Michael Jackson's legs

When I was younger, Santa would sometimes bring me or my brothers a lego set. One year my brother got a couple of pieces of roadway, which was great because we could then properly play with all of the cars we had made. Lego being Danish, the roadway pieces generally match European roads. I could never fully understand why there were so many crossing littered all over them. It was impossible to buy a piece with an intersection on it that did not have a crossing blocking the way of my lego car.

It is of course because the road pieces were designed not just for little lego cars but for little lego people too and on the front of many boxes of lego you could see people crossing the road with smiles on their yellow noseless faces.

In residential areas, it is something I think we could do with. I have moaned in the past about obstacles in the way of walking children to school. A crossing at each intersection would make life so much easier, particularly if they had the obligatory pedestrian crossing sign with Michael Jackson's legs on it:

As I have moaned about before, it should not strictly be necessary because pedestrians already have right of way at t-junctions and intersections when a car is turning on to the road they are crossing. The weird thing is that they do not have right of way when they are crossing the side street as a car when the car is approaching the intersection. It should be said of course that many many drivers are courteous and let pedestrians cross anyway.

A further rule that is often forgotten (rule 69(2A)) says that if a driver is turning left using a slip lane, the driver must give way to pedestrians on the slip lane. Anyone who has tried to cross the slip lane to get to the small concrete refuge would know that it is rare for a driver to be aware of the rule. They may of course also be completely oblivious of the pedestrian standing on the side of the road waiting to cross. Another place where Michael Jackson's legs are needed.

In fact, we need Michael Jackson's legs on all intersections in our residential areas. It would be a fitting tribute to his brilliance.