Catching Up With You?

01 Sep Catching Up With You?

Have you ever experienced a situation where you tried to do something good, but it didn’t turn out as you expected?

Sometimes this happens with governments too.

You have probably noticed raised bumps or lines on the ground in public places. This is also called tactile paving. Its purpose is to alert vision-impaired people of a change in the area, like the top or bottom of escalators. It gives clues about the environment on an unfamiliar route and helps vision-impaired people navigate cities and transport, by knowing when to be aware of potential hazards.

That is a laudable aim and outcome.

A couple of years ago, I had foot surgery. When I was able to start moving around again, I hobbled with crutches or other walking aids. Escalators made me break into a sweat. I remember standing at the top of an escalator, too scared to move forward, until a kindly cleaner took pity on me and walked me onto and off the escalator.

One of the issues was that the gaps between the raised dots for vision-impaired people are the exact size and shape to catch the bottom of my crutches or walking aids. The space between the dots gripped my crutches and sent me off balance, every time I came into contact with them.

Tactile pavement is a great idea. But it interacts with the size of the bottom of walking aids.

Tactile pavement was created to solve one issue and it created another problem. Two separate systems came into contact with one another in a way that wasn’t expected. This is known as an “unintended consequence.” The designer of the dots wasn’t thinking about walking aids, understandably. This is a case of imperfect information.

Government works with imperfect information. That means, as I have explained in previous columns, that government needs our input to improve its decisions. You can find more information here.

It’s our role to tell government when their well-meaning actions might accidentally trip us up. After all, that’s how government becomes aware of the issues and gives it the opportunity to resolve the issues.

This article comes from my column entitled “Here to Help” in Hunter Local, September 2024. If you have an everyday problem just begging for a simple, real world solution, send it to “Here to Help” and let’s see what we can achieve.

Elaine Abery has a closet full of great ideas and empowering solutions. She’s also the Director of Unravelling Red Tape, a company dedicated to helping everyday people, not-for-profits and companies change the world through improved decision-making and legislation.