One Of Life’s Little Hurdles
Submitted By: Pat T
Favorite Comment: Fixer Seephood says, “part of the new program to keep the urban population fit and healthy by forcing them to jump fences at the cross walk”
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And trouble from the neighbourhood kids soon ended once the new school crossing was installed.
Wheelchair users are at the biggest loss here, the next crossing is seven miles away.
Mr Gorbachev, tear this wall down!
its all out of perspective… its only 3 inches high
it’s 3+feet high <.< just check the cars in the background and remember that they are even more far away then…
“Flying Wallenda Family Only”
part of the new program to keep the urban population fit and healthy by forcing them to jump fences at the cross walk
That, or practice for hopping the boarder. That’s a skill every suburban pedestrian should know. It’ll come in handy one day…
US, always forming new track & field atlhetes.Even when they don’t want to
God I’m an idiot… it took me ages to figure out what was wrong in this picture
HYUP!
@Alcysio
This doesn’t appear to be the US.
It’s not really a kludge for that matter, either. Did I enter Failblog by mistake?
@Evan
You failed… to notice the fence is made entirely of duct tape.
@JT No, you’re not. Because if you are then so am I. So neither of us is.
There isn’t even a traffic light to slow down motorists!
Either the fence was a kludge, or the crosswalk was a kludge, based on the one that was there first simply _being_ there!
@Evan has a point. It is somewhere between a kludge and a fail… Maybe a “fudge” (a la “Chef”)…?
Looks like my local airport… After 9/11, the hourly parking lot closest to the terminal was closed, all foot traffic was redirected to the pedestrian tunnels, and fences and barriers were erected blocking folks from walking above ground from the parking decks. Crosswalks were kept, though.
More than once (usually late late at night), I’ve come to the realization that you truly could not get there from here, and had to backtrack into into the terminal.
In what way does it not?
@felix
Take a closer look at the blue street signs, the cluster of triangular signs facing away from the camera (the only triangular sign in the US is a Yield sign, there are two in this photo) and the cars in the parking lot. Looks a lot more like Europe to me…
@dono1
Now THAT would be a sweet entry for TIFI!
@Evan
Looks like Austria to me (from the roadsign design).
Oh, boy… Please tell me this is not Russia again. Our roads are really an everlasting FAIL.
And the factory manager kept wondering why so many of his employees had trouble getting to work when the parking lot was right across the street.
“On the bright side, bicycle parking was plenteous along the new highway…”
This looks familar.
The small square blue sign hanging over the street is sometimes used to indicate a bus or tram stop – specifically which route stops beneath the sign.
The other blue sign is a crossing sign (obviously). Perhaps one of these: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Crossing_signs#Pedestrian.2FCrosswalk
I’m going to go with Austria on this one.
At first glance thought it was the I-5 corridor just north of San Diego.
Jason: They all look so damn similar it could be anyone of those I’ll say Finland.
It’s not like there is a sidewalk on this side of the street, so might as well not cross.
I like how the arrows in the crosswalk tell you which way to go. Ummmm… like there would be another direction? Up maybe? Hold on while I put on my hover-boots!
…I stared at this for a good 15 or 20 seconds before I realized what was wrong.
Yeah I had to think for a second about this one myself.
And the point to this was? I simply love it when building crews and city officials are to dumb to notice obvious mistakes.
Great Photoshop artwork!
not to be pedantic, but where is the kludgy fix? Wrong blog!
Don’t think it’s Photoshop before You see the artful road planning in Moscow
Pim, this is a Russian fix – the 3rd lane has been renovated and the paintwork applied to asphalt BEFORE a gap in the bump wall has been created, and even before there are suitable pedestrian routes leading to the crossing.
@pim,
I think it is in the right blog. Like I said before, it is a kludgy (and dangerous) fix either way you look at it. Either the crossing or the fence was there first. so either there had to be a crosswalk and it was painted over a fence, or there had to be a fence and it was built over a crosswalk. In the case of the latter, the lines were left on the road, and in the case of the former there wasn’t a gap in the fence.
Either way, a kludgy fix to a situation. It might not be your run of the mill 2L bottle in a shower, but it is a worthy entry, showing the full range of ‘kludginess’ possible in the human experience.
Now is it so kludgy that it could also qualify as a fail? Sure! But don’t you think that makes it an even better entry?
Deffo Romania. My coountry. You can see a “Dacia”, Romanian car in that pic
Très poétique…
It clearly is America. No-one uses the pavements there anyway.
@Italian style
A comment I can agree with. Except for the “well done” part. I wish people would stop posting photoshopped images to sites like this.
@amagad
Romanians are allowed to leave their country, aren’t they? Plus I’ve seen Dacias sold…. well… not sold, but with native plates on in other countries, such as Spain, who themselves have a rather “robust” attitude towards getting road construction done. Someone sights it up, draws a pencil squiggle on a chart, then it’s bulldozer, gravel truck, first roller, asphalt truck, second roller, some short bus graduate with a tin of paint, and by the time you’ve come back from taking a leak there’s suddenly a 4-lane road where your field used to be. If you’re very lucky there might even be some signs and a pedestrian walkway.
@Bogus Exception
Not all “crosswalks” come with traffic lights, or even some kind of beacon…
-Mami!! I wanna get to the other side of the road!!
-You have to born there, my son…
Why couldn’t the chicken cross the road?
because it was to fat to fit between polls/wires
I also believe it is photoshoped. Nobody can tell where it is and confirm that it is real while it is quite a large road with probably lots of traffic at times. At least someone would have read about this outside TIFI…
It even seems very strange to put a crosswalk on such a large road without traffic lights.
You can also notice that the marking is not consistent: space between marks, discontinuous brightness of the continuous lines, stroke over the crosswalk at the left…
Continuing the fence or adding the crosswalk with photoshop would be quite easy, and the bad quality of such heavily compressed/reduced JPG picture even reinforces the effect.
Even if this picture is real, it is probably a work-in-progress: the triangular signs are probably misplaced road work signs (with a speed limit below them):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warning_sign#Road_works_or_construction
I wish TIFI provides sources for such images…
I submitted the picture, and I found it here: http://bikers-b.blog.friendster.com I have no reason to believe it was photoshopped. But even if someone decides it is, you have to admit it has caused a lot of conversation!
P.S. And thinking about the entire concept of kludges further, what would rule a photoshopped image out as a kludge?
Mexico city has created a new training course for Illegal immigrants.
@LordFarquaad
I prefer to use Hanlon’s paraphrased razor on this one; don’t attribute to a malicious photoshop what is more easily explained by incompetent road builders. I’ve seen similar examples of High Quality™ roadworks out in the wild. Poor painting, barriers put in retarded positions etc. Yer average highway labourer isn’t, statistically speaking, the sharpest or most caring tool in the box. Dangerous bit of road, many accidents where someone skids across the median and hits oncoming traffic, just happens to have a crossing on it. Local council says “here, contractors, put a central crash barrier along here for us”. Someone forgets to say “but leave a gap, maybe protected with bollards, for the pedestrians to get across”. And so the contractors build exactly what they’re told to. They’re not paid to think, after all, or so they will claim
Plus it may only be temporary. Ten metres out of shot there may be a brand new, shiny, light-controlled crossing that’s made this one obsolete, and they just haven’t burned off the old paint or removed the old sign yet.
(Conversely, as some of the road markings leading to it seem to be new, maybe it’s been freshly painted and they haven’t got round to removing that section of barrier yet).
As for those other triangle sign… roadworks can go on a long time but I’ve yet to see warnings for them set in a concrete base! Usually they either stand on the floor or are on some kind of X-footed pole with an old (and painted) tyre or some other weight to keep them upright. More likely they warn of other things – a crossroads, traffic lights, sharp bend etc – ahead and include a standard speed limit (or, e.g. “no trucks”) restriction sign. And have been bent around by vandals, or a speeding truck that’s got no hope of stopping in time for the dangerously constructed crossroad-on-a-bend up ahead. Hence the moving of the crosswalk to make the crossing experience safer
BTW, if the entire crosswalk is a pshop, they’ve done their homework and put the work in – note the “no overtaking/lane changing” solid lines either side of it, etc.
… but that does not seem very difficult to do, right? In fact, most of the time it is easier to photoshop something than to make it real. Otherwise, Photoshop would not even exist.
But I agree with you that – if it is real – this is probably a temporary situation. Maybe it was especially shot or cropped in order to hide some parts that would prove it.
@Bogus Exception
Thank you for the link, it allowed me to find a first appearance here, 2 years ago:
http://arbroath.blogspot.com/2007/11/pedestrian-crossing.html
(maybe not the origin though, as the image is hosted by imageshack)
And that is why kids in this area have to ride the school bus!
the new mexican style cross walk…
It’s wonderful that it is marked which side you’re supposed to start off on for crossing the street. Imagine jumping the fence at the same time with someone coming towards you, that would be disastrous!
@boogyman
HAHAHAHA!
@LordFarquaad
Yeah, but why would you bother with that for something like this? Lots of work, very little reward.
I apply the least-effort/most-likely razor again and it comes down on the side of poor planning-dept/contractor co-ordination and jobsworthyness.
Ha ha. It’s near of my apartment
it’s komendantskiy pr.
Looks like the US and Mexico border
@Alexander,
So perhaps not photoshopped after all! Which Street?
Go look for yourself in St. Petersburg (A strange story it is about how that place came to be!). You’ll see the street markings are just as depicted.
So to all those saying photoshop is easier than reality, and that this was a fake, perhaps a little crow is in order?
at least it is well lite for safe nightime crossing
I believe it was in Russia – they have tight project timetables/bonuses, so the construction workers will complete their parts of the project to minimum specification, then leave. So you would end up with fences being built, but with no gaps or gates while doorways/staircases would be added, but at separate times.
harlems new way of slowing criminals and getting cops fitter…
It must be in Poland…
its a test to see whose an illegal alien
When is it ever a good idea to have a crossing on a three lane highway?
(Guy trying to hop the fence)”C’mon, lemmie through, there’s a car comin’!”