Cut-Price Zebra Crossings?

A scheme that trialled the use of “unlawful” zebra crossings on side roads has been hailed a success after increasing the number of motorists who stop to let pedestrians cross the road.

But if they aren’t legal, why are they putting them in? Why aren’t they putting in legal ones? 

The initiative was launched by Westminster council on 11 side roads, at junctions with main roads such as Millbank, Horseferry Road, Pimlico Road and Wardour Steet. Typically, drivers exiting side roads – or turning in from main roads – tend not give way to pedestrians waiting to cross the road, despite being required to do so under a recent update of the Highway Code.But when “side road zebra crossings” were introduced, the trial found that drivers stopped on about 80 per cent of occasions – about double the number prior to their introduction.

So drivers aren’t recognising that they aren’t legal, clearly. Well, most of them, anyway! 

Westminster believes the results are so compelling that it is urging all 32 other London boroughs to follow its lead and introduce similar measures. Southwark is believed to be the next in line to do so.

A council urging other councils to do something illegal! Gosh, why isn’t this considered a scandal? Is it because it’s working?

Max Sullivan, Westminster’s cabinet member for streets, said the idea was “a rare unicorn… effective, popular and cheap”. He said: “I would like all boroughs to engage with it.”

You forgot ‘legal’, Max! Why isn’t it legal then? 

Mr Sullivan said that traditional zebra crossings cost £60,000 to £120,000 each to install, due to the electrical connections required. By comparison, the “side road zebras” can be installed for £20,000 to £25,000, a “fraction of the cost”, including the cost of monitoring, he said.

And when someone's eventually run down on one of them, what are the CPS going to charge the driver with? What is the victim going to sue the council for, for encouraging a belief that this was a safe road crossing? 

Letting The Side Down, Ladies...

A women's rights campaigner has rejected calls for female-only Tube carriages and said it should be men who are segregated in order to drive down harassment and sexual assault on the network.

 If that name sounds familiar, Reader, it should....

Patsy Stevenson, who was arrested by the Met Police at the Sarah Everard vigil, said a men-only carriage would be a better solution than segregating victims, because they constitute the 'majority' of offenders.

And - if such a thing was even possible on the overcrowded and unmonitored Tube - a men only carriage would result in...what, if not all the others being 'women only carriages'? 

Didn't think this through did you, airhead!  

It comes after the launch of a petition by UCL student Camille Brown, who called for women-only carriages on the Tube and for Sadiq Khan and TfL to 'do more to protect women'.

Ms Brown's petition, which has more than 13,000 signatures, asked for at least one dedicated women-only carriage on every Tube line in an attempt to curb gender-based harassment.

13,000 and I wonder how many of those were regular London Tube commuters. Because I am. and I know full well this idea is a total impossibility. As TfL (under the Muslim  Mayor of London, always happy to consider barmy virtue signalling insanity) know:

 The proposal has also been rebuffed by Transport for London (TfL) bosses who say they will not be considering women-only carriages.

Why does anyone entertain this nonsense? One interviewer wasn't happy to, and that's when the mask dropped: 

When challenged by presenter Wilfred Frost, who said that surely the problem 'could not be the majority of men', Ms Stevenson said: 'That would be lovely if it was a small minority, unfortunately it's definitely not. '

Good grief!  

'The whole idea is just to make driving unpleasant...'

Road lanes across the country are to become narrower to stop cars overtaking cyclists as part of a new war on motorists, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Likely to be far more successful than Labour's new war on asylum seekers, since no backbenchers will rebel against it... 

Official guidance quietly published last week on the Government's website states that the standard width of a road lane in Britain – which for almost 150 years has been 12ft – is no longer appropriate because of the safety risk posed to cyclists. Instead, lanes on local roads should either shrink no more than 10ft 8in wide or expand to at least 12ft 10in. Critics say space constraints in towns and cities mean they are far more likely to shrink.

This isn't something the government itself is persuing, it's outsourced it to another celebrity-helmed quango in an attempt to pretend its hands are clean... 

The guidance, which was drawn up by Active Travel England (ATE), a Government agency, will be applied to billions of pounds of future road building schemes, the MoS has learnt. Local authorities which defy the recommendations could see reduced transport funding.

It's yet more activist-driven nonsense with no thought given to the colatteral damage it will produce, slowing down deliveries and snaring emergency vehicles in gridlock. 

ATE's guidance follows a change to the Highway Code in 2022, which instructed drivers to leave space of at least 5ft when overtaking cyclists. ATE, which is led by former Olympic cyclist Chris Boardman, says motorists using a standard 12ft-wide traffic lane 'may try to overtake cyclists when there is not enough space', increasing the risk of collisions.

You know what else increases the risk of collisions, Chris? Cyclists acting like twats! Maybe crack down on that first, eh? 

The Department for Transport said claims that ATE is waging a war on motorists 'are false and misrepresent the guidance'.

'Our hands are clean, we got a proxy doing it for us'.