Crossing The Street

Have you ever been out and about, perhaps walking in your local area and just randomly crossed on to the other side of the road? the answer is of course yes, it’s a god given right, you likely do it without even giving it a second thought, it comes naturally, automatically, you look both ways and you see it’s clear before crossing the road – however for disabled people with mobility issues this isn’t always possible.

Going down the street in my motorised wheelchair causes me little disruption, the national highways agency and local councils have gone to great lengths to ensure that public pathways are accessible for all. Of course many people have had dropped kerbs inserted onto driveways to make it accessible for cars, but this causes an unusual problem for people like myself, camber on public walkways send wheelchairs off at uncomfortable angles at sometimes this carries an element of risk if a wheelchair is on a significant camber.

Most of the time this is easily overcome and rectified, however on many occasion, I’ve had to walk back from where I’ve come from, or cross further down the road as there’s no drop kerb on the other side. This can be absolutely infuriating. I’m not a flat earth person, I know I’m going to be dealing with uneven ground, but why do I have to travel further, just to cross a road? This nowadays is becoming quite a common theme.

On the positive side of the argument most foot paths are accessible, they’re plenty wide enough and even in my wheelchair they allow for two people to pass side by side, but sometimes obstacles (such as the placement on a lamp post) make accessing public footpaths challenging.

The infrastructure in place is more than sufficient, but there’s times when you look at the layout of a road or street and you instantly know that access hasn’t been thought about, there’s places where dropped kerbs are diagonal to each other which places disabled people with mobility issues at increased risk or harm.

Of course, the infrastructure that’s in place can’t really be adapted or rectified, but I would urge the general public to be vigilant the next time you cross a road, give it some consideration, ponder just how easy it is for you to cross the road wherever you may please, and it goes without saying but of course don’t ever take the most basic of human rights for granted.

Until next time. 😊