Jay Walking

Nearly a decade ago, one of my colleagues returned to office after lunch break with the sad face. I asked him what happened and he narrated the story with which the whole team laughed hard till their stomach got hurt.

He went out on to the roads to grab his lunch and there he crossed a road as he found an opening in the fence in the median. The moment he crossed the road, a police man caught him, issued a ticket by taking Emirates ID and asked to collect it from the police station which is 30 miles away.

My colleague somehow recovered quickly and by looking at the ticket he thought he can cross any road anytime until end of the day. So after having lunch, he was returning to the office and crossed an undesignated pathway at another location. There he goes, another police picked him and issued another ticket by taking his driving license! This time he had to go to a different police station which is opposite to the first one.

Enforcement is a great way of minimizing the pedestrian accidents. Now the question is, are we as transportation professionals, planning and designing the roadways considering the pedestrians and their walking time into account? I do not think so. This is what I always remember when I look at the two distanced signals without pedestrian crossing in between where there are attractions land uses on either sides.