[Sir Trev]

I can foresee a right mess and court action arising from this. Already-militant pedestrians (and mobile phone zombies) will be claiming for fictitious injury and "hurt feelings" if we as road users do not magically guess what they're about to do. This effectively gives pedestrians the belief that they don't have to have any duty of care for others they may impact by acting selfishly or stupidly. I'm not saying the current system is perfect but expecting a line of traffic to miss an entire traffic light phase because one belligerent pedestrian insists on crossing a road without waiting for a sensible gap is not necessary.

I was taught common sense pedestrian manners while still in pre-school half a century ago (anyone else remember Tufty and the Green Cross Giant?) and similar at primary school when the local police seargent did a cycling proficiency course for us. It worked just fine and I still use the lessons I learned back then. Just because people today are too stupid or selfish to care about anyone else and cannot look further than their own shoes/screen does not mean the rules need to change. Putting more Rozzers on the streets to enforce the existing and perfectly adequate rules would be a LOT more sensible than demonising drivers/riders of powered vehicles.

[/RANT]