Ball, pram and reversing hatchback in a residential zone
At 15:50 on a weekday you drive your B1 quadricycle into an estate road marked at its entrance with the D-40 residential-zone sign. The road is 5.5 m wide with no pavement, parked cars along the right-hand side, and a slight crest 30 m ahead. A white delivery van is stopped half on the verge, narrowing the gap to about 2.5 m. Beyond the crest you notice a football bouncing across the road from the right and a child of about six running after it, looking only at the ball. A woman pushing a pram is walking towards you in the middle of the road on your side, 20 m away, and is not looking up. On the left a resident is reversing a hatchback slowly out of a driveway with the reversing lights on. Your speedometer reads 26 km/h.
1. What is the correct speed and position here, and what in this scene should already have made you slow down before any of it happened?
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The D-40 sign makes this a residential zone, which means a 20 km/h limit - you are already 6 km/h over it - and, more importantly, that pedestrians have priority over vehicles and may use the full width of the road. Priority here means you give way to them, not merely that you try not to hit them.
What should have slowed you before the child appeared: the 5.5 m width with no pavement, the parked cars on the right, the delivery van narrowing the gap to 2.5 m, the crest cutting visibility to 30 m, and the pram in the road. Each on its own justifies walking pace; together they mean the correct speed is the one from which you can stop in the distance you can see, and your hand should be hovering over, or resting on, the brake. Position: slightly left of the parked cars to keep a door's width from them, well clear of the woman, ready to stop rather than to steer around obstacles.
2. The child runs after the ball. What do you do, and what do you expect next?
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Stop. Not slow, not steer around - stop before the line the ball is travelling along, because a child chasing a ball is locked onto the ball and will not see or hear a quadricycle, and a six-year-old cannot judge your speed. Stopping short also gives you a stationary platform from which to watch the second and third hazards.
Expect a second child to follow the first: children usually travel in groups and the one you see is often not the one who appears next. Expect the ball to change direction unpredictably, and expect the child's attention to stay on it even after it stops rolling. A horn is of limited value here - it can freeze a child in the middle of the road rather than move them out of it. Do not move off until the child is back with an adult or off the carriageway, and keep checking the reversing hatchback and the woman with the pram at the same time.
3. The reversing hatchback is now half out of the driveway. Who has priority, and why is this still a trap?
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A driver leaving a driveway or a property is not on a road at that moment, so the right-hand rule does not apply to him: he must give way to traffic already on the road and to pedestrians, and he has to stop until it is clear. Strictly, priority is yours.
That is exactly why it is a trap. Priority is not protection. The reversing driver is looking over his shoulder through a narrow hatch, his view of the residential zone is blocked by the parked cars, and he is probably watching for the delivery van rather than for you. Reversing lights show intent, not awareness. Because you are the one with the full picture - the child, the ball, the woman with the pram, the narrowed gap - you take the decision: slow to a crawl or stop, make sure he has seen you before you pass across the driveway, and leave enough room that if he keeps rolling backwards you can stop without involving the pedestrians.