The two roads of Rugby
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In April 2016, my employer moved the office I work in from my home city of Coventry to the nearby town of Rugby. Over the course of a weekend, I swapped my usual two buses each way for a single train ride with a generous dose of exercise at either end. Having grown up, lived and worked in Coventry all my life until that point, it was a change to make working in a different town part of my daily routine. The biggest change, however, was the added sense of danger that came with it.
The Coventry side of my walk is as uninteresting as ever. There's just more of it; now extending, as it does, to a train station a mile and a half away, as opposed to the bus stop at the end of the street. I'm so used to the scenery that I don't appreciate it as much as I should. Living on the outskirts, I'm spared the claustrophobic sprawl of post-war terraces that line the city's inner roads. Instead, I'm treated to views of woodland, fields with horses, and the occasional exotic road kill made unrecognisable by its final bad decision. On the other side, I have just two roads to walk along between Rugby station and my office. On a good day, walking at full pelt, I can make the journey in about twelve minutes. As a fast walker, with the added advantage of being six foot six inches tall, I appreciate that this is perhaps a third or so quicker than most people would walk it. But even this relatively short distance—about a mile—exposes me to more dangers than I'd find in a month's worth of my previous journey.
One of the biggest issues I face is blind spots. Another advantage of my height is the view. It works wonders at concerts where, more often than not, I can gaze over the heads of the rest of the crowd to see what's happening on stage in all its glory. This advantage means nothing, however, when there is scenery in the way. Of the handful of roads I need to cross on the way to and from work, there are two in particular that I dread every time. One of them is a side road that peels off about half way along the one my office is on. It's the tail part of a T-junction, situated at a point just where the main road it joins begins to curve back on itself. Approaching it on my way to work, I can only see a short distance past the junction. A car travelling at the legal speed limit could easily appear, approach and turn into this side road in less than the amount of time it would take me to cross it. There's no way I could know it was coming until it was there, so if I chose to cross, that car would be forced to either stop and wait, or scoop me up on the way around. It doesn't help that the side road itself also curves out of sight, as well as being flanked by the kind of high walls and tall trees that are the staple a whole sub-genre of horror movies. Yet despite the high-octane thrill of potentially being killed from at least two of the three possible directions, this isn't the worst part.
Further on, I'm forced to cross the main road itself. This is particularly annoying because my office is on the same side of the road that I start on, so I have to cross it twice to get to work. While I'm still only familiar with a small part of it, the pavements in Rugby appear to have been added in as an afterthought. This road is only ever paved on one side, and it alternates a couple of times along its length, for no reason I can see, except that perhaps the designer was bored and wanted to see how much he could get away with. At the point where the pavement ends, there is a series of thick bushes that lean out into the road on one side and over an embankment that drops into a canal on the other. The approach to these bushes is perhaps only fifty or so metres from the aforementioned junction, and still on the same view-inhibiting curve. By the time you reach the bushes, you can see less than ten metres along the main road, and the bushes themselves absorb all sound from approaching traffic. Crossing the road at this point requires a certain amount of courage and an even larger amount of optimism. The only way to tell if something is coming is to step into the road. If there is something coming, it's also a brilliant way to rival the outskirts of Coventry for exotic and unrecognisable road kill. So far, I've done okay. To my twice-daily bemusement, so has everyone else.
Both of the above issues are exacerbated by a perhaps controversial opinion I've formed since I started to work there: that very few people in Rugby are able to drive. I have to assume that I'm in a minority in holding this opinion, since so many of them have been allowed to keep doing so despite the wealth of evidence to support my position. My memories of taking driving lessons at around the turn of the millennium feature regular mentions of things called 'indicators' and other things called 'brakes'. There is evidence to suggest that the driving curriculum in Rugby isn't quite so thorough. In what amounts to a very short distance, the number of reckless or simply incapable drivers I see on a daily basis is astounding. There are, of course, the usual suspects who view speed limits as a kind of challenge. These exist everywhere, however, and it would be unfair of me to limit that observation to Rugby alone. Similarly, there are the dangerous over-takers—ones who will happily whiz past cyclists, and even other cars, against on-coming traffic, as if a chequered flag awaits them at their destination. And some of the younger drivers have all manner of adventures to look forward to when they eventually discover gears.
As a pedestrian, however, the worst for me are the ones who skipped the 'signal' part of their (I assume) driving lessons. Crossing side-roads in Rugby is already an exercise in guesswork and hope. Factor in cars that may or may not turn at a moment's notice, and without any warning, and it's a wonder I find the courage to make the journey at all. At the other end of the scale are the ones who do indicate, but who then stare at you and slow right down to a crawl on their approach. I'm never certain if they're doing this as a nice gesture to let me cross, or simply to force me to stand and wait even longer than necessary. Since most of them tend to remember where their accelerator pedal is right at the point where you're about to go, I never take the risk.
My sanctuary, of course, should be the pavement itself. This is the pedestrian lane and is exclusively for those of us on foot, in pushchairs, or in wheelchairs. It is our safe space in which we can continue our journey without risk to life or limb. Or it would be anywhere except Rugby. In Rugby, even the ill-thought-out pavements aren't safe. Putting aside the ones that are so uneven that I may as well be off-roading on a unicycle, the ones between the train station and my office are frequented as much by vehicles as they are pedestrians.
Perhaps it's that my route passes through an industrial estate and, as such, has several dropped curbs to allow access to car parks and frontages. In Rugby, any one of these is as or more dangerous than the road it joins. Cars approach them and cross the pavements at speed, even when the road they're trying to join isn't clear. And when leaving the road to get onto these premises, they're even more reckless—often swerving into position at the last moment while those nearby are left baffled by the bizarre amber lights blinking inexplicably on one side of their car. Despite being aware of the dangers and approaching with as much caution as I can muster every time, I've had more near misses in these situations than I care to remember. Some drivers don't even look; as if the pavements they cross are simply a waiting space while transitioning from one to the other. I can think of at least one occasion where the driver crossed it without using either mirrors, indicators or, indeed, windows—she came out of a car park, crossed the pavement and had the front of her four-by-four protruding into the path of oncoming traffic on a busy main road before she even looked up from whatever she was doing in the passenger-side footwell, missing me by inches on the way.
And then there're the bicycles. I have nothing against cyclists in general. I admire their effort, even if I sometimes wish their attire left a little more to the imagination. (Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to be disappointed after dinner.) I know many drivers who curse over cyclists—and at them—on a regular basis, and I can understand the frustration when they're holding up traffic, or not using an available cycle lane. I do, however, think it's a perfectly respectable—and, of course, healthy—way to travel. Just not on a footpath. Bicycles are road vehicles. They're fast-moving, large-wheeled and potentially life-threatening in the event of a collision. They don't belong among pedestrians. I see several cyclists per day, but in the year-and-a-half I've worked in Rugby, I could count the number I've seen on the road on one hand. Almost all of them ride on the pavements—often, it seems, directly at me on the assumption I'll leap out of the way. For the record, I won't. I can understand them not wanting to share the road with the drivers of Rugby. But on pavements barely wide enough for one person to travel along, my walking boots are claiming right of way.
It's a shame that all of this occurs in such a short distance. Aside from this stretch, I'm happier with my journey to work now than I've ever been. The train is much nicer than the bus. Even my fellow passengers are, by and large, more pleasant (albeit less inspiring than those I used to see). And the walk itself—assuming I survive it—is healthier, more scenic and generally better for me. Every so often, scientists make an announcement that something we've all been told for years is good for us is actually likely to kill us. If, one day, one of them announces the same is true of walking, then thanks to Rugby, I might very well believe them.