a crackpot prosecution

A fireworks organiser has been charged with manslaughter over a crash on the M5 motorway described as one of the worst on British roads. Geoffrey Counsell, 50, from Somerset, will appear at Bristol Magistrates' Court next month accused of seven counts of manslaughter. 

'It was clear from the investigation carried out by Avon and Somerset Police that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute for driver error and therefore no action will be taken against any motorists. 

So someone who was not directly involved in this spectacular crash is being persecuted as the scapegoat for it.

Motorway crashes of this sort happen with great regularity and there is no mystery about their cause. Large numbers of motorists break the 70 mph speed limit. Large numbers of motorists drive too close to the vehicle in front. Large numbers of motorists drive with complete disregard for adverse weather conditions. Large numbers of motorists are driving inattentively and without bothering to anticipate the unexpected. All it takes is for one small event to require sudden breaking and the next moment three lanes of high speed vehicles are ploughing into each other.

If anyone should be in the dock over this particular crash it should be Avon and Somerset Constabulary, on a charge of corporate manslaughter. This police force turns a blind eye on a daily basis to massive criminality on the M5. In that, of course, it is no different to any other police force in Britain.

Relying on eye-witness evidence in high-speed crashes on a motorway at night during fog not surprisingly results in little useful evidence being gleaned. Once again it underlines how every vehicle in Britain should be fitted with a black box data recorder which would, among other things, supply irrefutable evidence of speed prior to a collision. This is a subject one rarely ever hears discussed. Instead Britain’s car supremacist police forces spend their time telling cyclists to be ‘visible’ and wear helmets and all the rest of it. Chief Constables are not without clout and they could and should be lobbying for black box data recorders, which would make crash investigation work a lot easier. Unfortunately the ACPO crowd sees life through the windows of a chauffeur-driven car. The need for black box data recorders is illustrated by this little detail from a case involving the killing of a cyclist:

It is not known at what speed the BMW was travelling. 

The BMW driver later told police he thought it was a 50 mph zone, when it was 40 mph. 

A good defence lawyer ought to be able to get Mr Counsell off this unwarranted and unfair prosecution. It is also an odd prosecution, coming in the wake of earlier press reports like this, which seem to get to the heart of the matter:

Survivors told how they drove into a thick bank of fog, moments before the accident happened. According to reports, an investigation into the cause of the crash, in which 51 people were also injured, concluded that drifting smoke from a nearby fireworks party was not to blame. A police source was quoted as saying the emphasis of the probe had shifted and that driver error was the probable trigger, possibly a vehicle braking heavily as it encountered a dense fog bank just ahead of the main body of the accident.

Boris Johnson, Transport for London and the killing of Hichame Bouadimi

Yesterday’s Guardian carried a long piece about the recent killing of five year old pedestrian Hichame Bouadimi on St George’s Road, Southwark, asking Why are road deaths in the UK on the rise again? 

Unfortunately the journalist lets two major London agencies off the hook. One is the Metropolitan Police, which has always been institutionally car-supremacist. The Met is contemptuous of cyclists and pedestrians, and has only ever had a minimal interest in enforcing road traffic law. You can speed to your heart’s content in London, and chat away on your mobile phone, and your chances of being apprehended by a police officer are very, very remote. Nor is the Met at all interested in curbing the excesses of the out-of-control road haulage industry. The Met's slogan ‘Working Together For a Safer London’ seems like a calculated insult. Indeed

Drivers in London have a chance of being prosecuted once over a 50-year lifetime of driving.

This indicates that at present there is almost no chance of drivers who endanger cyclists (and others) being charged or prosecuted. 

However, in this particular instance the primary blame for this latest tragedy rests firmly with Transport for London. It was the infrastructure that created the conditions for the violent death of this child. And TfL is resisting all efforts to change direction. It remains firmly committed to the ‘smoother traffic flow’ agenda.

But Boris Johnson should not be exempted from responsibility either. His signing-up to the LCC’s ‘Go Dutch’ agenda was plainly a desperate piece of opportunism when he was struck by a last-minute anxiety that he might, after all, lose to Ken Livingstone. In spite of all Johnson’s rhetoric nothing tangible has actually changed yet. 

Take TfL’s proposals for the Lambeth Bridge roundabout, for example.

Southwark cycling blogger Charlie Holland even uncannily anticipated this latest fatality when back in January he denounced

the five-lane one-way motorstrosity that St George's Road has become

and remarked

Unfortunately TfL are using their time and energy on piddling interventions rather than on measures that will make a real difference.

This road, with three schools on one side and a park on the other, should swiftly be made two-way and cycle-friendly. 

Charlie Holland has also written about the aftermath of this fatal collision here.

Spot the irrelevant, victim-blaming detail

Cyclist Joseph Belmonte, known as Pepe, was struck from behind by Pc David Lynch’s van in Hackney. The officer, who was responding to an emergency call, was driving at more than double the 30mph speed limit before losing control of his van. Mr Belmonte, 31, who was not wearing a helmet, was thrown across the van’s bonnet and into a tree like a “ragdoll”, according to witnesses. He was left with brain, spine and face injuries and a broken right arm and finger. He also remained in an induced coma for nine days after the crash and needed surgery. 

Lynch, 31, from Hitchin in Hertfordshire, walked free from Southwark crown court on Tuesday after receiving an eight-month suspended prison sentence. He had previously pleaded guilty to careless driving and was also convicted of the more serious charge of dangerous driving. Father-of-two Lynch was driving his British Transport Police Mercedes Vito van at up to 68mph in a 30mph zone when he lost control of the vehicle and hit Mr Belmonte at 45mph. 

The smash happened as Lynch sped to an urgent call for assistance at Hackney Downs station on March 31 last year. Lynch, who has two previous convictions for speeding, was also ordered by judge Jeffrey Pegden QC to complete 240 hours’ community service and faces a 6pm-7am curfew for 12 weeks. He was banned from driving for 15 months and ordered to retake his driving test, as well as pay £1,000 costs.

Cop this #37

A left-turning police driver overtakes and cuts up a fast cyclist, the cyclist expostulates, the cop then chases after the cyclist and stops him. The sound quality isn’t brilliant but I think the cop is telling the cyclist not to ‘take the lane’.



 

Cycling noise: four new examples

Let me offer up a category: cycling noise.

Cycling noise is an initiative or campaign which purports to ‘encourage cycling’ or make it safer but which doesn’t reduce the presence of motor vehicles on the street, in terms of volume. The existing volume of motor traffic may be restrained or modified in superficial ways – by traffic calming, say, or a lower speed limit – but the volume and presence of the existing motor vehicles are not reduced, either in terms of traffic flow or parking. In other words, cycling noise initiatives are inherently rooted in vehicular cycling and as such ignore the core issue of subjective safety (on which topic there are interesting insights here). Or to put it another way, cycling noise campaigns never challenge the car-centric status quo.

1. Labour Party cycling noise 

This week Shadow transport minister Maria Eagle made a speech to the Labour party conference:

I congratulate The Times on their Cities Fit for Cyclists campaign. The Government should implement the campaign’s manifesto for change. In full. 

Ms. Eagle singled out

Separated cycle-ways. Redesigned junctions. Advance green lights for cyclists 

Whoever wrote Ms. Eagle’s speech for her plainly hasn’t read The Times Manifesto very carefully, since it nowhere mentions “separated cycle-ways”. If the Labour Party plans to make a manifesto commitment to the reallocation of road space on main roads through urban centres from drivers to cyclists through the medium of physically segregated cycle tracks, then that is very good news indeed. However, uplifting speeches made to enthusiastic party loyalists need to be treated with caution, or better still, extreme scepticism. I suspect it is nothing more than rhetoric.

If you have the stomach to read the complete speech you’ll see that Ms. Eagle also positions herself as the friend of the hard-pressed driver and wants cheaper motoring. Leaving aside the deficiencies of the Times Manifesto – you can find point-by-point critical analysis here, I felt that The Cycling Lawyer hit the nail on the head when he remarked a few months ago:

The trouble is that 'The Times' is not calling for infrastructure changes that may adversely impact motorists. 

In other words, the Times Manifesto is itself nothing more than cycling noise because it doesn’t engage with the basic reason why most people won’t cycle and it doesn’t campaign for the kind of cycling infrastructure that would. Instead it merely ameliorates some aspects of vehicular cycling.

And that brings us back to the core wisdom of Dave Horton:

We’ve got a cycling promotion industry in the UK which refuses to contemplate the act of deterring driving. It’s always promoting cycling around the edges, not seeking to dismantle the central system of mobility in the UK, which is the car. 

It’s also worth remembering the very long history of politicians pledging their support for cycling and promising to encourage it:

since Lynda Chalker’s encouragement of cycling in 1985 until 2010, [there has been] an increase in car, van and taxi vehicle passenger distance travelled of some 48%. All motor vehicle mileage (e.g. including lorries) has gone up by 57%. Cycling distance travelled nationally decreased by about 17%. 

Not very effective on the encouragement front. 


2. SUSTRANS cycling noise 

Among those overjoyed by Ms. Eagle’s slithery speech was this person:

Sustrans' policy adviser Joe Williams welcomed the commitment: "Slower speeds on our streets will make the biggest difference to getting more of us out walking and cycling. 

No they won’t.

As far as cycling is concerned the biggest difference can be made only through the principle of separation of cyclists from motor vehicles, particularly by creating bike grids in urban centres. That’s how the Dutch cycling revolution began. It did not begin with sticking up speed limit signs.

Everybody from car-centric politicians to the vehicular cycling campaign establishment loves ‘Twenty's Plenty’ because 20 mph zones in no way threaten to curb the presence or volume of motor vehicles on British streets. Obviously 20 mph zones are a Good Thing in so far as they reduce the seriousness of the consequences of collisions but they do not in themselves civilise streets. If you want to get more people walking and cycling you achieve it by creating a safe, pleasant walking and cycling environment. That’s what will make the biggest difference, not sticking up 20 mph signs in car-sodden streets. For both travel modes that means separation from motor vehicles, whether through pedestrianisation or segregated cycle paths. It requires a reduction in the presence of vehicles on our car-sick streets and pavements.

SUSTRANS more and more resembles an organisation which has completely lost the plot and exists only to perpetuate its own existence. It is quite literally a collaborationist organisation, which is happy to ally itself with a borough which is absolutely NOT a friend of either the cyclist or the pedestrian. Listen to this other fresh example of Sustrans cycling noise:

CYCLING shoppers who use their local high street will be rewarded in a new loyalty card scheme. Sustainble transport charity Sustrans has launched the scheme with Redbridge Council as part of the council's pledge to become a biking borough. 

More than a dozen shops in High Street, Wanstead have signed up to the scheme which rewards cyclists for shopping locally. 

Cycling promotion officer for Sustrans, Emilie Charlesworth, said: "Wanstead has got this local high street feel to it. Residents and shopkeepers want to preserve that feel. 

Redbridge Council is a viciously pro-car Conservative administration with an extreme reluctance to curb the use or parking of cars in the borough. It’s cycling modal share is risible. As for High Street, Wanstead. It’s about thirty feet wide and dotted with NO CYCLING signs. Redbridge Council could very easily create segregated cycle paths on the High Street, but as the council understands nothing whatever about cycling there’s little chance of this ever happening. This cosmetic scheme won’t get a single extra person cycling on the hellish roads which lead to Wanstead High Street, and for Sustrans to involve itself with this kind of fatuous and inane scheme shows that the organisation is not fit for purpose.

Footnote: Sustrans’s latest London Greenway is identified as being fundamentally misconceived.



3. Hampshire Constabulary and ‘road safety’ cycling noise 

In 2011, there was an eight per cent increase in cyclists as road casualties across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, with 190 seriously injured and one cyclist killed. 

In 2012, there has been another death, and the levels of cyclists being injured or killed on the roads of the UK nationally are increasing. 

Since in the majority of collisions the motorist not the cyclist is at fault, will there be a crackdown on reckless driving? Er, no.

Officers from Hampshire Constabulary's Roads Policing Unit have created the Steer Clear campaign, which is being launched across the county on October 1. 

New signs will be appearing on the roads of Hampshire today (October 1) to raise public awareness of the dangers posed to cyclists. 

Throughout October, officers will be carrying out initiatives to raise cyclists awareness of safety on the roads including knowledge of the Highway Code, basic road safety, and traffic awareness. 

The police spokesman masterminding this cycling noise says:

Our message to cyclists is very simple; be safe and be seen. Our leaflet highlights key safety tips, and gives you some discount vouchers to help get yourself kitted out properly; think high visibility, check your lights, and remember the Highway Code, it is really important. Things like cycling recklessly on the pavement, having no lights on your bike, cycling and driving under the influence of drugs and drink, or more than one person riding on a solo bike. We will be focusing on encouraging all road users to grasp the concept of mutual respect. We want to foster a culture of mutual respect between all road users to create a safer environment on the roads. 

Apart from the conspicuity crap (all about cyclists doing their best to shine a bright yellow in the hope of being noticed by the texting driver), and apart from the reality that the thrust of this campaign is focused on cyclists not drivers, there is not a scrap of evidence that ‘ mutual respect’ campaigns or education have the slightest beneficial result. This is not evidence-based 'road safety'. Crap campaigns like this are a substitute for road traffic law enforcement in a vehicular cycling environment. If the police were at all interested in making the roads safer they could start taking driver crime seriously, since the latest figures show that:

47% of cars exceeded a 30mph speed limit in 2011, while 49% went faster than 70mph on a motorway. The proportions of motorcyclists breaking the same speed limits were similar, at 50% and 49% respectively. 

The figures for articulated heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) were considerable higher, with 71% exceeding the single carriageway 40mph limit and more than four in five breaking the 50mph limit on dual carriageways. 

The road haulage industry is out of control, yet there is no shortage of cycle campaigning which hopes to make lorry drivers nice people who remember to watch out for cyclists at junctions.


4. PACTS cycling noise 

It is reported that

Annual road casualty statistics showed that overall cyclist casualties reported to the police rose by 12 per cent between 2010 and 2011. While the number of fatalities fell by 4 per cent to 104, the number of cyclists who were seriously injured rose by 16 per cent to 3,085 last year. 

The number of serious injuries has increased every year since 2004. 

Commenting on this Times story

Robert Gifford, Executive Director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, said: “Both central and local government need to do far more to make our infrastructure more suited to cycling with dedicated cycle lanes where appropriate, better signed advance stop lines and campaigns aimed at getting car drivers to look out for cyclists.” 

Nothing but the same old crap. Leaving aside the fact that cycle lanes alongside or amidst motor vehicles have demonstrably failed to bring about mass cycling in Britain, that weasel phrase ‘where appropriate’ is a giveaway. Cycle lanes very often fizzle out just before road junctions, so they won’t get in the way of ‘stacking’ motor vehicles in two or three lanes (in central London sometimes even more) to ‘smooth traffic flow’. To allow a British transport planner to determine what is ‘appropriate’ for cycling is to surrender before the battle has even begun.

As for ‘better signed advance [sic] stop lines’. Yes, perhaps we could make them even more conspicuous.

Here is a helpful design showing a traditional cycle lane leading to an ASL. It also happens to exactly match this lorry driver’s rather substantial ‘blind spot’.

Advanced Stop Lines and cycling safety

Photo: The Argus. The aftermath of a collision which apparently involved a left-turning vehicle and a cyclist.





Yesterday the car-centric Department for Transport announced that it was still determined to shun best practice at road junctions and was instead recommending the usual stale vehicular cycling solutions which will predictably result in cyclists being killed and maimed and which will do absolutely nothing to bring about a mass cycling culture in the UK:

The Department for Transport has published today a review of design solutions to protect cyclists at road junctions. It found that the four leading methods of protecting cyclists were creating advanced stop lines for cyclists at traffic lights; painting coloured cycle lanes across road junctions; straightening staggered road crossings; and changing traffic priority at crossings to give right of way to cyclists crossing roads on cycle lanes. The study concluded that it would be cost-effective to launch trials of coloured cycle lanes through junctions. It found that allowing cyclists to turn left at red lights was among the worst possible solutions. 

The bit about ‘changing traffic priority at crossings to give right of way to cyclists’ sounds on the face of it quite progressive but it’s ambiguously worded  and I think all they are referring to is a theoretical right of way embodied in painted markings on the carriageway rather than an infrastructural one such as dedicated cyclists-only crossing phases or absolute priority for cycle paths at all side roads.

All the rest of these ‘design solutions’ are very obvious vehicular cycling crap with decades of failure embedded in their implementation. For example, some years ago the London Borough of Waltham Forest went through a coloured-cycle-lanes-through-junctions period, and these crap lanes did absolutely nothing for modal share because they provided no protection from turning or overtaking motor vehicles. (Though to be fair they were very useful for blind cyclists.)

The DfT ought to be setting an example but remains ideologically committed to prioritising motor vehicle infrastructure and the speed and convenience of drivers. I must say I find it rather weird to read the London Assembly's Transport Committee chair Caroline Pidgeon saying things like “The Department for Transport must allow TfL to catch up with best international practice”. The DfT is wilfully indifferent to best international practice, but then Ms. Pidgeon herself seems more than a little confused about what it amounts to. Trixi mirrors, training for lorry drivers, and poxy little lights for cyclists giving them a few seconds start at the lights are not best practice and form no part of Dutch cycling culture. And when I read people talking about segregated cycle tracks “where possible” my heart sinks, because there is no shortage of people who can come up with excuses why it can’t be done (roads too narrow, utilities wouldn’t like it, deliveries to shops, bus stops, would get in the way of car parking, just not possible).

In any case

A year on from the Kings Cross fatality we still have no understanding of why or how TfL makes decisions and takes actions when it is warned of danger to cyclists on roads it has designed, nor how it takes a measured responsible risk assessment when reopening a road following a severe cycle accident. 

And now let’s see how “protecting cyclists [by] creating advanced stop lines for cyclists at traffic lights” works out in York, which as we know from the CTC is the safest place in Britain to cycle [see previous post, below]. Here (below) we see a woman cycling east in the cycle lane on Bootham, approaching the junction with Gillygate. A massive left-turning heavy goods vehicle is waiting just behind the Advanced Stop Line (ASL) for the lights to change.

What happens next is that the woman undertakes this massive lorry and then positions herself ahead of the ASL. She has done something highly dangerous – undertake a lorry indicating a left turn – and she has acted unlawfully by moving beyond the ASL.

The point, of course, is that the infrastructure conditioned her behaviour. In Britain’s congested towns and cities it is quite common to encounter this kind of cycling infrastructure – a narrow cycle lane leading up to an ASL. Cyclists quite naturally undertake the line of stationary vehicles waiting for the lights to change, especially here on Bootham where, as a testament to York Council’s long history of discouraging walking and cycling, the vehicles can sometimes stretch all the way back to Clifton Green.

The danger point comes if the lights change while the cyclist is undertaking and hasn’t yet reached the ASL (always assuming that the ASL isn’t full of vehicles, as they so often are – a consequence of the prejudice against enforcement which informs all UK policing, which is institutionally car supremacist). This is where so many cyclists get caught out, alongside left turning vehicles at junctions. But having successfully negotiated the undertake it's only sensible to go beyond the ASL, because that may well put you slap bang in the driver's blind spot. Cyclists respond to perceived hazards in classically Darwinian fashion. Rule-breaking ensures survival, however much this may distress the 'winning respect for cyclists' brigade.

The solution, as the Dutch understand, is to separate cyclists from turning vehicles at junctions, either by separate signals or by cycle paths physically segregated from the carriageway.
 
Because the cyclist went beyond the ASL she ensured she was probably not in the driver’s blind spot, and when the lights changed she went on her way unharmed. It worked for a solitary cyclist, but imagine the situation if there were twenty or thirty cyclists queueing at this junction, some going straight ahead and coming into conflict with left-turning vehicles. Look at the space required by this driver to turn left into Gillygate, a two-way street:

The DfT’s solutions for safer cycling at junctions are risible and inept.

Conditions for York cyclists are no better on the two other roads leading to this junction, which also have an ASL.

This is the narrow cycle lane on Gillygate, approaching the junction shown above. Not really cycling-friendly, is it?

Here we see a woman on a bicycle on St Leonard’s Place, cycling north towards the same junction. She is forced to a stop by a stationary bendy-bus (caught up in the line of stationary vehicles backed up from the traffic lights at the distant junction)  which, wisely, she chooses not to undertake.

If you want to know why York is a failed cycling city, why cycling is stagnating there, and why the CTC’s claims for York are delusional and idiotic, look no further, dear reader, than the conditions shown in these photographs.

Section 59

Message to all you convinced vehicularists and helmet cam cyclists.

Lots of scope for you to demand implementation of Section 59, eh?

Section 59 of the Police Reform Act gives police officers the power to seize vehicles being used in a manner which causes alarm, distress or annoyance if the driver or the vehicle has been subject of a previous warning in the last 12 months.

Hampshire Police turn a blind eye to motoring criminals

For the year 2011 Hampshire saw

a massive reduction in penalty notices for using a mobile while driving. Just 1,700 motorists were caught, down from 5,152 in 2008. 

That’s just five drivers a day for the whole of Hampshire.

Pathetic, but utterly symptomatic of British policing, which is car-centric to its core.

Hampshire Constabulary does participate in zero-tolerance operations - but that’s only against cyclists.

Here’s a statistic:  

32,955 killed, nearly 3m injured between 2000 and 2010. This is 11 years of deaths and injuries on Britain's roads.

Terrorists are feeble and ineffectual amateurs compared to Britain’s drivers. Policing could make a massive difference to the carnage on Britain’s roads but the police are part of the problem (along with the House of Commons, the media and the judiciary).

Hampshire Constabulary boasts that Anti-social behaviour remains a priority 

And what’s that? Needless to say it includes action to tackle dangerous cycling on pavements. 

A police force which ignores drivers using mobile phones but is keen to crack down on pavement cyclists has lost all sense of what constitutes both dangerous behaviour and proportionality.

In defence of Andrew Mitchell

OK, so the guy has a short fuse, is a millionaire Tory MP, a former investment banker, a snob, and has an exaggerated sense of his own importance. But if we set these minor character flaws to one side (hey, who's perfect?) let’s consider the one thing which has not been discussed in the acres of coverage which have resulted from this storm in a teacup, namely the cycling aspect.

Friends said he had been allowed to cycle out of the main gate on three occasions that day. 

Mr Mitchell said in a statement: “I attempted to leave Downing Street via the main gate, something I have been allowed to do many times before. 

“I was told that I was not allowed to leave that way. 

Why not? The glib explanation was “security”. I don’t believe that for a moment. My guess is that either the same set of cops got fed up with opening two gates for a solitary cyclist, or a new shift from the diplomatic protection squad took over and decided they weren’t going to bother.

As a cyclist Mr Mitchell quite reasonably didn't want to be subject to the equivalent of a CYCLISTS DISMOUNT sign by police officers, who wanted him to dismount and go through this side gate.

 

He wanted to go through the main gate, as he had done without incident previously.

The excuse used to prevent Mr Mitchell going out through the gates – security – was the same feeble excuse wheeled out for the Met’s draconian response to London’s July Critical Mass – an occasion when cyclophobic police officers jeered "Just see them as speed bumps" and "pay your taxes". 

We now know that the Met has charged 16 cyclists and taken no action against 166 of those arrested: 

‘The whole sorry affair seems to have been a case of an over-zealous police reaction to the general paranoia around the build-up to the Olympic Games. ‘We consider there are potential civil claims for compensation against the police following the mistreatment of our clients and will be taking this further.’ 

Not that the Met could give a toss. It regularly dispenses vast sums of money for unlawful arrests and a range of other malpractice by its well-protected employees. The Met is car-centric and cyclophobic in its policing priorities. Its initial investigation of this incident said everything you need to know about how seriously the Met takes crime against cyclists, and there's more illumination on this cycling discussion thread. The Met remains a sleazy, dysfunctional and unprofessional force which is long overdue for a good sorting out. The whining of the Police Federation (which is milking this affair for all it's worth in revenge for the Winsor review) is laughable and hypocritical. If the police are upset by rudeness and boorish behaviour they need look no further than their own ranks. 

Mr Mitchell may perhaps have also have been stressed by the conditions for cycling in and around Whitehall. And that’s where my qualified sympathy runs out. It’s Conservative politicians who are largely responsible for the atrocious conditions in Parliament Square, a five-lane motor hell. 

On Whitehall, which used to be an agreeably wide road to cycle on, there’s some new footway widening (below) which forces cyclists into the same lane as buses. Bonkers, and completely unnecessary.

It would be perfectly possible to ‘go Dutch’ on Whitehall and around Parliament Square, although ideally both should be pedestrianised (with cycling access) and with vehicle access severely restricted.

Cycling minister calls for better permeability in Downing Street

Doesn’t the Met know a bicycle is a vehicle and belongs on the road?

It seems some policemen want cyclists to use the pavement.

Let’s hope Mr Mitchell never goes cycling in Hampshire, where dressed like that he’d soon feel the full force of the law:

Police look out for people riding on pavements or cyclists who are not wearing the right safety equipment. 

What Hampshire Constabulary means by “the right safety equipment” is revealed here.

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.

Today in Walthamstow

The Metropolitan Police took a very tough line with London’s July Critical Mass cycle ride: Police believed the demonstration "had the potential to cause serious disruption" 

The Met was far more relaxed about the EDL march through Walthamstow today:

POLICE have told the Guardian they have no intelligence to suggest that a controversial march by the far right English Defence League (EDL) this weekend will be violent or disrupt the community. 

I feel sure local residents won’t have felt a bit disrupted. It enabled some of them to develop their three-point-turn skills, as shown in this beautifully choreographed display of the sort which could be witnessed on all four ‘A’ roads leading up to the Bell Corner today. These two photographs show Chingford Road, southbound.

Church Hill was gridlocked and it was taking drivers over twenty minutes to travel a very short distance. On the plus side this was the first time this 20 mph zone has seen one hundred per cent compliance with the speed limit!

It also forms part of the cycling friendly London Cycle Network – yes, it does look inviting, does it not?

Forest Road sealed off eastbound at the junction with Bromley Road.

Forest Road sealed off westbound at the gates of the Town Hall:

The Met uses only the finest contractors for their temporary fencing. It takes real skill to park in an off-road cycle path like this.

It appears that some of the anti-EDL protesters were ‘kettled’ on Hoe Street.

Stella Creasy MP tweeted that she’d seen a white dove flying over Walthamstow today.

All I saw in the sky was this:

It seems there was some disruption after all.

Update here.

I do hope someone is going to ask how much all this cost (here’s a possible clue).

Another London cyclist is run down by a speeding police driver

A cyclist was in hospital with a head injury today after being hit by a police car responding to a 999 call. 

The car and bike collided in Liverpool Road, near its junction with Chapel Market in Islington.

Cops and cyclists in New York City

Police certainly haven't spared any resources in one area: ticketing cyclists. In 2011, truckers got 14,962 moving violation summonses and 10,415 Criminal Court summonses, while cyclists got 13,743 moving violation summonses and 34,813 Criminal Court summonses. (Large vehicles only account for 5-17% of vehicles on New York City's streets, but are involved in 30% of all cycling fatalities.) Of the 241 pedestrians or cyclists who were killed by drivers last year, only 17 of the drivers responsible faced criminal charges.

When you MUST wear a cycle helmet

Photo: Oxford Mail 




When you are issuing a fixed penalty notice to a cyclist it is very important that you wear a helmet and high viz vest. This will ensure pedestrians can see you and help avoid a collision while you are engaged in taking a zero tolerance to cycling like that

Because let’s face it, pedestrians are a menace. They have no respect at all for cyclists. They walk in a reckless way with total disregard for cyclists. They act like you are invisible. They step out in front of you without warning. They flout red lights and treat cyclists as if they don’t exist. Some of them are very obviously drunk (which is understandable if they live in Stratford or Leyton).

I was cycling through Walthamstow the other day and the lights were at green and all these pedestrians totally ignored the red light and treated me like I wasn’t there. I came very close to being very nearly practically almost killed. 

Luckily I managed to weave my way between them and survived (although road weaving is, I know, something which is widely deplored and loses us cyclists some respect).

If you ask me these pedestrians should be insured and have to wear some sort of identification. Most of them are totally irresponsible and wear dark clothing, which means you can hardly see them at all, especially on zebra crossings, which pedestrians should not be using anyway as they are supposed to be for striped African quadrupeds.

One driver in seven speeding is OK with the cops – that’s normal

People living on Hillside Avenue, in Woodford Green, slammed a recent police evening operation which found only 14 per cent of drivers were speeding along the street.

Six officers checked the speed of 253 vehicles on the road on Friday, July 22, between 5pm and 7pm, but concluded that “Whilst speeding was detected it was not found to be prevalent, was below expectations, and equivalent to problems on similar suburban routes.”

But residents raised several complaints with the operation itself. They told the police they were stationed in the wrong parts of the road, wore high visibility jackets which alerted speeding drivers to their presence, and should have done the speed checks at night on the weekend.

But police said safety reasons stopped them from performing these operations at night and doing it on the weekend would have damaged other priorities.

There are no safety measures to control speed on the busy road.

Cycle Superficialhighway news

This gleaming new Cycle Superhighway does look super, does it not?

These lanes cost about £10m each and if you haven't seen them they involve blue smoother surfaces and more branding and signage.

Funding is also aimed at businesses on the routes to encourage cycling.

Cop this:

Ten minutes later the pair came ambling back, one carrying a shopping bag from Tesco Express and appearing to check his receipt. The other appeared to be on hand to guard their dinner provisions. The footage was taken on Tuesday at 6.40pm on the northbound lane of Kennington Park Road, showing the patrol car in breach of signed rules stating drivers must not stop between 7am and 7pm, Monday to Saturday.

‘serious disruption to the life of the community’

Oxford Street collides with driver

The driver was an employee of the famous Working Together For A Safer London organisation.

British policing: car-centric and unaccountable

Oxford:

A COUNCIL call for police to enforce Oxford’s 20mph speed limits has been rejected. A senior officer spoke out after Oxford City Council passed a motion urging Thames Valley Police to crack down on speeding drivers.

Liberal Democrat Alan Armitage, who put the motion, said: “It doesn’t say much for the police that they don’t give a damn what the people think.

“It is a high priority for people in Oxford who are worried about protecting themselves and their children.”

Labour leader Bob Price said Beaumont Street and Park End Street were among roads which would benefit from enforcement.

He said: “We don’t expect police to focus all their attention on the enforcement of speed limits but, where you have places where it happens, there is a strong case for them using a short, sharp period of enforcement.”

In April, a police check outside St John Fisher Primary School in Sandy Lane West, found 44 of 110 cars over the limit.

This echoes what happened in York back in March:

City of York Council agreed to introduce a 20mph limit on a section of Fishergate which passes two primary schools,

The Fishergate scheme was opposed by North Yorkshire Police, who said it could make the area less safe and warned its officers would not enforce the limit.

Meanwhile in London, apart from episodes like this, which tell you everything you need to know about how far the rot has gone inside the Metropolitan Police, there’s this:

Dutch towns don’t have tens of thousands of uninsured drivers on their streets and unlike Newham, they don’t have to cope with a quarter of road casualties involving a hit and run driver.

In the nineteen eighties and nineties, the number of traffic police in London was halved. Some senior people within the Met even discussed closing the unit altogether.

The Met’s traffic unit has become very effective as a result of this close scrutiny of their work. One estimate shows they make seven times the number of arrests as the borough police. Given the historic decline in their numbers and the proven efficiency of the section, it is one of the last places the Met should be looking to find savings, yet Traffic is now dealing with a 10% budget cut compared to most sections of the Met who have a 5% cut.

At the last meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority the Commissioner defended his decision to cut traffic police as the right one, as all sections of the Met were being asked to make savings. This simply isn’t true. The public affairs section, for example, has been given around a £1m of extra funding this year.

Ah, so! The money was needed to pay the sort of guy who earned

more than £1,000 a day to work two days a month as a public relations adviser to Sir Paul.

Sir Paul is a hero of the self-styled Association of British Drivers and Safe Speed (sic). The ABD identifies him as one of the ‘good guys’ (gals naturally don’t come into this masculine topic). Both cite his reluctance to take speeding seriously.

“There is a perception that people who commit criminal offences and who, quite properly and according to guidelines, get a caution, get an easier ride than those who speed at the lower end. Whilst clearly the comparison is not a helpful one, I do nevertheless have some very real sympathy for this perception. Any criminal justice system to be effective has to be seen to be fair. It just cannot be right when people feel that our response within that system is disproportionate.”
Paul Stephenson
Chief Constable
Lancashire Constabulary
2004-03-11

And ‘Safe Speed’ (sic) gloated:

Lancashire's chief constable Paul Stephenson has announced plans for a review of the way motorists are punished. The moves follow a lengthy campaign by the Lancashire Evening Post against the excessive use of speed cameras which won the backing of hundreds of readers.
Authorities in the county, which has more fixed speed cameras than any other in the North of England, Scotland or Northern Ireland, will now operate a "three strikes" rule, where instead of being hit with a £60 fine and three penalty points, motorists who breach the limit only slightly will be cautioned.
A second minor breach would lead to another caution and the offender being asked to attend a speed awareness course.
Only on the third occasion would a fine and points be handed out.
Drivers caught excessively flouting the law would still be subject to the normal punishment.
Mr Stephenson made the announcement yesterday at a meeting of Lancashire Police Authority. He said this system would allow more "discretion" and added: "My post bag is filled and lots of other post bags are filled. Many motorists who have committed offences at the bottom end of the spectrum do feel they have been punished too harshly."

Where does the Met Bus stop, apart from the Town Square Walthamstow yesterday?

Sometimes it's The Dot Stop and sometimes it's here!

Evening all.