"Neil Williams" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 14 Aug 2003 01:24:20 GMT, "Martin Underwood"
wrote:

Seeing the above Highway Code URL has reminded me of the rule about
turning
into a road where pedestrians are crossing. Notice that it says "if they
are
already crossing". As a cyclist and a driver, I've seen a lot of
pedestrians
treating sideroads as if they were zebra crossings - ie as if they have
the
right to hold traffic up indefinitely, rather than waiting until the road
is
clear before crossing :-( As a pedestrian, I wouldn't dream of starting
to
cross a road (except on a zebra crossing or a pelican crossing) unless it
was safe to do so.

While many may be doing this just out of stubbornness, it's useful to
know that, in Germany, pedestrians legally have the right of way over
turning cars at this kind of junction. Indeed, the pedestrian lights
turn green when the traffic lights are still green in one direction.

I wonder how Germany's "pedestrians have priority" rule arose? I reckon our
way of doing things is much better: a green light (when you eventually get
it) really does mean "you can go" (either for pedestrians or for vehicles,
at different times) rather than "you can *both* go, but pedestrians have
priority over vehicles".


The junctions that always confuse me are the ones with two sets of lights,
one for traffic going straight on and another for traffic turning right. I'm
so conditioned to stopping at a red light that I find it very difficult to
drive straight ahead through a green light when faced also with the red
light for traffic turning right. What woudl be much better is if all the
right-turn lights were arrows (ie a red arrow, as well as a green arrow) to
make it more clear in the heat of the moment that this light only applies to
traffic that's turning right.