I live in Chicago, where we have cold, snowy winters and some tall buildings. This combination often creates an accumulation of ice and snow on the buildings, which may then fall onto people below. Occasionally, someone is killed.
So far the solution to this problem has been to place signs on the sidewalk warning people that ice may be falling from the building. Apparently the thinking is that if pedestrians are warned, they can somehow dodge the ice as it falls. Or perhaps merely being warned somehow protects them from harm. I'm no expert, but I would guess this doesn't really offer much protection.
What I don't see are any effective measures to protect the pedestrians. I'm sure it's not practical to remove all the snow and ice from each building, each time it accumulates. Fortunately, that wouldn't be neccessary.
All we'd have to do is to build canopies over the sidewalks that run past these buildings. What a concept. At one stroke, the problem is solved. Aside from preventing people from being killed by falling ice, canopies would offer some protection from the elements - rain and snow. People could go about their business in greater comfort, without having to worry about getting drenched as they try to go to lunch or go shopping.
Or we could just leave things as they are, content to lose the occasional pedestrian to a completely avoidable "accident".
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