Street mural causes stir but expert says distraction keeps eyes on Bunbury road

A new street mural connecting the Bunbury CBD to the Leschenault Inlet was met with a flurry of confused and concerned comments regarding its safety last week. The City of Bunbury Facebook post showing off the art had more than 250 comments in just a couple of days, almost all of which slammed the artwork as “confusing and dangerous”. The comments on the City’s Thursday follow-up post — in which the City confirmed the mural was not a zebra crossing, but a road safety initiative — were almost as damning. Despite the outrage over the mural painted by Blank Slate Directive director Martin Frazer, a road safety expert predicts the street art is not likely to be a danger. Western Australian Centre for Road Safety Research deputy director Dr Paul Roberts said while it was too early to tell for sure, the artwork would be unlikely to distract drivers’ attention away from the road. “I would be very reluctant to predict what the net result of this would be,” he said. “I have to say, it’s unlikely that it creates a significant risk. “Just because the risk here would be about the increase in people crossing at that location or crossing with less care, but then one imagines that that might be balanced a bit by drivers going ‘what’s going on here’ and just paying a lot of attention to the road.” In the City of Bunbury’s second Facebook post it confirmed it was looking to install signage confirming pedestrians did not have right of way. Dr Roberts said while the mural would cause a distraction for drivers, their eyes would be exactly where they needed to be. “You’ve got a mural on the road where people are driving then in a way it’s directing their attention to the forward roadway by definition,” he said. “The distraction thing is the big thing here, as I said if people are looking at this they’re looking where they need to be looking.” Dr Roberts said the installation of road murals was being seen all over the world. “There’s a lot of painting murals on the road going on around the world at the moment, partly or often to try to flag that it might be more of a shared zone so there might be lots of pedestrians, cyclists, et cetera,” he said. “It’s part of a worldwide movement to try to introduce more pedestrian and vulnerable road user areas in streets.”