvement in observance and there is a noticeable slowing down 0i speed in crossing-place streets. This week a batch of pedestrians came before the court and were "for it" for jay walking. Next week perhaps an equal batch of motorists may be before the Magistrate for refusal to observe the crossing rules, though drivers are more difficult to round up in large batches than pedestrians. It is all very educative, but cannot be nearly so effective as a fair recognition by both that the observance of the rul.es is, by plain common sense, in the interests of both. Both have a right to use the road. Where crossing places are laid down pedestrians should use them,, even at the labour of a few extra yards of walking, and when a pedestrian uses a marked lane the driver should recognise his right to use if safely, whether or not" a traffic inspector is about. FLAGRANT NON-OBSERVANCE. Tomorrow will be Sunday, probabiy a fine Sunday. Past the Featherston Street exit from the railway station in the late afternoon hundreds of cars will roll, homeward bound from the bays and beaches and picnic places. From the station there will exit, homeward bound from Palmerston North and way stations, several hundred train passengers, and a lot of them, will be mothers and children. The pedestrian crossings from the station are the clearest in Wellington, and when inspectors are on duty the most rigidly observed; There is not a motorist in, Wellington who does not know perfectly well that the crossings are there, arid none so blind, except deliberately, as to be unable to see women and children standing on the.footpath waiting to get across, and yet, Sunday after Sunday, train passengers wanting to cross to reach, trams are ignored, and there they stand, while a stream of cars rolls by. Immediately a uniform is seen all is order and decency again, but that is not the purpose, of'the regulation. It was framed, not for the upholding of the still greater dignity of the man in the .uniform, but to give consideration to people who have a right to cross a road in their own, and not the motorist's time, a safe crossing—particularly women and children. It is about time, that . thq flagrant non-observance of.'the rules and the utter lack of consideration at the station exit was changed, and tomorrow will be a good day to make a start.