PedXing Checklistitis

Pedestrian crossings are ubiquitous and highly visible, except to the pedestrians, along urban roads. I suspect the government agency responsible for making our roads safe for pedestrians is a zealous lot and they follow a manual which has a checklist of across which roads, how many and where to provide these facilities.

The most prominent item on the checklist is to ensure that at least at one end but preferably at both ends the curbs are too high to climb on to them. Next, it is also preferable to have an off-road shrine duly protected by a revetment with shiny black marble tiles smack in the middle of where the zebra markings lead to.

In the above photograph you may note that the curb is about twice as high as the floorboard of a two-wheeler! Of course, pedestrian crossings are for the young, tall and the athletic, particularly for the high hurdlers, and not for the short, middle aged, potbellied, arthritis afflicted …, not to mention the disabled! The funny thing is the median has been broken down along the marked crossing to help the above identified disabled people! We are disabled half-friendly, if you get the drift.

The above photo also justifies the phrase “preferably at both ends the curbs” that I have used above. If you cannot provide a curb at one end of the zebra crossing, it is OK to end it in the middle of a side road, the checklist must be saying.

If you have been taught to look both ways, first right and then left, before crossing a road, the government agency wants you to be disabused of that notion. They want you “unlearn” that insane piece of advice. You need to look only right or left.

Do you see the car going right to left and beyond what appears to be a median, it is a scooter doing the same. At the median, if you had checked to your left, found it free and thought it safe to cross the road, you would have been run over by the two-wheeler. The collision may not have been fatal, of course! Thanks for small mercies!

It is better to go for two-in-one, a bus stop and a zebra crossing. This way, instead of a commuter getting aboard a bus, the bus can run over the pedestrian – role reversal! As an aside, given the height of the curb, do you want to blame those who are occupying road space while waiting for the bus? I thought not.

The above photographs explain themselves and also stand proof as to the existence of the checklist. How else would these zebra crossings have come to be marked, such casual and fruitless attempts?

It is an inflamed checklist and hence checklistitis.

Raghuram Ekambaram