Cycling in the dark

Lights are being turned off on motorways and major roads, in town centres and residential streets, and on footpaths and cycle ways, as councils try to save money on energy bills and meet carbon emission targets. The switch-off begins as early as 9pm. 

They are making the move despite concerns from safety campaigners and the police that it would lead to an increase in road accidents and crime. 

The full extent of the blackout can be disclosed following an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph

The government raises two fingers to cycling safety

The government response to the Committee’s inquiry does not take up any of the recommendations in the report 

Louise Ellman, Chair of the Transport Select Committee said today, Generalised talk about everyone playing their part to bring road casualties down should not be allowed to hide central government’s responsibilities to keep local authorities, the police, other agencies and the public fully focused on delivering significant and sustained improvements in road safety. 

and

Martin Gibbs, Policy and Legal Affairs Director at British Cycling responded by saying “British Cycling shares the Transport Select Committee’s disappointment at the Department for Transport’s response to the Committee’s Road Safety inquiry. 

"This is a disappointing response from the Government which lists a few modest measures with no central strategy for improving cycling in this country. It’s another missed opportunity.”  

A few modest measures with no central strategy for improving cycling in this country pretty much sums up the condition of contemporary UK cycle policy at every level, does it not?

The latest conspicuity lunacy

Notts County Council is asking youngsters to wear fluorescent or bright clothing in the daytime and reflective material at night to make them more visible to drivers.

‘To help promote safe cycling…’

You can guess what this is all about, can’t you?

Yes! It is.

Cycle helmet chic

If we set aside all those self-harming cyclists who are wilfully riding around without one at all, the fact is too many cyclists today wear scruffy, unfashionable cycle helmets. This is why we must immediately introduce legislation to make it compulsory for all cyclists to look their best during a crash. For the ultimate in cycle chic, everyone needs one of these:

Hövding is a bicycle helmet unlike any other currently on the market. It's ergonomic, it's practical, it complies with all the safety requirements, and it's also subtle and blends in with what else you are wearing. 

And let’s face it, on cycling-friendly Regent Street (below) it’s important to look good when that texting driver hits you from behind. And with luck, after the collision, you may well be signed up to appear as an alien in a low-budget science fiction movie.

Footnote 

A moderate and uncontroversial blog like this one has always steered well clear of the wearsiome cycle helmet debate. But we like a larf, and so draw your attention to the latest objective statement of the scientific necessity for helmet-wearing, which includes the claim that while wearing a helmet might seem inconvenient right now, so did other safety initiatives that have become common practice, like wearing sunscreen.

The Zambian approach to a child pedestrian fatality

Mr Kapeso said the motorcyclist, who has not been identified and was riding an unregistered motorcycle, hit the boy of Kaloza village in chief Sailunga’s area of Mwinilunga. 

He said the boy identified as Alex Kamuza, aged eight, died on the spot. 

The Deputy Police Chief said this angered the villagers who mobilised and beat the motorcyclist to death.

A crash in a 20 mph zone

 


Most crashes on British roads do not result in injury or death, which is why trying to define “safety” solely by casualty figures gives a false impression of exposure to risk on the part of cyclists and pedestrians, who are more often than not the innocent victims of dangerous driving.

It’s yet another reason why the CTC’s definition of “safe cycling” based on KSI figures (i.e. cyclists killed or seriously injured in road crashes) is inherently absurd and, in terms of “encouraging cycling”, futile. Not that futility and wrong-headedness has ever bothered the CTC, which remains to this day a massive obstacle to mass cycling in the UK, as it has been ever since 1934.

Another problem is how you define “dangerous” and “reckless” driving. What most readers of this blog might regard from their own experience as meeting those definitions is very likely to be defined by the Crown Prosecution Service merely as “careless” driving.

To get a true picture of just how poor driving standards are on British roads, and how often there are crashes, you need to look at insurance claims. But it is remarkably hard to get hold of statistics regarding the annual total of insurance claims for damage to motor vehicles resulting from road crashes. However, I believe it's running at around five million claims a year.

A subsidiary aspect of these issues is how streets are perceived. The corporate mass media repeatedly represents streets as places where significant numbers of lawless, rule-breaking cyclists terrorise and injure pedestrians and also collide with motor vehicles, while drivers by and large obey road traffic law, while being simultaneously persecuted by traffic wardens and speed cameras, there to extract even more cash from the victimised, monstrously exploited motorist. Ideology, needless to say, is not rational in what it conveys but is there to serve interests.

Everybody seems to “see” rule-breaking cyclists but very few seem to see the extent of rule-breaking by drivers. Even fewer see the widespread evidence of driving which is so bad that drivers “lose control” and hit stationary objects. I noticed that recently the safety railings outside Our Lady and St George’s Catholic Primary School on Shernhall Street, Walthamstow, had been damaged. (“Safety railings”, of course, provide no protection for pedestrians, and are there to prevent sentient bipeds from intruding on hegemonic motoring space.)

The speed limit along the entire length of Shernhall Street is 20 mph, and drivers are warned by signs that they are entering a neighbourhood which contains seven schools. Needless to say there is no shortage of drivers who routinely ignore this speed limit. The traffic calming is inadequate to enforce the limit and the car-supremacist Metropolitan Police refuses to enforce 20 mph speed limits. The Met's all-male limo-lifestyle command structure is very much on the side of violent death and mutilation on the roads and has only the most perfunctory and minimalist interest in prevention.

It is a reasonable deduction, Watson, that the damage done to these railings was the consequence of a driver “losing control” on the bend. Trivial damage to railings is not in itself an index of how bad the crash was. For example, I spotted minor damage to a single piece of street furniture on Forest Road, Walthamstow, a few days before I read about the reason for it here. Neither the emergency services nor local authorities are under a statutory obligation to notify the press of crashes, which is why the vast majority go entirely unrecorded by local newspapers.

Ultimately, this particular instance of a driver colliding with a stationary object is, I strongly suspect, just another crash on a safe road.

The only detail that apparently matters

A cyclist who died after a collision with a car downtown yesterday morning was not wearing a helmet, police said Thursday. 

The crash happened about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday near the corner of York Avenue and Main Street. The 68-year-old male cyclist was taken to hospital in critical condition and later died of his injuries. Winnipeg police patrol Sgt. Monica Stothers said early indications are that the man was not wearing a helmet. 

And to remind us that self-styled cycling campaigners are often a major obstacle to enabling mass cycling up pops

Curt Hull from the group Bike to the Future. 

He said it’s time for both cyclists and motorists to educate themselves on road safety. “We have improvements in infrastructure, but until we have improvements in education that teaches motorists and cyclist how to behave towards each other, things aren’t going to improve very much,” said Hull. 

He said Winnipeg’s new active transportation strategy is making it easier for cyclists but the city still has a long way to go. Since 2007, the group has seen a 64 per cent increase in the number of bike commuters, rising to around 12,000 per day. 

Manitoba Public Insurance is also working with cycling groups to make the road safer for cyclists. It offers safety courses to teach riders hand signals and the rules of the road. 

Only one hand signal is required to respond to cycling groups and safety campaigns like this and absolutely no instruction is required.

This is not dangerous

Photo: Paul Cowan 


It appears that no one was injured in this SVO crash (Single Vehicle Only) and so this will not appear in the government’s annual road casualty statistics, which are commonly regarded as an index of road danger. Air bags and rigid steel safety frames often protect drivers and their passengers from the consequences of a crash like this.

The blue Alfa Romeo smashed into a lamppost and turned over outside the William Morris Gallery museum in Forest Road, Walthamstow, just before 6pm on Friday (August 24). 

Police say the vehicle was being followed after it failed to respond to a request to stop a short distance earlier. Ryheem Gordon, 18, of College Close in Hackney, has been charged with dangerous driving, failing to stop, not having proper insurance and not having a valid driving licence. 

Although it isn’t immediately obvious from the photograph, the upside down car is lying on a zebra crossing.

You might say that In reality, it was only sheer chance that prevented a pedestrian from being seriously injured, or even killed, in this incident..

Footnote

The site of this crash has featured previously on this blog here and here.

The aftermath of another crash on this same bend is shown here

In the distance, beyond the zebra crossing in the foreground, you can see the bend where this driver lost control in the second photo here.

a shocking photo of a criminal cyclist

So far this year 1,112 tickets have been given to cyclists for not wearing helmets

And let’s face it, you can’t argue with statistics, can you?

This one which concerns cyclists is particularly awesome and is guaranteed to impress all road safety professionals and top public health experts:

Of those who died after some sort of accident involving a vehicle, 55 per cent did not have a helmet on.

Brilliant road safety suggestions # 317

As all enlightened cycling commentators know, the absolutely key role that cyclists can play in encouraging safer cycling and winning respect is policing the behaviour of other cyclists.

We also need more legislation, because after all, all British road users scrupulously obey the law.

So hats off to this marvellous suggestion which, if only the government will take it on board, is guaranteed to make cycling even safer than it already is.

It goes without saying that we need a compulsory helmet law to stop the spread of brain damage in the cycling community. (Sadly, there are many cycle discussion threads where it is very, very obvious that the contributors are a bit soft in the head and have not been wearing helmets!)

But let's not stop with a cycling helmet law. Let's go further.

Mr Cawthorn said: “I want the Government to go even further and make it law to wear bright green, yellow or red.

 “Cyclists have to be better protected - too many wear the wrong colour in order to hide mud splashes from roads, but the result is that they become camouflaged.

 “I believe changing the law would save lives.” 

This cyclist (below) ticks all the right boxes and sets an example to everyone. 

Wearing a helmet? YES

Wearing bright green, yellow or red? YES

Making every effort to appear conspicuous to others? YES

Unafraid of mud splashes?  YES

Child pedestrian knocked down in Chingford

RESIDENTS say a road bend close to where a 12-year-old boy was hit by a van yesterday is dangerous due to a lack of warning signs and traffic calming measures.

The collision which took place in Larkshall Road in Highams Park, near the junction with Coolgardie Avenue, left the boy with head and leg injuries. Witnesses said the boy got off a bus just after a bend in the road and as he crossed in front of it, he was hit by the van.

Carmel King, 63, who lives close to the scene of the accident, said: "This road is a nightmare. "Years ago there was a petition to get a crossing put in but it was put in further up the road.

"The speed that drivers come round at that corner makes the road very dangerous and they may not get to stop in time if something is blocking the road.

"When I get of the bus sometimes I have to stand on the side of the road for about ten minutes before crossing.

"They should have cameras here and signs because it might make people slow down."

‘the number of cyclists killed rose for a third consecutive year’

The road casualty figures for 2010 have just been published

As far as cyclists are concerned

Although deaths and injuries fell significantly for motorists, pedestrians and motorcyclists, the number of cyclists killed rose for a third consecutive year. Deaths rose by 7% from 104 in 2009 to 111 last year, although the DfT says the number of cyclists rose by just 0.5%.

In fact the figures rose in all groups for cyclists - killed, seriously injured and slightly injured. But, hey, don’t let that get you down. With the right approach to statistics you can see that this is good news, since

In 2010, the likelihood of being killed while cycling was 54 per cent lower than in 1990.

This is reassuring, is it not?

Sadly there are still some cyclists who go round in ordinary clothing. It’s time to knock some sense into the heads of these self-destructive fools with this expert advice:

"Cyclists can help themselves by making sure they ride appropriately and make use of safety equipment and clothing. Wearing high visibility clothing, even during daylight hours, can reduce the likelihood of a collision and if one does unfortunately occur, the use of a protective helmet can significantly reduce the extent of injury."

Miscellaneous news

Children MUST wear helmets when crossing the road (see below)

It’s a sin: “cyclists weaving their way through traffic.”

Meanwhile, in a vicious trick designed for no other purpose than to steal from innocent road-tax-paying drivers Camden Council has put up signs on one road which read:

No motor vehicles between 07:00 - 10:00 and 15:00 - 19:00 except bank holidays.

This is totally baffling and you would need to be Einstein to understand it. Yes, shockingly,

Motorists have been fined a staggering £5 million for driving down a quiet residential street which has been dubbed ‘Britain’s most baffling road’.

You like zee statistics?

Brake said that in 2009 cyclists made up just 0.5% of traffic but accounted for 5% of road deaths and 11% of serious injuries.

It added that while road casualties overall had decreased, cyclist deaths and injuries had not.

Road safety. A cycling Nottingham University professor is encouraging all cyclists to wear helmets and high visibility clothing

And

A cyclist who was able to walk away from a head-on collision with a car is urging other bike riders to wear a helmet.

More road safety tips. This initiative demonstrates how children should cross the road: heavily supervised by adults; wearing crash helmets; carrying hi-viz signals; and tied to each other.

A pensioner driving a sports car mounted a pavement and slammed into a group of pedestrians killing a three year old child. The driver was arrested.

Meanwhile

THE driver of a people carrier that hit and fatally injured an elderly pedestrian told an inquest she did not see him at all before the impact. Great-grandfather Leslie Young, 86, of Fitzpaine Road, had sustained multiple injuries, including fractures to his skull. He later died in hospital.

He had been at the back of his parked Vauxhall Cavalier. The Chrysler then collided with the rear offside of the Vauxhall, pushing it into the back of a parked Renault Laguna.

District coroner Sheriff Payne noted that there were no direct witnesses and recorded the verdict that Mr Young’s death was due to an accident.

War on the motorist news. A “Traffic reform campaigner” has been cruelly persecuted: I wasn't doing 91 mph all the time, just to avoid delay down the other side of the hill..

Shock horror – some council car parking ticket machines don’t give change - huge frothing in the Torigraph (“This is absolutely outrageous).

The only speed camera on the southbound M11 is a cruel trick, impartially described in the Daily Mail as “infamous” for its success in catching out innocent drivers who can’t see a series of signs bearing the message 50 mph and SPEED CAMERA AHEAD, followed by a bright yellow object half a mile ahead on a straight road.

Britain’s poisonously car-centric cyclist-hating Department for Transport is exposed as trying to block a European ban on oil derived from the carbon-heavy tar sands of Canada.

By the way, the planet is fucked.

Greenpeace says “It will now be up to us to stop them.”

Another London cyclist killed

A 13-year-old boy died who after being struck by a car in Dagenham has been named locally as Thomas Stone.

The accident happened in Bell Farm Avenue at around 7.45pm, according to police and the London Ambulance Service (LAS).

Friends told the Post that Thomas, of Gay Gardens, had been riding his bike when the incident happened.

It was apparently a hit and run killing:

The driver of the blue coloured Toyota Celica, a 20-year-old woman, left the scene but later returned. She was arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving and taken into custody at an East London police station.

A believed passenger in the vehicle, a 36-year-old man, was also arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving and also taken into custody at an East London police station.

It is a bitter irony that this fatality coincides with the latest smiley-smiley propaganda from Transport for London and the Mayor’s office.

New figures released by Transport for London and City Hall show that last year the capital's roads were the safest since casualty records began in the 1970s with the total number of people killed dipping below 150 for the first time.

To me that statement is a classic instance of what, in another context, has been identified as misleading measures of safety on the road and conniving with careless and dangerous driving, since most of the danger on the road is due to behaviour which is mainstream driving behaviour.

Another impressive student of ‘road safety’ is Olaf Storbeck, who calculates that so far this year eleven cyclists have died on London roads, which means last year’s total of ten dead cyclists has already been exceeded. Mr Storbeck calculates that the number of London cyclists killed since 2000 is 186.

Prophetically, he asked several weeks ago:

Will 2011 become a black year for cyclists in London?

Since 1986 the number of cyclists killed in London per year varies massively. On average, from 1986 to 2010 , 17.2 cyclists died per year.

The spin put on the 2010 statistics by Transport for London was designed to obscure an aspect highlighted by the Evening Standard:

The total number of children injured on London's roads has risen since Boris Johnson cut funding for road safety, it emerged today.

A total of 150 more youngsters were injured on the capital's roads last year - a 14 per cent jump.

In 2008-09, the year the Mayor took office, TfL's road safety spending stood at £58.8m, of which £30.3m went to the boroughs.

But the most recent figures show that in 2010-11 just £24.5m has been allocated, £9.7m of which will go to town hall programmes.

Lambeth in South London came under fire earlier this year for scrapping 30 lollipop patrol posts in a bid to save £150,000.

According to TfL figures, there were 2,064 children injured on the capital's roads in 2008. By 2010 this had risen to 2,134.

Interpreting casualty figures and using them as a measure of ‘road safety’ is a very contentious and often ideologically-driven affair.

Meanwhile let’s have a report on London’s safer-than-ever roads from Dalston Junction:

The current situation at Dalston Junction in London highlights a lamentable state of affairs. It is for me one of the most dangerous locations in London, for anybody - motorist, cyclist, pedestrian - and given recent tragic events I am aghast at the continuing rank indifference of the various agencies responsible for the transport network.

I was there again today and asked a 'banksman' why, as a pavement had been closed, and so many pedestrians were hazardously crossing through and in between heavy traffic, a proper (if only temporary) pedestrian crossing had not been provided. "Too expensive" was his reply. So pedestrians deprived of a footpath are crossing in between heavy traffic through which cyclists are also travelling on a highway narrowed substantially by building works. The tragic irony of this indifference is, this is a transport hub.

Julian also inadvertently filmed an impatient taxi driver forcing his way through the Tweed Run

(Below) Apparently no one was hurt in this Walthamstow crash not far from a local primary school. So it’s not recorded in the statistics used to define ‘road safety’. This helps to prove that London’s roads are getting safer all the time.

Speeding driver who crashed expresses his gratitude

Mr Sherwani was lucky not to be hit by the engine of his Lexus IS200, which ended up just inches away from him on the front passenger seat.

But he said the car was so well built it protected him from other potential injuries, and he credits the brand as being one of the safest available.


And that’s the problem. Many modern cars are built with engines as powerful as were once used in racing cars, but they also offer massive protection to those inside them, encouraging dangerous risk-taking that threatens others with little fear of adverse consequences for the driver. The motor lobby cynically builds cars to travel at twice the maximum national speed limit but has always successfully resisted having to install a simple data recorder which would establish vehicle speed at the time of as collision. Mr Sherwani thinks he was driving at about 55 mph when he crashed. Presumably PC Plod hasn’t been smart enough to notice that the speed limit on this section of the North Circular is 50 mph. In any case, a driver whose excuse is that he fainted at the wheel should surely never again be allowed to drive.

Cyclists: a lorry driver speaks out

(Above) A typical cycling-friendly London junction, where two ‘A’ roads meet.

‘Rikki’:

HGV's are not on urban roads for fun, or because they simply want to be, they are there for a reason, to deliver goods, Cyclists on the other hand have alternatives, called trains buses and taxis, your average lorry driver cant carry his 23 tonnes of goods onto a 24A bus to avoid travelling down a certain street, cyclists have that choice.

(Below) Rikki’s right. Note the bus stop on the right of this picture, showing how much more sensible it would be to abandon cycling here and transfer to a bus.

(Below) More proof that Rikki is right and that it is safer to travel by bus than to cycle in a cycle lane

As for the alternative of taxis. That’s not a problem for any cyclist in central London.

(Below) Spot the cyclist

London’s secret violence

Someone has recently ‘lost control’ and crashed into the railings by the entrance to St Mary’s primary school in Walthamstow. No mention of any crash in the local paper, so it may well have been a non-injury collision, in which case it won’t be recorded in the casualty figures used to determine spurious notions of 'road safety'. Everywhere I go I see evidence of street furniture which has been hit by motor vehicles.

Yesterday I saw my third crash aftermath this year – an ambulance, a paramedic car and a police car attending what looked like a crash involving a motorcyclist, on Lea Bridge Road by the junction with Wood Street, 5.30 pm. The previous two were a motorcyclist brought down on High Road Leyton and a cyclist knocked down on Hoe Street. The local paper recently reported another powered two-wheeler knocked down on Fulbourne Road.

What won’t bring about mass cycling (8) legislation and education to make drivers behave better towards cyclists

(Above) The first rule of learning to drive is that cycle lanes like these can be parked in quite legally seven days a week, at any time. This is the London Cycle Network, in which lots of small blue rectangular signs guide cyclists from one crappy, car-sodden location to the next one. Leyton Green Road.

(Below) A learner driver is instructed in the art of parking correctly in an ASL. Snaresbrook Road.

(Below) This probationer has passed her driving test and has understood the importance of driving into an ASL at red.

Traditional cycle campaigning in the UK is committed to improving the lot of vehicular cyclists in a motorised environment. Historically, this strategy has been a catastrophic failure in terms of boosting modal share. As every survey ever taken has shown, and as even most campaigners admit, fear of traffic remains by far the greatest deterrent to new and returning cyclists.

However, instead of addressing this fear by campaigning for cycling infrastructure which separates cyclists from motor vehicles, traditional campaigning sees the problem as being rooted in individuals, not systems. The guru of British cycle campaigning is John Franklin, who is treated with enormous reverence by the British cycle campaign establishment:

Maintaining our right to cycle on any road (other than motorways) must always be a top priority, for if we lose that right we can have no expectation of being treated any better elsewhere.

I'm pleased that most of the cycling community is united on this, but there have been exceptions and I think that this has fuelled the 'cycling is dangerous' myth that invariably leads to calls for cycling to be restricted. I also think that in the UK there remains a general recognition by the public at large that cyclists ought to be on the roads and we need to reinforce that perception and not weaken it.

At a public level we need to tackle the perception that has grown up over the past 20 years that cycling is inherently 'dangerous'. It isn't and it's easy to prove

On the one hand campaigners believe that the non-cycling majority must be persuaded that cycling is safe, that the more people who cycle the safer it gets, and that nervous individuals can be taught to cope through the medium of cycle training. But that still leaves the question of what to with motorists.

As many cyclists have noticed, there are quite a few drivers out there on the roads whose driving standards might be deemed antagonistic to cycling in various ways – even, you might say, dangerous.

One position on this is to blame cyclists. If cyclists are badly behaved (cycling through red lights or on footways, for example), then they cannot complain if drivers also behave badly. Cyclists must therefore win respect for cycling by demanding that all cyclists adhere to a car-centric status quo and obey rules designed to manage motor vehicle flow and parking. This kind of argument even gets embedded in local authority policy statements. Thus the London Borough of Redbridge Cycle Action Plan solemnly states that

Anti-social behaviour by cyclists undermines other efforts to develop cycling in Redbridge and creates conflict with other road users. Through engineering, education and enforcement, a mutual awareness and respect between cyclists, pedestrians and other road users will contribute to increasing the attractiveness of cycling.

By this twisted logic, what is holding back cycling in Redbridge is not a transport structure entirely built around the hegemony of the private car but naughty cyclists who have adapted to a deeply hostile cycling environment in ways deemed delinquent. But of course even if every cyclist in Redbridge scrupulously obeyed the rules this would not make one iota of difference in terms of ‘increasing the attractiveness of cycling.’ Redbridge is a deeply unattractive place to cycle for reasons which have nothing whatever to do with the behaviour of some cyclists. The same applies to all the other ‘Biking Boroughs’ including Merton, where, to give just one example,

The crossing at Kenley Road is a sheep-pen affair with a cycle time so long most people don't bother waiting.

More delinquency!

However, a more mainstream argument within the vehicular cycling campaign community is that the behaviour of drivers must be directly addressed. There are, it is argued, three ways of doing this.

The first one is through ‘education’.

Many people are campaigning for better provision ON THE ROAD and educating drivers to be safer around cyclists. You have to admit that if cycling on the road was safer then there would be no/less need for segregated cycle routes.

Thus at last year’s Cyclenation conference in Edinburgh, Ian Aitken from Cycling Scotland passed on the thrilling news that the Action Plan for Scotland aspired to cycling accounting for 10% of all journeys by 2020 (the kind of delusional fantasy that gets cycle campaigners yapping excitedly and which will require the traditional amnesia when in nine years’ time cycling’s modal share in Scotland predictably remains at one per cent). Among the strategies cited to get more children cycling to school was a “Give Me Cycle Space” campaign – posters asking drivers to be nice to child cyclists. Education. (Doesn’t seem to work with the environment, incidentally – in one survey just 0.1% of drivers registered concerns about pollution and the environment.)

(Above) This Isuzu Trooper driver parks in the cycle lane and pops into the bank. R873 SOY. At the same time, just across the road (below) this Jeep driver parks their 4X4 both across the cycle lane and on the footway, to visit the school uniform shop on Hoe Street, E17. Reg. PG02 XPK.

The second one is new legislation to change driver behaviour.

We recognise the role that good quality infrastructure has to play, but we feel that the elephant in the room is driver behaviour in the UK – something that has been addressed almost everywhere else in Europe but not here.

This alludes to

"stricter liability" laws which mean that Dutch and Danish drivers really do respect the priority of cyclists using cycle tracks at junctions.

There’s nothing wrong in principle with ‘strict liability’ legislation, but it has nothing at all to do with driver behaviour (and as I have previously argued, it is often misinterpreted as referring to criminal law). In reality Dutch drivers behave better to cyclists because they are virtually all cyclists, unlike Britain where two drivers out of three never cycle. ‘Strict liability’ was not the catalyst for mass cycling in the Netherlands – infrastructure was. The legislation came much later. The significant variations in modal share within both the Netherlands and Denmark are down to infrastructure, not legislation affecting insurance matters for drivers involved in collisions with cyclists.

(The idea that European drivers are nicer to cyclists than British ones might also be regarded as optimistic when they turn up in the UK – I don’t think the absence of ‘strict liability’ here is really why some foreign drivers behave like this.)

‘Strict Liability’ would, in any case, be a drop in the ocean in a car-centric society in which

danger from motor traffic – particularly to the non-motorised – is characterised by official tolerance… enforcement and sentencing policy for the majority of rule and law breaking driving [is] non-existent or lenient.

Compared to Health and Safety at work, maritime safety, aviation safety or rail safety, regulation of danger on the road is much more likely to be based on a “voluntary code” which involves accepting behaviour which endangers other road users.

The third proposal for changing the behaviour of British drivers is to make cycling part of the driving test. This is the CTC’s latest frothy enthusiasm.

This would create a generation of bike aware drivers whose experience of cycling in traffic would make them better disposed to accommodate their more vulnerable brethren.

Oh yeah? Since when did passing the driving test have any influence on the subsequent behaviour of drivers? There is none whatsoever that I know of. The idea that making learner drivers spend time cycling in traffic would create generations of cycling-friendly drivers is just the kind of crackpot delusion that appeals to establishment cycle campaigners. Their top priority remains cycling in traffic, and the demonstrable and continuing failure of this campaign strategy matters not a jot.

There is a deep rooted, unquestioned assumption here namely that the key cycling skill is about dealing with motor vehicles. The argument becomes a circular one; the skill that matters is dealing with motor vehicle traffic, ergo anything that reduces the relative significance of that skill is undesirable.

And of course even if we had more niceness by drivers, with lots of lovely posters reminding them to watch out for cyclists, and strict liability legislation, and cycling part of the driving test, these would have no impact whatever on volumes of traffic or car dependency. You would still be left cycling on streets like these.























(Above) Conditions for cyclists on Lea Bridge Road, Leyton

(Below) Conditions for cyclists in the car-sick 'Biking Borough' of Redbridge. A113, Wanstead.

“He did not deserve to die from being hit by a car”

THE father of a Barnet councillor has died after being hit by a car on a pedestrian crossing in Temple Fortune.

Donald Salinger, 95, passed away three weeks after being hit by a car on a crossing in Finchley Road on February 6.

Note that the driver who hit him was 82 years old. Fit to drive? The only person required to verify that is the octogenarian driver himself.