DOING THINGS DIFFERENTLY: Not ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, just different!
On Being a Pedestrian
When my Dad was alive he loved to say to us kids, ‘I’ve been a walker all my life’ (his surname was ‘Walker’). Now I can say the same about my own lifestyle, despite changing my name through marriage, because I have never owned a car (see my other blog on being a lifelong non-driver).
For over twenty years I’ve lived in a town in the Peak District, England, where as soon as you set out to walk anywhere you will either be going down a hill or up one.
So I have no problem scooting up hills at a fast pace. I usually have a backpack as well, which gets pretty heavy if I use it for shopping, or carrying books and iPad around with me. There are buses but I tend to use them only in really bad weather because, believe it or not, by the time I’ve waited at a bus-stop and the bus has crawled all around town stopping at all the other stops, it really is quicker to walk!
Unfortunately I tend to forget that my driver-friends from elsewhere are not as sound in wind and limb as I am. So when they visit me I either have to slow to a snail’s pace or go in their car. Those who have put on weight in later life have even more of a problem. For some, the answer to maintaining good health is to go to a gym. But it seems ironic to me that they are paying huge fees to use treadmills and lift weights when they could exercise at home, and take brisk walks everywhere, for free. The only exercise I pay for is swimming, plus the small amount I give drivers as petrol money when we share cars to get to the start of a long walk.
Sometimes we take a walk on one of the many recreational trails that have been made out of disused railway lines. Unfortunately, walkers have to share most of these with cyclists. We don’t mix very well. For some reason today’s bikes are not fitted with bells, and can creep up on unsuspecting pedestrians with no warning. Not long ago I was almost knocked over by a racing cyclist, who merely laughed at my distress and zoomed off. A recent case in the UK highlighted the problem of cyclists and pedestrians in London when a young man on a fixed gear bike with no brakes killed a woman crossing the road. He was found guilty of causing bodily harm by “wanton or furious driving”.
However cyclists mowing down pedestrians are rare occurrences: the real danger to pedestrians is from car drivers. In 2015 there were over 400 pedestrian deaths on UK roads, and many more suffered serious injuries. It is most likely this figure has risen since. And there is chilling news about the autonomous cars which seem to be on the horizon: in a potential accident scenario, they may be programmed to put the lives of those in the car above the lives of anyone outside. The answer could be to provide pedestrian-only routes, but this is not easily done in a country where our towns, cities and countryside have been built up over centuries.