Throughout New Plymouth’s inner-city streets are a number of
flat white traffic islands. Generally in a state of disrepair – flaking dirty
paint, rough finish, weeds around the edges - they do little to draw attention
to the fact that they’re marking a potential killing field.
As a regular cyclist past, over and around many such islands, I’ve come up
with an idea to both draw attention to them and what they’re there to do and,
with the aid of a little subtle humour, get people to pay behave a little more respectably around these traffic islands.
To digress for a moment, in 1970s non trade-liberalised New Zealand, or at least
my hazy youthful recollection of it, there were apparently about 3 different
types of carpet on offer. The one that’s seared in my mind is a sort of red and
gold floral number. Axminster, I believe. It adorned the floor of my father’s
shop for over a decade and can still be found in unexpected commercial and
retail locations around our nation – namely Chinese restaurants in my recent experience.
To me, that vivid blood red carpet with its varying hues of
gold and black screams two things. The first is a sort of muted 1970s opulence,
hope, a fin-de-siecle grandeur as the floodgates of consumer opportunity
started to heave under looming spectre of globalism.
But it also speaks of cosseted childhood, of the safety of
beige-tinted domestic bliss, and the broadly-held belief that everything was
going to be okay.
So why not merge the two, and cover the faded white traffic
islands with a red and gold fiesta of hope. It’ll draw more attention to the
fact it’s an intersection, and it might just trigger enough childhood nostalgia
to get people to stop and exhibit a bit of patience.
As a bonus it might even remind drivers that bloodshed could
happen at any moment, and hide the stains when another cyclist loses some skin.
I’ve even found a local source of the carpet (a Chinese
restaurant, as it happens). Now to get it photographed and printed onto
weatherproof vinyl...
