Green cross code

When I was young, I was a keen rollerskater. So I'm very pleased to see a dozen or so skaters regularly speed along the streets where I live in Lewisham. Their confidence is impressive. This evening, as they were travelling in procession and triumphantly gliding through the red lights (there was no one crossing at the time), one of them raised his arms aloft in joy.

Thankfully, the traffic in the immediate vicinity tends to be either sporadic or an absolute jam. The bottom of the road is a bottleneck, there's the pedestrian crossing awkwardly sited just after the entrance to the station and, more critically, a bridge over the railway that hides the crossing and unexpected skaters enjoying the freedom of the open road.

So far, to my knowledge, there haven't been any awkward scrapes. This despite the steep hill leading down to the intersection that car racers, skaters and cyclists all love to charge down.

It's not really the skaters I worry about though. They seem to do a fair job of keeping their wits about them; road sense (or second sense) must be a requirement for them.

It's the pedestrians that concern me. Whether skater, van, cycle or car, walkers increasingly seem to take their life in their hands. Walking out in front of oncoming traffic while on a crossing; stepping out into the road where there isn't a crossing; pushing a buggy ahead to ensure the traffic stops. This worked in the days when we all observed rules such as slowing down and stopping when a pedestrian was even vaguely near a zebra crossing. It doesn't happen half as much in London any more. Cars and vans now seem to dominate and don't necessarily cede right of way to insignificant - inconvenient - other road users.

For years, I've shouted at drivers ignoring pedestrian crossings or speeding up through changing lights. I swear at bus drivers - among the worst offenders at iinfringing on other users' road space and sitting static on crossings, forcing pedestrians to walk out into the traffic in order to cross.

At this rate, I'll have to change tack and shout at fellow walkers instead. Obliviousness in the face of other road users' bad manners as well as acting unpredictably and walking out to meet it only had to go wrong once. Perhaps if you're distracted by an unexpectedly skater.