Silly Saturday: A Badly-Positioned Crossing

North Tyneside Council has recently been doing a lovely job of smartening up our local shopping centre - it now looks much more inviting, with wider newly-laid pavements, better parking bays and renovated seating.

However the final piece of work worries me as I think it's very silly - and dangerous. They've created a new zebra crossing on the main road, just at the junction with the road to the shopping centre (on the left of the photo) and the road to the local park (on the right). The crossing is terribly close to the junctions. I happened to use it today. I saw a car about to turn right out of the shop road, so I waited at the kerb in case it came out quickly and didn't see me. However the driver did see me and stopped at the crossing to allow me to cross. But another car just behind it pulled out quickly and almost ran into the back of the first one.

So I'm concerned that: a) cars will turn out from the shops or the park and fail to see a pedestrian on the crossing in time to stop, especially when the main road is busy and their attention is focussed on the main-road traffic, or b) that a following car will run into one which stops in time - potentially pushing the front car onto the crossing.

I've looked uip the rules for traffic planners (here in paragraph 2.1.1.1) and it seems that there should be an absolute minimum of 5 metres between a junction and the crossing, measured from the position of a driver waiting at the give-way line of the side road. This is probably just the case for the road to the shops, but certainly not for the road to the park.

I plan to raise my concerns with the authorities.

Definitely very silly - the crossing could easily have been positioned a little further away from the junction.

Many thanks to admirer for hosting Silly Saturday.