Intersections

Laura from Melville

I know I'm in a bad mood already but this is the second incident to happen to me in 3 days!

I'd just like everyone to be a bit more careful when turning at intersections. I'm usually on foot with a pram and 50% of the time with a near-deaf 4 year old so am kind of vulnerable to cars not following the road rules.

What got me today at the Ohaupo/Collins Road intersection was the THREE cars who ignored the red arrow in order to make their turn into Collins Road from the North. Yes, the truck in front was slow and took up the whole turn signal, but you ALL started moving off AFTER the arrow had changed to red.

Having been hit by a car on a zebra crossing as a kid I am super careful and so chose to ignore the green man that would have let me walk across Collins Rd as I [correctly] supposed that at least one car would make the turn anyway, but was rather shocked at the following two who not only made me miss my chance to get across the road and on with my day but held up the two lanes of oncoming traffic for some time as well.

Now that didn't really put me and my kids in danger as I hadn't entered the intersection, but on Wednesday when crossing Ohaupo Rd on the appropriate signal (same intersection as above) I was forced to stop in the middle of a lane so a van towing a trailer didn't drive into my pram. Yes, the 'green man' had changed to the 'do not start crossing' at that point but I was over 3/5 lanes of road by then, moving quickly, so it's not like I was dawdling and the driver was going to miss his turn signal. I can only hope the hostile look he gave me was as a result of him getting a fright at nearly hitting us rather than because he thought I was holding him up.

I was given to understand that turning on red lights was illegal and also that turning drivers had to give way to pedestrians even if the driver has a green light... but, you know, correct me if I'm wrong...

So yeah, maybe you'd like to get through the lights in order to get on with your day, but so would everyone else. AND they'd like to do it without being injured as well!

/end rant =P

PS: It also makes it harder to teach aforementioned 4yo about road safety when the 'safe' places to cross are sometimes harder to get across safely than picking a spot further up the road and just running for it.