In memory of Ivan Smith, 9 years, killed crossing Victoria Avenue, 1981
and William Leake, 84 years, died of injuries sustained in Mulcaster Street, 1994.
Published by Wordcraft Limited, 1995
ISBN No. 1 9000069 00 8
“ Any road accident is of great concern to Public Services ... It was particularly saddening, therefore, when the elderly gentleman was knocked down, in Mulcaster Street.
While it might appear that the obvious step, to ensure that this sort of accident does not happen again, is to install a pedestrian crossing, it is not as simple as that. Crossings have to be positioned where people wish to cross and used with sufficient frequency, that drivers are always alert to their use. Introducing a crossing that does not meet these basic criteria may increase the likelihood of an accident happening which could well be the case in Mulcaster Street ...
The problems associated with road safety are much more complex than would first appear (sic). The authorities are aware of these problems and are addressing them in the correct manner by proper research, surveying and monitoring. Public Services will continue with this responsible approach and take any steps necessary to safeguard all road-users.”
Connetable E LE G Godel, PUBLIC SERVICES COMMITTEE
Letter of 25 April 1994
Many reports have been written and many hours have been spent discussing the issue of traffic in Jersey, none of which appears to have made us, either individually or collectively, change our attitude to the use of the car. In writing these poems Simon Crowcroft hopes that a more emotional and reflective consideration of the subject may succeed in influencing people where years of dry statistics have failed. He was already concerned about the death of an elderly man who was struck by a car in Mulcaster Street in January 1994, but the awful reality of road danger was brought much closer to home when one of his sons was seriously injured by a car in Bath Street a month later.
Most of us use cars because of the mobility and convenience they bring but perhaps we can have too much of a good thing. Is it possible that, for our excessive use of the car, the price is too high? Reading these poems made me think about what streets are for and particularly about how all of us, particularly children and the elderly have to defer to the car. There was a time when streets were the centre of community life, the places where people met, did their buying and selling, and where children played. Now they are little more than polluted and hazardous conduits for traffic, with community interaction increasingly banished to the non-combat zones of pedestrian precincts.
If street life were still an important feature of our community and it were suggested that we should end it by suddenly introducing the phenomenon known as traffic, people would rightly be outraged. Yet this is what we have done, albeit over a period of time. The unacceptable has become acceptable by stealth. So what have we done to resist this process?
Very little, is the short answer. Indeed, it is surely an interesting commentary on our values that the Island’s government has felt able to procrastinate over the introduction of a mobility allowance for disabled people and yet scarcely pause for thought when it comes to spending many tens of millions of pounds over the years in an effort to accommodate cars.
As a politician I frequently find myself discussing traffic, usually in terms of congestion and a lack of parking spaces. Only rarely is the issue of road safety raised. This is perhaps understandable as the inconveniences of motoring are experienced by most of us while accidents are, fortunately, far rarer. Or so I thought. When researching this issue it was with amazement that I discovered that since 1945 more British people have died on the nation’s roads than died fighting in the Second World War. If the number of deaths and the much greater number of serious injuries were caused by addiction to illegal drugs we would, quite rightly, consider the country to be on the brink of social collapse. Yet, when it comes to the car, addicts is what we are. And, as with all addictions, the first and greatest obstacle to recovery is to admit that we have a problem.
It might be argued that the comparatively small number of accidents involving pedestrians on the Island’s roads demonstrates a safe environment for pedestrians, yet surveys undertaken by the Policy Studies Institute show that accident statistics are an all but meaningless measure of how safe a road is. Falling accident statistics have persuaded those responsible for these matters - in Jersey, the Public Services Committee - that our roads are becoming safer for children and adults; these figures simply mask the fact that people’s use of roads for activities other than driving has become increasingly circumscibed because of fear and danger. A good accident record is usually explained by the fact that children are forbidden to use the roads unaccompanied, while if adults perceive a certain area as dangerous it is avoided, or entered with a high degree of vigilance.
This apparent surrender to road danger is reflected in road ‘safety’ campaigns aimed at children. The message is the normality of traffic danger and the importance of deferring to it. Essentially such campaigns seek to “educate” children that unless they suppress the playfulness, energy, exuberance and impetuousness that are natural features of childhood they risk serious injury or death. Can we as a community be proud of such a message? Can we take comfort in any reduction in deaths and injuries thus achieved when it is as a result of withdrawing the children from the threat rather than withdrawing the threat from the children?
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the General Assembly at the end of 1989 and ratified in September 1990. It is binding in law for all member states of the UN and defines children as “individuals with inalienable rights of no less importance than those of adults.” Further, it embodies the principle that “the lives and normal development of children should have first call on society’s concerns and capacities.” When we reflect upon the extent to which children in Jersey, particularly those in the urban areas are denied such a basic requirement of childhood as a safe and healthy environment in which to live and play because of our over-indulgence in the car, we have to consider the possibility that as a community we are failing our children.
People who believe that we defer to the car too much and that we should be redirecting some of our resources towards improving the lot of the pedestrian should write to their states’members and tell them so, for if only one extra pedestrian crossing is achieved and, who knows, one life saved, it will have been worth the effort.
‘Mean Streets’ is one person’s letter to the States.
Senator Stuart Syvret
The roadmaker’s craft lies also in the signs
screening paved meadows, divided farms,
as if a crow had flown
straight across the land I knew,
these level acres its wide black wake.
The forest I never understood is ash;
it’s clear now how the village stands
in relation to the town,
why long circuitous walks were unnecessary
down the undulating road few used.
No quantity of faith moved these hills;
certain nomads encamped here,
tethered their beasts in this dust-bowl
and went, the scars grassing over,
to cut their way through another shire.
England 1982
Once they would raise a cheer and stand aside
to let the cars pass; the drivers outside
like them, and slow, a man who walked ahead
with a flag. A fad, a fancy, they said,
sure of their calloused feet and worn palms,
centuries of errands between the farms,
children dawdling home, charlatans scot-free
skipping down the perquages* to the sea.
I’ve been thinking, there must have come a day
when we gave up our ancient rights of way,
an accident, perhaps, the first bone bust,
and all walking stopped in the sunlit dust.
* perquages were pathways that used to run from each of Jersey's twelve parish churches down to the sea. If a convicted felon could get onto one of these paths, tradition has it that no one was allowed to apprehend them.
What wide inhuman maw?
What needless sacrifice?
What paralysing roar?
The rubbish people talk!
You won’t be eaten -
Just look both ways and walk.
Armed with the Green Cross Code**
More young islanders
Brave the mouth of the road.
For Ariadne’s thread
Has rotted in the dark
And Theseus is dead.
** the Green Cross Code is a booklet that has been used extensively in British Road Safety campaigns. Its first dictum is, "Find a safe place to cross".
The new FREEDOM
look at me
Sleek good looks, impressive performance
impeccable manners
not as young as I used to be
0 - 60 in 15 secs
waiting till the traffic thins
Improved road handling
a little unsteady on my pins
Revolutionary water-shedding tyres
traditional Dawson brogues in brown
Sun-roof included as standard
cloth cap, bald pate, thin crown
Electric windows front and rear
glasses bleared with rain
Top of the range in-car audio
those voices again
Finger-tip control PAS
almost there
Driver and passenger air-bags
just air
Environmentally friendly
not to me
Your new freedom
my captivity.
Public Services do not care -
their holes in the ground, the ash in their hair*
their main concerns, and traffic flow,
not the mean streets where pedestrians go.
Tourism moguls do not care -
they let the hapless tourist dare
our gridlocked roads, and advertise
Jersey: a walker’s paradise.
Parents of small children care -
there’s a guard on the fire, a gate on the stair
but nowhere to cross from the house to the shops,
their street a racetrack that never stops.
Eager commuters do not care -
they hardly see the pedestrian there,
but other cars, of course, let pass
with a nod or a wave through tinted glass.
Politicians do not care -
they like to park in the Royal Square*,
“If we make the bankers commute by bus
they’re hardly going to vote for us!”
Workers in the hospital care -
confronted by the injured there;
and nurses cool, calm surgeons, porters whistling tunes
dread morning’s harvest and the afternoon’s.
* Much of the Public Services Committee's time and money has gone into trying to find a safe way of disposing of the island's toxic ash, which, until recently considered harmless, was dumped on the reclamation site in front of St Helier to blow into our lungs or leach into the sea. They have also been working on a vast underground cavern which will prevent the town sewerage system from flooding after severe storms.
** For years States Members have enjoyed the right to park their cars in one of the island’s most attractive pedestrianised areas, which was also the site of The Battle of Jersey in 1781. From 26 March 1996 they were required to park their cars elsewhere. But the main point of the verse still holds true as the island’s politicians approach elections in the autumn.
For all their pains: the clear-headed sperm,
the abstemious ovum, the infant who swam
in sober seas (till she was full-term
he renounced lunchtime beer and the wee dram
at bedtime); for all the sterile rooms
and hospital gowns, each ante-natal session,
the earnest men with ears to wombs
like eavesdroppers, the sudden conversion
to home-birth, the doctor’s dark word
of disaster (the flying squad trapped
in traffic, the child hanged by the cord);
for the kitchen like a library, the mother rapt
in Leboyer and Kitzinger; winning the fight,
for the birth in their bed, the father asleep
at his post, the midwife arriving at first light
with the milk-man; for all the hours without sleep,
the checking a re-checking of the cot,
kept awake by the hi-tech gismo, hearing
each catch in his breathing, checking he had not
turned on his front, always checking and fearing;
for all of the warm clothes washed and dried,
the coats, straps, and clips, done, undone,
every door locked, buckle-restraint tied,
for every precaution and vaccination;
for all the kerbside drills, the lessons
in fear, the child chauffeured here, there
and everywhere, the tireless explanations,
(You cannot walk - just think of the danger!)
for all their pains, came a killing machine,
someone in a hurry, or an alcoholic haze,
and for the child out for sweets, or a magazine,
called a visitor early by ten thousand days.
As I was walking down Mulcaster Street
An old man took me by the arm;
‘Now you be fit,’ he said, ‘and you be fleet,
Help me cross so I meet no harm.’
‘So I meet no harm as my neighbour did
On the ring road in St Saviour,
He saw the bright stars when he heard the van skid,
He went up to meet his Maker.’
‘You should use the crossing, good sir,’ I said,
‘You may go across in safety,
Press the button and when the lights turn red,
you may go across in safety.’
‘Cross in safety, my hat!’ he said, ‘Oh where
Is the pedestrian crossing?’
I looked up the street, and I looked down, there
Was no pedestrian crossing.
‘Then you must wait until the traffic slows
To arrive at the bus station,
One of these rushing drivers surely knows
You walk to a destination.’
‘Shall I wait until the loud crack of doom?’
He called out as I was leaving;
He stepped into the street, into his tomb,
And all his friends are grieving.
Then a man from Public Services came,
He set up a ticking meter,
Said, ‘By my yellow coat, we aren’t to blame,
The old man should have been fleeter.’
No muffled anchor chain dropping in the bay,
and queasy soldiers disembarked by night,
or bullets from the blue sky splintering
wood and bone, and flagrant foreign flag* -
We thought these were our friends! Not threatening
but gracious, arriving in ones and twos,
finding favour with the natives, and when
their ships had doors, and they crowded ashore,
Welcome! we said. Then reinforcements came,
tankers with supplies, teams of engineers
who changed the land, the laws. Who could refuse
orders like theirs? For least resistance meant
in some houses silent rooms, in some schools
chairs tucked under desks all day. And watching
their manoeuvres now, their constant convoys
drawn across our paths, we are afraid.
Leashed to our sides our children see no gleam
of an insurgent’s eye in our craven stares;
only late at night when the patrols slacken
we stroll across the avenue to the sands.
*The two invasions referred to were by the French in 1781 and the Germans in the Second World War, respectively. The latter began with an aerial bombardment of St Helier in June 1940.
Like any Friday, turning out
his pockets, the crumpled cards,
the pencil stub, the balloon shards,
the sticky sweets, the stale crust -
hard facts in a world of doubt,
where everything turns to dust.
The seams still intact,
resewn to the fly
from the crotch and thigh,
but the right leg needs attention,
holed by the car’s impact
and the road’s abrasion.
And the knee patches like muslin -
‘What do you get up to at school,
for godsake! Do you
work on your knees?’
His trousers kick and run
under the trees.
Remember the first yards across the ward’s
miles of polished lino, crutches akimbo,
and silvered in the slanting sun,
the exercise as impossible
as crossing a falls?
Then some expert would swing by,
I’d say, ‘You’ll be like that, pretty soon’ -
‘Never!’ you’d scowl,
flinging the crutches down,
getting your burning leg horizontal.
And the sweating physiotherapist -
remember how he kept leaving off
your torture to mop his face,
how the pools of his perspiration
impeded your progress?
Like overdue books, for months
they were left in the hall, save when
you machine-gunned your brothers with them,
or took trips around the uneven yard
for old times’ sake.
If you want you can watch
my boy’s waking this morning,
eyes shut fast against the bare bulb
and winter’s steely light;
and I will show you
tousled curls and crumpled clothes,
pages of last night’s scribbled tales,
his arms upstretched for a hug.
If you want you can watch
the knot in the road,
the crouching throng,
the ambulance drawing near;
and I will show you
no wide white stripes,
no beacon brilliant to efface
his outstretched twisted leg.
If you want you can watch
his drifting back to sleep,
incur with us in half an hour
strict teachers’ wrath;
and I will show you
nothing in the world
more precious than this
in morning’s yellow light.
Thank you for the letter I received
last April, and please excuse this late reply.
Do not think for a moment I was deceived
by the things you claim to have achieved.
And what have you done to deserve my
thank you? For the letter I received
said there was something I had not perceived:
“Crossings make accidents happen, see?” I
do not. Think, for a moment I was deceived
that you did care about my son, and grieved
with the widow, and did not lie.
Thank you for the letter. I received
it and waited for change. Perhaps you believed
I had forgotten to protest, or was grown too shy;
do not think for a moment I was. Deceived
by your assurances, some may be relieved
that all is well as they cross the streets, or try.
Thank you for the letter I received;
do not think for a moment I was deceived.