2014-05-20    Wet weather ....and HK's slippery surfaces

Have you seen the skating rink in Central ....where people can often be seen slipping and sliding and sometimes falling?  I'm talking about the area of green marble footpath outside Exit A of Central MTR ....on a wet day.

All over Hong Kong, nice-looking and easy-to-clean marble or marble-type tiles are used in schools, shopping centres, homes and walkways etc. But on a wet day they are a menace and cause many accidents.

Surely it's time some other surface was used, an all-weather surface that is both easy to clean and not slippery. If you put "non-slip floor material" into Google, there's lots of information about safe surfaces.

And as I see people walking through puddles on footpaths and in parks and playgrounds, with wet shoes leading to colds and flu, I keep hoping some government engineer will discover the Law of Gravity and make sure that all outdoor surfaces have a tiny gradient, so that Brother Water, being a clever creature, will flow away and not cause health problems for pedestrians.