WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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Abbey Road! The Beatles' famous crosswalk --

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or zebra crossing, as we'd call it in Britain,

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because of the black and white stripes

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and the weird thing we have about naming our
crossings after creatures.

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Now, jaywalking -- crossing the road where
there isn't a marked crossing --

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isn't illegal in most of Britain.

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We can cross wherever it's safe. Which is
just as well,

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given the complicated layout of our cities,

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and given how often day trippers recreating
that album cover

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hold up traffic here on what is actually a
fairly busy London road.

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But crossing the road safely,
wherever you are,

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requires both the people driving and the people
walking to take care.

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Yes, a driver not paying attention could kill
someone --

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but someone on foot could walk out into traffic
without looking,

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assuming they're safe because,
hey, it's a crosswalk,

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and even the best driver with brand new brakes

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has a limit on how quickly they can stop.

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And there's plenty of research to say that,
in some situations,

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marked crosswalks like this one
are actually less safe.

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The US Department of Transportation analysed
five years of data from 1,000 marked crosswalks,

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and 1,000 matching sites that had no markings.

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On roads like this? The markings made no difference.

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On bigger, multi-lane roads?

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A marked crosswalk is more dangerous,

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probably because if a car stops in the first
lane,

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pedestrians don't always have a sightline

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to see any cars still speeding past in the second

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-- and the cars can't see them either.

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Does that mean we should remove
all the road markings

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and let everyone fend for themselves?

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Well, we can work it out.

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There are "shared space" schemes,

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based on studies from the Netherlands,

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like this one in Exhibition Road in London.

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The theory is because there aren't strict
road markings,

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everyone is more cautious, cars go a bit slower,

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and people look both ways. Great in theory,

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maybe not so good if you're
blind or partially sighted.

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The debate about whether this is a good thing
is still going on.

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And ultimately, the only way to be sure,

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is for pedestrians to look when
they're crossing the road --

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and drivers to assume that people on foot
aren't paying attention to you.

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'Cos at Abbey Road?

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They mostly aren't.

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