London: Safety First

As we saw in the previous post, London has always been kind of an unsafe place to live. So is any big city, I guess, but we were struck by London's safety signs just because they're new to us. Some of them just seem a lot more admonitory than the signs in our town:

This sign is right outside the London Canal Museum (which backs on to the Battlebridge Basin of Regent's Canal). The water is so thick with algae that it doesn't look like water, so the sign warns people that the algae won't support the weight of a person.

Here's a historical sign from inside the Museum:


Water's a problem in London, what with the Thames and the canals and so forth, but what about the roads? The first big problem is that they drive on the wrong side, so they have to have these signs on the roads for people from the rest of the world to give us a fighting chance when we're crossing the street:



When you want to cross the street, you have to press the button and wait for the green man (a big WAIT sign lights up on the box in case you don't get it). It's fun to watch who waits and who takes their chances. Often, the natives cross even without the green man (maybe following the CROSS WITH CARE message on the box). Some unsuspecting tourists follow their lead, only to narrowly miss getting creamed by speeding taxis, etc., while we watch smugly from the safety of the pedestrian island. We always wait for the green man.


If you survive the streets, you must also beware of the Underground. Alas, I didn't take a picture of the first safety sign I saw in the London Underground. It was at the escalator in Heathrow, and it gave the total number of escalator casualties in the past year (I think it was over 1000, with one fatality). It certainly made me step carefully.

(Maybe that's what most safety signs are missing: specificity. E.g. at Cape Spear: "Do not go past this sign. Seriously. The wind will gust and sweep you into those crashing waves and your body will not be recovered even though Search and Rescue will do their best." Or at Niagara Falls: "The last person who sat on this railing to get her picture taken fell into the Falls and they found her body several days later.")

This sign is rather pointed:


Heat is a big problem in the Underground. Like Toronto's subway system, the Underground gets kind of stuffy in the summer, so they have humungous fans in some of the stations to get the air moving (notice safety cage):


Unlike Toronto's subway system, there is no air conditioning on the trains themselves, just a few vents to open so that the stuffy tunnel air can flow through the train. This makes it necessary to put up posters like this one:


Be careful when you get on and off the train:


And finally, when you're leaving the station, please don't try walking up those stairs to street level:


Here is the strangest safety sign we saw in London, in Postman's Park. We have interpreted it thus: "No setting fire to your dog's poop."