Citizens, rejoice! Double yellow lines, generally a friendless and unwelcome lot, are now being recruited to save lives.

The new “baffling” double yellow lines in Headington are in fact a monument to creative forward thinking on behalf of Oxfordshire County Council’s transport department.

I know this for a fact, having had enlightening discussions with their engineers and officers on this very subject.

What your photo and article (last Tuesday’s Oxford Mail) failed to include was the critical detail that these double yellow lines run parallel to a new raised informal pedestrian crossing, finished with a brick pattern at a slight additional expense.

The yellow lines running across the side street were deliberately positioned to visually protect pedestrians crossing the junction, further fortifying the visual protection for pedestrians offered by the brick pattern and the hump and give way markings.

An aesthetic decision was also taken not to spoil the brick pattern with yellow paint dribbled on it, while still keeping the parking restrictions unambiguous.

Indeed, double yellows have a legal definition with regard to parking restrictions. But the council’s engineers understand that double yellows are also popularly read as a virtual electric fence, delineating ‘pedestrian’ space from ‘motor’ space.

As a result, motorists regularly break the Highway Code by failing to give way to pedestrians crossing at junctions with double yellows that sweep around their corners. Is there anyone who hasn’t suffered bullying or intimidation from a motorist furious that some pedestrian had the nerve to intrude into ‘their’ space before they drove into a junction?

Headington’s installation actually uses this ‘electric fence effect’ to promote the motorist behaviour the Highway Code fails to achieve on its own.

A similar use of double yellows was specified for our recently installed crossings at either end of Beechcroft Road, as requested by the residents’ association. Other examples exist at Chalfont and Polstead Roads in North Oxford and Blue Boar Street and St Aldate’s in the city centre.

Parking rules are not compromised by this clever and aesthetically sensitive use of road paint.

We’re not accustomed to our road engineers thinking outside the box; yet creativity and aesthetics are part of the new buzz in the profession, the Headington installation being a modest example. I look forward to seeing more “baffling” use of road materials in future, as our roads gradually evolve to become more civil public spaces.

TED DEWAN, Beechcroft Road, Oxford