Lack of initiative a frustration

Madam – There is nothing more frustrating than seeing the same glaring problem every day and not being able to get it sorted out.

So I hope that by writing this letter, someone within the relevant department will perhaps take the initiative and do something! I tried phoning said relevant departments, but no one is ever ‘available’ to take your call!

Firstly traffic lights (robots for most of us) in this town seriously need to be sorted out. The pedestrian signals, even on the new ones, do not work properly. Some just flash red, others simply do not work or if they do work you have to be an Olympic sprinter to beat the little green man across the road! I was recently in a former Eastern block country, you know the one where road users are supposed to be so bad?

Well I was surprised to see how well their traffic signals worked, some even have a count down time display of the sequence. Traffic actually stops on the yellow signal already. Most pedestrians will wait for the green light even on streets where two strides will get you to the other side! Drivers actually wait for you to cross the road and I had to learn to trust them not to try and run me over the moment I stepped out in front of their vehicle!

I came home to sunny South African with a crash when I sedately stepped off the curb the other day and nearly got taken out by a taxi driver on his cellphone steering with his elbow and counting his takings in the other hand!

Secondly, the turn signals in our town: Those at Allen and Hardwick and the Amajuba Mall are a waste of time now that they are before the main sequence, especially in morning traffic going into town. The one at Hardwick and Kirkland streets may as well be off, because five seconds are about the average reaction time of a half asleep driver in the morning and that is all you get there!

Oh yes, and the little blue and white lane indicator board at that intersection is still pointing to the wrong side of the island even after a photograph of it was sent to the Advertiser months ago. Note to everyone, all those boards and road markings with all the different colours are not there to make the streets look pretty!

Can someone please do something about the Hunter Avenue intersection. In peak traffic people exiting Hunter do not deem it necessary to stop or look right especially if the left lane in Victoria isn’t moving! Do not assume the person travelling down the right hand lane can see you! Those big yellow markings in the intersection are there for a reason; go look it up in any learner’s licence book.

Would it not be more logical to extend Coronation Road into Allen Street (Colley Place) and close off Hunter avenue to Victoria Road?

Perhaps also increase the green sequence a few more seconds as traffic backs right up to the next intersection and for some reason people have forgotten how to anticipate and simply block the intersection; a habit which is becoming more of a norm than an exception at most intersections.

Finally, perhaps it would be of use to publish various road rules, or even a sketch of how various intersections in our town are to be used! I think there is a large majority of people who actually do not know the correct way to use the feeder lanes when turning left from both Murchison and Kirkland streets into Hardwick Street, the present method of teaching people to drive concentrates too heavily on a sequence of head bobbing and signalling than actually safely driving a vehicle and knowing how to read road signage.

People often crawl along these and then try merge with fast moving traffic at the narrowest point! The correct way is to stay behind the line and then accelerate down the feeder lane to safely merge with traffic!

Old School driver