A right size 36 sneaker or an oversized left shoe. If you drive on the highways in Brabant, you’ve probably seen them on the roadside or on the emergency lane. In most cases it is one of the two. The story behind these lonely walkers.
You’re not the only passer-by whose lonesome footwear raises eyebrows. Because let’s face it, who loses one shoe? A drive on the A58 quickly yields a handful of discoveries for the attentive driver. On the roadside at the De Stok junction near Roosendaal. A little further on near Breda, motorists have to avoid a shoe without an owner.
“This is a well-known phenomenon for us,” says spokesman Joop Kraan of Rijkswaterstaat Zuid-Nederland. Lonely women’s shoes with high heels, scuffed children’s shoes, muddy clogs, you name it. Every year the road inspectors fish a lot from the roadside. There are hundreds of orphaned shoes throughout the Netherlands. The road manager does not know how many there are in Brabant. “We simply don’t keep track of how many we encounter and clean up.”
“It is not possible to determine exactly, but we do have an idea.”
Lost shoes can be dangerous for other road users such as motorcyclists. You don’t want to get a sneaker against the visor of your helmet. Rijkswaterstaat therefore immediately takes action if a lost shoe results in an unsafe situation. “The shoe is then quickly cleared away by the road inspector.” Footwear that is in a safe place on the verge is later taken along with other litter and further processed as waste.
But where do those soulless shoes come from? How do you manage to lose one shoe in the middle of the highway? And who fits that shoe? Rarely do you see someone with only a left or right slipper standing at the gas station. Rijkswaterstaat also regularly asks itself this question. And although it ‘cannot be determined exactly’, the road authority does have an explanation for a large part of the shoes that are found. “They probably belong to truck drivers.”
“Some truckers don’t like their work shoes to drive with.”
Spokesman Joop Kraan: “Some drivers prefer to keep their work shoes outside their clean cab for loading and unloading. Moreover, they often do not like to drive with these shoes. After changing, the work shoes sometimes remain on the footboard of the truck. They fall off while driving on the highway.”
So truckers who treat their cabin like a sacred cow and occasionally forget something. But they are certainly not the only ones, Rijkswaterstaat also knows. Although it remains a guess as to the exact cause of heels in the roadside or toddler slippers on the hard shoulder. However, the summer period seems to cause an increase.
Women may have swapped their gaudy pumps for comfortable flip flops at a roadside rest stop. And that children in the backseat accidentally kick their shoes out through the open window. It is also not always easy to sit still during a long holiday trip.
The owners usually do not try to get the lost shoes back. At a hundred kilometers per hour you just have to remember the hectometre marker. Turning to Rijkswaterstaat usually makes no sense. There are no viewing days when the footwear is displayed. This summer also applies: if you go on the road, take care of your shoes.
