Take responsibility and don’t become smartphone zombies

I don’t know what she thought I meant and I can only quote a former colleague who was frequently heard to say ‘to the pure, all things are pure’.

I assume my wife hadn’t been keeping up with the news. I was, of course, referring to the new advice in the updated Highway Code which recommends drivers use a Dutch Reach when opening their car doors.

For the avoidance of doubt, the technique involves using your left or ‘wrong’ hand to open your door. Apparently, it has two potential benefits.

Firstly, because you have to twist your body to reach the door handle, you are more likely to look behind you, and secondly, because your movement is more restricted, the door is unlikely to open as wide as using the ‘normal’ method.

This is, of course, to potentially protect cyclists and stop them from being catapulted over your car door.

Which brings me on to other parts of the updated Highway Code.

One of the major changes is the introduction of a road user hierarchy, which puts responsibility on drivers of large vehicles – such as trucks or vans – to reduce the danger posed to others.

Pedestrians are at the top of the hierarchy with all other road users (including cyclists) responsible for protecting them.

But it’s not just drivers who are being asked to be considerate. A new instruction says that cyclists should give way to pedestrians on shared pathways, and to horse riders on bridleways. I look forward to that being enforced.

But I expect to see some confusion over the rule tweak which gives priority to pedestrians who are crossing roads.

As theguardian.com reports: “One of the most debated changes is that drivers about to turn into a junction should now give way to pedestrians ‘crossing or waiting to cross’ that road.

That’s what good drivers do anyway, but it is a change to the previous version, which said pedestrians had priority only ‘if they have started to cross’.

As anyone will know if, say, they have walked through a city with a small child, or a frail older person, it can be daunting to have to step out into the road just to claim a place to cross.”

That’s all fine. I have absolutely no problem at all with those who pose the greatest road safety risk legally taking the greatest responsibility and seeking to protect pedestrians is a laudable aim.

Let’s face it, we’re all pedestrians at some point.

But where this all starts to fall apart is when hope, optimism and good intentions meets the reality of zombie pedestrians.

This is a true story. I know it’s true because it happened to me. A couple of weeks ago, I had to drive into town. It’s a journey of no more than a couple of miles and was uneventful.

By the time I’d done what I had to do, it was lunchtime so there were many more pedestrians out and about.

But before I’d got out of the town centre, two people had stepped off the pavement in front of moving traffic. The first incident was two cars in front of me, forcing us all to break suddenly.

Fortunately, none of us was driving particularly quickly and we all managed to avoid hitting each other and the pedestrian – a young woman who was looking at her smartphone.

Less than 500 yards further on, a middle-aged man in a smart suit did exactly the same thing, stepping off the pavement in front of me while he was looking at his smartphone.

I was still a little shaken from the first incident and was being extra careful so there was no harm done.

Having cleared the town centre, I thought I was ‘safe’ but oh no. While I was turning off a busy roundabout near a supermarket, a mother with a child in a pushchair stepped off the pavement in front of me…while looking at her smartphone.

Smartphone zombie pedestrians have become such a problem in some cities that special ‘zombie’ traffic lights have had to be installed at pedestrian crossings.

So by all means, let’s have a hierarchy of road users that seeks to protect pedestrians. But this starts with pedestrians taking responsibility for their own actions.

Don’t be a smartphone zombie.