Pedestrians Don't Matter

Last year, the number of pedestrian deaths in Scotland rose by 40%.
Although the increase is alarming, in many ways it's hardly surprising. Pedestrians are having to find their way through and around increasingly complex road and street layouts where the most important risk factor comes from not knowing or understanding which direction traffic is approaching from.
With this backdrop of fatalities, we explore a number of situations in Glasgow where the pedestrian has to overcome everything from drivers who are simply unable to drive their vehicle, to confusing road layouts that look like dual-carriageways but are not.
How, for example, can we have a lane in the city where every lamppost has been hit by a reversing van? And I don't mean the same van. We're talking lampposts being flattened by any number of reversing vehicles where the driver clearly has not got a clue how to reverse his vehicle.
And why are so many pedestrian crossings not properly functioning with 'WAIT' signs not being illuminated.
Then there's the all-singing, all-dancing new road layout at Byres Road in the West End. Road signs indicating whether a side road is a one way street with traffic moving one way or another cannot be seen by pedestrians, and so once again the pedestrian is at a disadvantage in knowing which direction traffic is coming from.
Pedestrians have become second-class citizens and an afterthought in town planning.
And up in Glasgow city centre road layouts have been altered so much - what with one-way streets now two-way or visa-versa that, again, pedestrians struggle to know which way vehicles are approaching them from. One lapse of concentration and a step onto the road can spell disaster; as it did for 47 persons in Scotland last year.