Cagey NPHET going nowhere fast -

Policy to hold our hands fails

WHY did the NPHET advisor cross the road? Well... the short answer is he didn’t.

Long answer is that instead of crossing the road, he expressed concern about it. After all, crossing the road is dangerous. There’s a risk.

So instead of crossing the road, the NPHET guy would recommend that none of us should cross the road.

We should stay on whatever side of the road we’re on. And if our workplace is on the other side of the road, well, NPHET Guy’s sorry – but he’s also concerned.

You could tell Nphet Guy that there are measures in place to negate the risk of crossing the road.

There’s the much heralded traffic light system – where actual traffic lights make it safer to cross.

Danger

There’s pedestrian crossings. There are even extremely effective pedestrian bridges that can help people across massive roads.

But NPHET Guy is still concerned – perhaps because of the variants of vehicles out there.

Cars are always evolving. Many of the dominant vehicles are capable of moving at speeds more than 50 per cent faster than before.

There’s nippy little e- scooters. There’s motorbikes. There’s lads doing sulky racing. All very concerning for NPHET Guy.

Pedestrian crossings – good as they are – may not protect us from the risks posed by these certain modes of transport.

It doesn’t matter that in every other European country people are allowed to and trusted to cross the road.

It doesn’t matter that we’ve all seen stadiums packed with people watching football matches that they had to cross the road to get to.

Because – if NPHET Guy goes for a walk any weekend – there’s those shocking scenes that he’ll witness.

There’ll be people crossing the road all over the place – even in places where there aren’t traffic lights or pedestrian crossings.

NAYSAYERS: The team at NPHET and (above) a pedestrian crossing Packed

It would be like Jones’ Road on the day of an All Ireland final. People crossing without singing a verse of the Safe Cross Code first. They might think there’s safety in numbers – herd i mmunity maybe – but NPHET Guy isn’t sure about how many it takes to get across the road safely like that.

So he recommends you stay where you are, then politicians say they hope to let us cross the road later this month, but there are no guarantees.

But first Leo Varadkar will say it’s not unavoidable that we will be stuck on one side of the road.

Then two hours later he’ll say it will be difficult to go against NPHET Guy’s advice – so we’ll be staying where we are.

Going nowhere. Fast.