• It takes law-abiding pedestrians about 30 minutes to cover the 100-odd-metre stretch from SN Banerjee Road at Esplanade to the income-tax building on Bentinck Street. There are three signals at two intersections along that stretch, each of which allows them less than seven seconds to make it across after showing red for seven minutes.

• At the seven-point Park Circus crossing, there is not a single signal or zebra crossing for the pedestrian. There are only signboards warning him of penalties, even jail, for violating rules. If these were taken seriously, all of Calcutta would be behind bars.

A videographic study conducted by an NGO over the past two years at 10 major intersections has confirmed the suspicion that the Calcuttan on foot is not bothered about traffic rules because the authorities aren’t.

Rethinking Development, which video-recorded what pedestrians go through at intersections like Exide, Moulali, Ballygunge Phari and Jadavpur police station, found the traffic system “out and out anti-pedestrian”.

“Our videotapes probe the reason behind pedestrians breaking traffic rules. Nine out of 10 roads won’t let you obey traffic rules. By the time you reach the 10th, you are used to breaking rules,” Sabuj Mukherjee, the secretary of the NGO, said.

Sources in the Calcutta Municipal Corporation said the width of pavements along some thoroughfares was reduced in the last financial year. That increased the space for vehicles, but shrunk it for pedestrians.

“Walking from Sealdah to Esplanade is like climbing all the stairs inside Shahid Minar…there are so many gaps between stretches of the pavement,” said Mohinder Sharma, who owns a roadside shop near Jan Bazar.

Last year, when a bus ran over a woman and left her son critically injured on AJC Bose Road, the transport minister blamed the victims. Mukherjee, however, said: “Our camera team detected later that the pedestrian signal the woman was said to have violated would not turn green.”

If the signals for pedestrians are faulty in many parts of the city, at a busy intersection like Rashbehari Avenue, there aren’t any.

The video recordings also show how motorists disregard zebra crossings by rolling beyond the “stop” line and blocking the crossing.

While the survey reveals the motorists’ and the traffic police’s indifference to the pedestrian, it doesn’t cover the pedestrian’s lack of respect for rules. Where footbridges exist, most would rather face the risk of being run over than climb a few steps.

Alighting from buses and trams that stop wherever they want is common. “You have to be rather athletic after getting off a bus to avoid vehicles overtaking from the left even at designated stops,” schoolteacher Shefali Nath said.

Others complain that cars come rushing at people walking down a zebra crossing.

Mukherjee cites the lack of common sense while levelling and concreting the elevated grassy corridor for trams on Rashbehari Avenue. Now, passengers boarding and alighting from trams risk getting hit by vehicles.

Deputy commissioner of police (traffic) Manoj Verma told Metro that he had asked officers to examine the survey.

Rethinking Development intends to file a PIL if the authorities do not act.

Verma said the police could do little about the public mindset. “It is not that people don’t know what a zebra crossing is. They just want to take shortcuts and refuse to obey the rules. ”