Tactile paving

Diagonal crossings are largely untried. Flush kerbs, tactile paving and audible/tactile should not be provided at diagonal crossings. 

At wide crossings, colouring the pedestrian crossing area may have benefits but pedestrians may think they have an unjustified precedence over vehicles. Care will be needed to give a colour contrast between red tactile paving and red surfacing. 

There is a need to obtain and examine road accident data involving sight impairment. The consequences of tactile paving errors would be a good area in which to start this research. 

I tactile paving not provided at dropped crossings or other locations, with no height difference between footway and carriageway ... 

I tactile paving with the wrong layout or colour ... 

I tactile paving missing (or wrong) in footway/cycleways ... 

Tactile paving with no colour contrast at a puffin crossing... 

Figure 3.5 A TMS Consultancy auditor examines unusual tactile paving during a Stage 3 site visit...

While looking through scheme plans, Road Safety Auditors may identify deficiencies in designs that are not related directly to road safety (Figure 3.6). For example, tactile paving wrongly specified. HD 19/15 states that non-safety issues should not be included... 

Pedestrians with visual impairment use kerbs, tactile paving, controlled crossings, lamp standards, bus stops and other items of street furniture to tell them their position along a memorised route. 

Figure 6.1 Incorrectly aligned tactile paving leads users Into live traffic...

Figure 9.4 Absence of colour contrast between tactile paving and the footway...

The judge found that there was a need to achieve a reasonable level of uniformity and consistency (in the provision of tactile paving) throughout all localities, and there were no special circumstances in Newham that made national guidance inappropriate. 

Newham is not the only authority that installs tactile paving in a different way to national guidance, and it remains to be seen whether further legal challenges may arise. 

DfT (1998b) Guidance on the Use of Tactile Paving Surfaces. DfT, London, UK. 

The lack of firm evidence makes this approach very difficult. An example of this can be seen in City of Westminster. Westminster has produced guidelines on its public realm schemes that recommends a minimalist use of tactile paving at crossing points (City of Westminster, 2011). In particular, the advice is that ... 

The Department for Transport s (DfT) guidance on tactile paving (DfT, 1998) is confirmed in the document Inclusive Mobility (DfT, 2005), and recommends that ... 

There is almost certainly no definitive collision research into this topic, as the STATS19 form used by the police to record injury collisions does not report on the visual acuity of a pedestrian involved in a collision, and does not record details of any tactile paving present. The Road Safety Audit is therefore more likely to be an intuitive approach in which the safety needs of each user are role played in relation to likely conflicts that could arise. The need to audit what you see rather than audit based on stereotypical or hypothetical concerns is really important here. 

The tactile paving guidance in Westminster has similarities to that described in Chapter 9 in the London Borough of Newham. In that case, a blind pedestrian obtained a judicial review in which the Newham guide was declared unlawful . 

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