How far do you need to be pushed before you take matters into your own hands? For the folk at Crosswalk Collective it was the realisation that Los Angeles officials weren’t keeping pedestrians safe. Their own brand of direct action involves installing it’s own zebra crossings across the city.
Many of the crossings are subsequently taken down by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT), but others have been replaced with official crossings. Many more continue to exist, undetected, as guerrilla zebra crossings.
The Crosswalk Collective website features photos of its numerous installations as well as instructions on how to paint your own zebra crossing.
Over the last century, groups both large and small have taken direct action against the domination of car culture.
People Power: Dutch folk protesting against road danger in the early 1970s
For example, the Stop de Kindermoord movement sparked radical change in the Netherlands that resulted in a transport system that’s now the envy of the world.
On a smaller scale, community groups in America placed tethered helium-filled balloons in the middle of streets to calm traffic where children play; villages in England built fake speed cameras to slow approaching cars and New Yorkers created their own concrete curb extensions to slow traffic speeds on corners.
For our part, we designed a pop-up zebra crossing to help schools lobby for safe crossings.
Here in the UK measures to reduce road danger like safety cameras or pedestrian crossings are not installed until a certain number of people have been killed at that particular location. We think that’s an unacceptable metric and salute all those who mount their own campaigns for road harm reduction.
If you’d like us to visit with our pop-up inflatable zebra crossing, please get in touch.
The ethical choice
The ETA was established in 1990 as an ethical provider of green, reliable travel services. Over 30 years on, we continue to offer cycle insurance , breakdown cover and mobility scooter insurance while putting concern for the environment at the heart of all we do.
The Good Shopping Guide judges us to be the UK’s most ethical provider.
Chris
I’m not commenting on the content of the article, but on the lack of knowledge of grammar exhibited by the author of it.
Please could ETA ask their contributors to go back to school and see what ” installing it’s own zebra crossings” means?