Walking to our QUT campus this week and saw these cheap pedestrian warning signs at Kelvin Grove Rd and Musk Ave.
At that intersection. The same place where our dear friend Arjun was killed, and only weeks after his killer was sentenced.
And the car-brained LNP Brisbane City Council's response is signs telling pedestrians to be more careful?
I work here. I walk or ride this crossing daily. This isn't abstract. And it's hard not to read this as victim blaming dressed up as 'safety'.
You know what actually reduces deaths and injury: lower speeds, better signal control, enforcement, pedestrian-focussed road design. Dropping speeds even slightly in inner-city areas makes a massive difference to survival rates, with basically no real impact on trip times given how stop-start these roads already are.
Instead, we get cheap signage aimed at the people least able to absorb the consequences of other people's lack of care.
This won't make the intersection safer. It just lets a feckless council tick a box and pretend something's been done.
Posted by antmandan
38 Comments
I hate that any genuine reminder to pay attention and take care of one’s own safety is now disregarded as victim blaming. Yes, lower speeds, better signal control, etc. would help improve pedestrian safety but so would greater awareness as a pedestrian. Both things can be true.
you clearly havent meet drivers who think their entitled on the road.
the amount of times i’ve almost been hit while safely crossing at the lights is insane. Drivers don’t care if your on a green crossing man or not, they’ll just go.
At least the sign shows the council knows this is a high area for both pedestrains and traffic, so they’d rather put up a massive sign everyone will see vs a itty bitty sign that only those who pay attention to signs notice.
Are these signs actually supplied by BCC? There’s no logo and it’s not using the same colourway as the rest of the printed collateral from BCC
It’s almost like you can’t rely on others to watch out for your own personal safety… Like you need to have situational awareness.
What do you expect from a city where pedestrian crossings don’t exist.
Yeah I don’t think that’s from the council. If it was, it would have BCC branding/colours, etc. The council never spends money on something unless it can show it was from the council.
Plus… How is this any different to the “high crash zones” you see on the highway?
BCC didn’t put these signs up. You are blaming the incorrect entity.
It’s the idiot drivers that don’t look. I’ve been crossing at the nearby red rooster crossing. All lanes had cars. Everyone had stopped at the red light, but one car decided to just drive past all those stopped cars and keep going through the intersection, from the right turning lane… I gestured and yelled and he stopped and gave ME a dirty look. That was before covid. Since then with all the entitled out of staters moving here, it’s only going to get worse.
I ALWAYS look at the cars before crossing the street. Leftovers from living in Canberra and Sydney, because its the wild west when you are a pedestrian there.
What’s next, maybe they will install signs everywhere to tell everyone to be on the lookout for strange people wandering around at night 🤔
I would assume if it was bcc then there would be a logo on it somewhere.
Seems like an ideal location to trial the Pedestrian Brick Crossing System that was pioneered in Vancouver.
Video the traffic when you cross at the pedestrian crossing. Report the cars that violate the rules.
Fully agree with your sentiment. Pedestrians get treated like 3rd class citizens in many places. Being a young man with a reasonable build, I take my space where it’s my right and just prep to have to avoid some dingus if I ha e to, but so many people don’t have the capability to confidently step onto the road in front of a car knowing they can pull out if that car doesn’t brake. Eye contact with drivers is huge. Making eye contact with someone makes them 10 times more likely to stop for you.
It’s a good thing no one has asked the LNP State government to do something about the risk. They would have solved the problem with laws restricting pedestrians using the crossing to a speed limit of 0.01 kilometers per hour as the solution. And also require the pedestrians to have drivers licenses.
This isn’t victim blaming signage. It’s preventative and making an attempt to get pedestrians attention due to what happened.
The amount of people who either see an orange light and speed up as it is turning red. Green man goes, pedestrians start to cross and ZOOOOM! Close call. Extremely common at traffic lights as well as zebra crossings. The signage helps remind to stay alert
Or pedestrians that aren’t paying attention and walk out onto roads is ridiculously high. In case, the sign is meant to grab attention and think twice about walking right out.
Also, not BCC signage, has no BCC logo on it.
This is totally fair. If it’s a dangerous intersection and lots has gone wrong there, it’s helpful for people to be extra cautious. This sign reminds them of caution. That’s a good thing.
There goes Jim.
This is not council signage (if it was it would be in either council colours or high contrast yellow, at best it might be your local labour mp doing it unofficially), so whoever put this up can only do this, they have no control over speed limits etc. this is the best they can do and at least it’s something.
This may not be the solution you envisage but it is helping and whoever put it up is on your side, you’re fighting the wrong fight and setting yourself back. Have you tried talking to your local representative about the issue?
I think those were out up by QUT. They seem to happily govern the area.
“Danger, drivers are aggressive.”
Nah that’s not the council. That’s put there by a person who thinks that pedestrians are the problem not tiny men with anger problems behind the wheel.
That’s something QUT would make, not BCC ..
I’m reading “Killed by a Traffic Engineer” at the moment, and he suggests that drivers would respect pedestrian crossings if the road had bollards rise up when the pedestrian light was green. Dangerous? Well, it depends if you’re a pedestrian or driver.
This is stupid. I know that intersection and the intersection is quite wide there. The crossing is governed by traffic lights and walk/Don’t walk lights. What they need to do is repaint and signage the crossing much brighter and clearer so drivers don’t just assume there’s nobody walking across there. It should be a driver problem, not the pedestrians.
Based on the colour scheme, I can only assume this sign was put there by Jim’s Test and Tag.
Has it been there since BCC removed the turning lane onto KG Rd.
That was a mistake also.
It is very simple for any uncoordinated, untrained, easily distracted person with zero spatial awareness to get a driver’s licence in Australia. Authorities keep clutching their pearls and declaring that they’ve tried everything, but continue to act as though a driver’s licence is a right, not a privilege, and just increase fines and drop speed limits. There is ample evidence overseas that these things aren’t required if there is a proper driver training, testing, licencing, and ongoing education system in place.
If they invested properly in adequate, efficient public transport, and tightened up driver licencing requirements, I am absolutely convinced they would see crashes, fatalities, and injuries decline accordingly. There is a story somewhere (I can’t find it any more) about a QLD learner driver who failed their test TWELVE times before finally being given a licence … that individual is now allowed out on the road controlling 1.5 to 2.5 tons of moving metal.
We all see this, all the time. Impatient drivers flying through red lights, slowing (but not stopping) at stop signs, barely giving way at roundabouts, etc. One look at DashCams Australia’s YouTube page will show you ample evidence of the failures in the licencing system (although a lot of their videos are of aggression as opposed to unskilled drivers).
Just think about how bad the average driver is, then remember that (by literal definition), half the population is below average, and worse than that.
Edit to add – OP, I’m very sorry to hear about your friend, my sympathies for your loss.
Brisbane has such a massive problem with pedestrian/ car priority
More appalled we have a Musk Avenue….
That intersection is a nightmare.
They recently made changes to the turn from Lower Clifton where to go left you have to use the right lane, and to go right, you use the left lane.
Confused drivers will be way more prone to accidents.
I’m not opposed, any extra warning could save a life, but it has to go further than this.
Strange, I just booked Jim’s Test and Tag to do so next week.
Where the BCC branding? LNP one
-That doesn’t look like an official council sign
-It may be targeted as pedestrians who cross without waiting for their signal
-Based on a quick search, Arjun was killed by a person running a red light – better signal control won’t help.
She ran the red light, wouldn’t matter how low the speed is or how pedestrian focussed the road design is when someone does that, they’re going to ignore the rules anyhow sadly.
This sign is dangerous. Came off the icb and it caught my eye as I thought it was for drivers. Took attention away from the road and traffic.
Whoever put it up has not thought through the danger.
Evidently chatgpt forgot to tell you that official BCC signage doesn’t look like that…