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Posted By Kevin Street MIOSH,RSP
We have seen an increase in our slips,trips and falls accidents. Having investigated further the route cause appears to be tactile paving. The tactile paving is installed to the recognised standard,however due to the location i.e. at the kerb side we have had instances with elderly people tripping and falling into the roadway. This is a national issue, have we created a bigger hazard for the majority in trying to protect the minority?. Any comments
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Posted By Michelle Driscoll
From a purely pedestrian point of view - I find the tactile paving more dangerous than the normal paving especially in the wet.
And from a womans point of view is quite tough on your feet if you're wearing thin soled shoes.
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Posted By Jonathan Breeze
I have personally succumbed to this problem when tactile paving was recently installed at a local railway station along the full length of the platform.
I was saved by the fact that I was getting off the train at the time and so I tripped and fell onto the platform.
Because of the potential implications I ensured that the situation was reported to the ticket office immediately.
It doesnt take much imagination to forsee a situation where a passenger trips and falls onto the track or a live rail and a fatality ensues.
Jon
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Posted By Dave Wilson
Interesting!
Our LA have a dept (couple of geezers) who go around the city centre standing on all the paving stones to see if they are loose looking for trip hazards, they then mark them with paint and another team come round and repair.
They obviously have another team installing trip hazards at areas of high risk ie pedestrian crossings.
Never thought of it like this before!
so is it reasonably foreseable now that this has occured and when will the first case of negligence be brought before the courts?
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Posted By Jonathan Breeze
Good point that Dave,
And all at the tax payers expense...
Could the problem be resolved by installing a paving stone with dimples in of the same dimensions?
What does the standard for tactile paving actually say?
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Posted By Sean Fraser
I have noticed this problem and wondered what the reasoning was behind making the pavement less safe to walk on. Here in Aberdeen the LA have installed tactile paving at road junctions that inclines toward the road, presumably set at the correct angle to maximise the launching of the victim directly into the path of whatever raod vehicle is approaching at the time.
Seriously, I wonder where this "great" idea originated from? The paving is especially unsafe during the conditions when it should be providing the most protection - rain and ice/snow. I am always far more careful walking on this stuff than on normal paving - or perhaps that is the point!
Changing to dimples would create a greater opportunity for rain to collect and during cold conditions this would encourage the formation of ice - increasing the skite factor significantly.
Since I am not a civil engineer, my opinion is unqualified, but I would have thought that only grating or close roughness (like sandpaper) would be the safer alternative to the traditional pavement. This would give sufficient grip in all conditions.
In the end, the only real solution on wet and cold days is to be conscious of the dangers and to take care when travelling, regardless of the mode of travel (vehicle or Shanks' pony).
Whoever came up with this "solution" should be hunted down and made to explain themselves!
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Posted By Ian Mycroft
Sean
It seems to me that you are misunderstanding the application of the tactile paving. It is not there to create extra grip on the surface, it there to help the visually impaired by alerting them to their suroundings (different surfaces mean different things). However, what Kevin is saying is that by helping the visually impaired we are at risk of creating a trip hazard for the rest of the population at the points where we should be removing any possible hazards i.e. crossing points on roads, rail platform edges, top and bottom of stairs, etc. We have just installed the cordouroy slabs at the top of some concrete steps and I am quite worried that we are in for an increase in trips (potentially serious).
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Posted By Jonathan Breeze
I can see the lawyers circling like vultures already...
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Posted By John Webster
Sean, I think you may have misunderstood the intended purpose of the tactile paving, which is of course to inform blind and partially sighted pedestrians of a safe place to cross the road.
It seems a worthy idea, but clearly there are problems emerging - another case of inadequate risk assessment prior to change being made? I have also heard of wheelchair users who, not wishing to cross the road, find the feeling of the chair being tipped towards it quite alarming, and have difficulty steering when one side is on smooth tarmac, the other on tactile paving.
Yet do people with limited vision really need, or even want this tactile clue. The paving is usually installed in a depression in the pavement at the site of a dropped kerb. Don't the depression and the dropped kerb provide the necessary information? I would be interested to hear from the RNIB in the light of the problems.
I fear this may be another "knee jerk" response to the Disability Discrimination Act, with a lot of public (our) money wasted.
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Posted By Sean Fraser
Ian/John,
In response to your comments, it wasn't a case of me misunderstanding the situation, it was more that I hadn't understood it in the first place! Thanks for letting me know the original reasoning behind the tactile paving, which I hadn't considered.
We are still left with the situation that in an effort to address one issue, the LA's the length and breadth of the UK have now created a worse one - and I am concerned that my hard earned tax money is going to be spent in meeting compensation claims instead of what it should be spent on, providing local services. Mind you, it will only be following the trend that my hard earned NI has been going in paying out for NHS compensation claims . . .!
I would also be interested in seeing if there is positive feedback from RNIB etc. regarding this paving. The following has been taken from their website (http://www.rnib.org.uk/jmu/streets.htm) regarding this subject:
"Tactile Paving Training
The Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions has issued new guidance on the use of tactile paving surfaces. The aim of this guidance is to avoid the misuse of the surface and enable local authorities to implement a paving surface considerately without detriment to other street users or the aesthetic appeal of the environment. The JMU Access Partnership has developed and delivered a training course, ‘Tactile paving - or crazy paving? , to enable authorities and professionals using the surface understand the new guidance.
JMU’s in-house workshops enable local authorities to install tactile paving in a way which:
-Maximises usefulness to visually impaired people
-Minimises expenditure
-Reduces complaints
-Creates aesthetically pleasing environments
-Complies with Department of Environment, Transport and Regions guidelines
Participants are trained to:
-Understand how and why people use tactile paving
-Interpret and adapt national guidelines where necessary
-Identify good and bad practice
-Develop solutions to specific problems
-Develop phased improvement programmes
-Obtain further information and advice
-Undertake effective consultation "
It will be interesting to note if the "reduces complaints" bit is actually taking place!!
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Posted By Stuart Nagle
Kevin.
In response to your question, and as detailed in the above responses, tactile paving was 'invented' for the benefit of persons who are visually impaired.
I am aware that various paving manufacturers have been addressing the problems caused by minor surface irregularities in tactile paving and there are I understand a whole range of differing types, so it might be worth contacting the manufacturers of pre-cast concrete paving to see what's on offer.
In response to some of the comments above, I/m sure that the highways inspectors would not like being addressed as 'geezers' no more that health and safety practitioners would like being addressed, for example, as 'geezers who stop me working' !!
There are very specific standards for paving on highways, including tactile paving, and it may be worth discussing this with either a highways engineer or someone from the Highways Inspectors office who may be able to give more detailed advice, or know where to get it. They too have usually studied hard and long to get where they are...
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Posted By Dave Wilson
This was in a pedestrian zone in the city centre and these two blokes job was to stand on every paving slab to see if it moved and if it did they marked it, that was the remit of the job as I asked them.
No disrespect to these LA employees but in the context of the thread it was to highlight that the LA was doing something about the Trip hazards and apparently introducing more with tactile paving.
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Posted By Jim Walker
Come on Stuart! climb down off that high horse. Dave's description quickly and graphically got over his point.
Surely we can indulge in the national sport of having as crack at public servants on this site. I can't imagine there is anyone so thin skinned to take offence.
Are you saying every council in the UK has done such a professional job on this issue, that the slip hazards being disussed are a figment of our imagination??
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Posted By Stuart Nagle
I fully understand your points and do not, in essence disagree with them, however as can be seen from many a thread on this site people value their 'professionalism' and so it would be nice for a professional organisation, like IOSH and it's members to 'appreciate' the professionalism of others.
That said (ho, ho, ho....), having working in Local Government as an Engineer for some years, I know that trips and slips on tactile paving are a very very small persentage of the overall claims for tripping and slipping on the public highway, with the number one being trips over uneven (Broken) paving slabs usually attributed to vehicles overiding the footways.
There are standards produced by both national and county bodies on the maintenance (and acceptable defect) standards for highways, concerning carriageways, footways and verges etc.
What is interesting is that there are, or cetainly were, persons who were know serial claimants for tripping cases and made claims throughout the UK. I attanded a meeting with county insurers some years ago now concerning this subject following their announcement to do something about it and pass details to other local authorities to try and stamp it out. I don't know if it was successful, but a thread on this site just a few days ago about someone entering a site and 'assisting' employees with information on trying to make claims goes some way i think to understanding the mentality here.
One thing I can say is that in general I think we have a good highway infrastructure in comparrison to other countries (the USA springs to mind) and that for what we pay for this infrastructure we get a good deal !!
Now;s there's a controversial comment!!
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