Poetry: opening minds, elucidating experiences – and now also making New York a safer place. I feel actual joy at the news that the city's department of transport is installing a series of colourful signs featuring haikus by the artist John Morse in dangerous locations around New York, in the hope it will prompt passersby to travel the streets more safely.

Here's a selection (it's a PDF).

I love "Cyclist writes screenplay / Plot features bike lane drama / How pedestrian", but "A sudden car door, / Cyclist's story rewritten. / Fractured narrative" is also very clever. I'm sure seeing "Too averse to risk / To chance the lottery, yet / Steps into traffic" would make me think twice before dashing across a busy road, as would "Oncoming cars rush / Each a 3-ton bullet. / And you, flesh and bone."

I already had a soft spot for Morse, after he plastered Atlanta with bizarre and thought-provoking haikus last year ("Free debt counselling/ Take the important first step/ Beware signs like these"). Those in charge of NYC transport obviously felt similarly.

I just love this new scheme, and think we need something very similar in the UK. Turning my own cycling experience into verse – "Double decker bus / At Elephant & Castle / Alison falls off" – doesn't quite have the ring of Morse's haikus. Perhaps we can convince Boris to kick it off in London, though, if we come up with good enough examples. What've you got?