Hit on Wood Street

This illuminated sign on the pavement build-out on Wood Street has been smashed over and uprooted by a vehicle. In fact all along Wood Street E17 there is evidence of the damage done to stationary objects by drivers.

(Below) This cycle stand near the junction with Havant Road has been hit by a vehicle and twisted out of shape.





















This lighting column/pedestrian crossing beacon has been knocked sideways at the junction with Barrett Road.

That cycle lane again

The space between the parked coach and the 4X4 is for cyclists.

Ever since the council redesigned this section of Forest Road to accommodate parking at the expense of the safety of cyclists I've noticed that the new parking bays have become a magnet for large vehicles which park here.

Large vehicles are far too wide for the bays, leaving cyclists squeezed out.

A cycling fatality or serious injury here, I suspect, is only a matter of time.

It's the Green Fair!

This afternoon I went to the Council's Green Fair in Lloyd Park, home of the William Morris Gallery. (Judging by the poster above the council seems to think its name is Aveling Park, which is weird. I've checked with my Atlas of London, which identifies the park as Lloyd Park, which is what I've always known it by.)

I was enormously impressed to see how the Mayor had arrived at this event (see below).

I picked up lots of leaflets, including a copy of the 'Transport Quiz'. Strangely the Quiz didn't ask how many cyclists had been run down and killed outside the venue in the past year (one), how many speed cameras there are at this point (none), how many libraries in the borough lack cycle parking (40 per cent), or how many cycle stands there are in Walthamstow Village, where all the good pubs and restaurants are (none).

And right next to the poster shown above are cycles locked to the railings (below), because Lloyd Park and the William Morris Gallery have car parking but not a single cycle stand. That's how 'green' this crap council is.




















Ample car parking (below). Parked cars do so enhance the entrance to the William Morris Gallery, do they not?




















No cycle parking inside the park. So everywhere people had to use railings to lock their bikes:




















And this is how the Mayor got to the Green Fair (below). Which sums up the ethos of this event. She was too lazy even to park outside the William Morris Gallery and walk the rest of the way.







































I picked up a copy of The Waltham Forest Road Safety Guide 2007/8, which "is proudly sponsored by Renault". Yes, Renault, the firm that sponsors the High Speed Renault Festival and manufactures killing machines like the Renault Laguna, which has a top speed of 145 mph and the Renault Megane RenaultSport 225, with a top speed a shade under 150mph. By any measure you care to apply, this is a very quick car.

Modesty: not a virtue of this crap council(below).




















The Friends of the William Morris Gallery were refused a stall at the Green Fair because of their criticisms of this crap council. So this Friend was perambulating with campaign badges and other Morris goodies:







































Hot from the press: a new, beautifully produced, illustrated paperback about Morris's politics, Crossing the ‘river of fire’.





















This crap council may not understand the first thing about the environment or William Morris but the spirit of Morris was present. This head is made out newspaper. Cool







































Was the Green Fair a success? There was music from numerous stages, lots of information tents, plenty of entertainment for children, food, a bar, and all kinds of stalls. It was a fun afternoon out and I don't doubt people had a good time. But what did it have to do with climate catastrophe or the kind of changes our society needs to make to break with car dependency?

Lots of nice people gave me leaflets about why I need to cycle and walk. I ended up with 54 (below). Is that good for the environment? Of course it is - I shall dump most of them in my crap council crap recycling bin which is too small and doesn't have a lid.

The news

The roadside shrine to Tyrese Hannah, a seven year old run down and killed while walking along a pavement in Swindon. Swindon Council, headed by a man who has been disqualified for speeding, is proposing to get rid of all speed cameras in the town. (More below)



What a surprise! Up to a fifth of the MPs who have been debating the UK's climate change bill do not understand, or choose to ignore, the science on which it is based.

The government has cancelled the proposed autumn fuel tax rise, even though perpetuating our society's addiction to oil can only lead to ever greater vulnerability and worse shocks in future.

Cycle stand provision in Britain is laughably inadequate, yet the government continues to promote car dependency, and is now lavishing £6 billion on the latest futile attempt to ‘cure congestion’. Further plans to allow drivers to use motorway hard shoulders and possible tolled lanes were announced by the Government today as part of a six-year, £6 billion jambuster package.

Car driver David Sexton discovers the joy of cycling: Once, getting a car felt like a massive surge in freedom, and mobility, too. Not any more, not in London. Only a bike gives that sensation now.

The Daily Mail discovers ‘ghost bikes’.

Paris's self-service bicycle scheme has been hailed a success, despite a third of the bikes being vandalised or stolen in their first year of service – and with several turning up in foreign countries. Two users of Vélib' – which does not offer helmets – were crushed to death this year, both in collisions with lorries.

Also in France: A boy aged two-and-a-half died from dehydration after being left in a baking hot car after his parents went shopping and forgot about him.

A Tube station which has been closed since February while its escalators are replaced, could have remained open during the refit, it has been revealed. Local MP Andy Slaughter, who obtained documents under Freedom of Information Act, said people were "deliberately misled" over Shepherd's Bush closure. The documents show maintenance firm Metronet said the upgrade could proceed with the station still operating. The west London Central Line station, used by an estimated 20,000 people a day, was closed in February to replace its 80-year-old escalators and will remain shut until October. (If you want more detail, it can be found here.)

‘Car crime’ to the police is not deaths on the roads but damage to cars and theft of cars. A stolen 4X4 is a top priority, with the usual consequences.

In the West Country convicted drivers are being given the choice of a fine and penalty points or watching a 15 minute video. (That’s a difficult one, isn’t it?)

Drivers caught speeding in Cornwall are to be shown a hard hitting video of a fatal accident in a bid to save lives. Operation Slowdown is a joint initiative between the county council, Devon and Cornwall Police, and the Safety Camera Partnership. Fifty people were killed and more than 200 seriously injured in road accidents in the county last year. Those caught will be given the choice of a fine and penalty points, or a 15-minute educational session.

An off-duty police officer whose motorcycle killed a pedestrian as she walked home has been cleared of causing death by dangerous driving.

Pc Damien Myerscough, 42, was instead found guilty by a jury of driving without due care and attention. He was fined £2,000, disqualified from driving for 12 months and ordered to pay £1,000 costs at Bolton Crown Court. Lyndsay Oldham died instantly in the crash in Ainsworth, Bury, last year. Her family say justice was not done.

A bus driver who crushed a mother and daughter to death under the wheels of his single decker has been fined just £1,000.

Road safety campaigners have called for the charge of 'careless driving' to be scrapped after magistrates said they were powerless to give 53-year old John Scott a tougher punishment.
After the case, a spokesman for road safety charity Brake said: "The charge of careless driving should be scrapped. It is careless to spill a pint of milk, but driving in a way that is anything other than safe, and in line with the Highway Code, can only be described as dangerous or bad driving. If someone is seriously injured or killed by a bad driver, they should be charged with a charge that reflects the consequences of that bad driving and has a significant penalty.The charge of careless driving when a serious injury or death has occurred causes great offence to the injured victims and their families, who frequently view it as a trivial charge, adding extreme insult to injury."

Knife crime remains a hot media topic. Car-nage isn’t, even though So far this year, 58 people killed have been killed on Northern Ireland's roads. Nine of those deaths have been in the past 10 days.

Needless to say there is no moral panic in the mass media about deaths from head-on collisions:

Two "bright and beautiful" sisters and one of their boyfriends died in a head-on crash between a car and a van in Aberdeenshire. The victims were named locally as sisters Elena Putnam, 18, and Rachel Putnam, 20, and her boyfriend Mark Gardiner, 22, all from Cullen. The crash happened on the B9022 south of Portsoy on Monday night.The deaths take the total number of people killed on Grampian's roads to six in the last week.

A woman has died after a head-on collision involving two cars in the Highlands. Four other people were injured in the crash on the A82 at Onich, south of Fort William, on Saturday afternoon.

A student and his mother who died in a motorway crash hours after he graduated from university with first class honours. Ben Dalah, 21, from Edgware, his mother Nadia, 50, and father Freddy were travelling back from Birmingham University when their Saab was hit by a lorry and another car on the M6.

Inadequate traffic law enforcement and risible penalties for behaviour that threatens the lives of vulnerable road users have a predictable result:

Drivers appear to be shrugging off the threat of jail for causing fatal accidents while texting or talking on a mobile phone. Two Evening Standard photographers caught dozens of motorists using their phones while driving - despite a new crackdown which could mean up to 14 years in prison for offenders who kill. Among those pictured were cabbies, van drivers and commuters.

Tory run Swindon council wants to scrap all speed cameras in the town, to the delight of petrolheads everywhere.

Peter Greenhalgh, who is in charge of the council's transport policy, said that he would rather see the money spent on traffic calming and vehicle-activated speed signs, which cost as little as £5,000 to install.

It later emerged that the leader of Swindon council had a personal interest in the matter:

The leader of a council considering scrapping speed cameras was once banned from driving for speeding, it was revealed today. Swindon Borough Council is looking at proposals to get rid of cameras and find other ways to spend the £400,000 annual contribution it currently makes to the local safety camera partnership. Roderick Bluh, the leader of the Conservative-controlled council, was banned for three months after he collected 12 penalty points on his licence for speeding.

The blood-drenched farce of ‘road safety’ is rather underlined by this ‘complaint’: Drivers have complained about cameras being too hidden in the past, despite rules saying they must be clearly visible to oncoming drivers.

Swindon is where a speeding 19 year old driver careered on to a pavement and killed a child:

Tyrese, of Eastern Avenue, Walcot, had been out walking his dog Odi, with his mum, when a car lost control and hit him in Drove Road on Friday evening.Caroline was holding the dog as Lethbridge School pupil Tyrese walked ahead. He was instantly knocked unconscious. He died five and a half hours later at the Great Western Hospital.

It turned out that

The accident was the third serious incident of its kind in the last three months and residents have called for safety measures in Drove Road. Just last month a motorcyclist was involved in an accident in which his entire bike became wedged underneath a van. And at the end of last year a disabled man using the pedestrian crossing in Drove Road was hit by a car and needed emergency hospital treatment.Many people living in the neighbourhood say it was just a matter of time before there was a fatality.

Just three days after Tyrese was killed cars were still speeding past the spot where he was knocked down.

‘Losing control’ happens all the time. A teenager died and a man was seriously injured when the car they were travelling in overturned on a road in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire

and

A family had a remarkable escape when a car smashed through the wall of their bedroom as they slept with their five-month-old son. Joe Poulter, 40, and his partner Angela Foss, 38, were in bed when the Mercedes ploughed through the front of their cottage in Millfield, Sunderland, just after 2.30am. One neighbour said: "I heard cars driving along the street. They were racing each other. "It looked like one was trying to overtake the other when it went through the house.

Welcome to Walthamstow!

(Above) The moment you step off the bus at Walthamstow Central that much celebrated 'quality environment' is immediately evident.

(Below) Walthamstow makes a great movie location - if you're making a film about the end of the world or a society of cyberpunk squalor. Why bother going to the expense of constructing a landscape of ruin and waste when you can simply visit Buxton Road?




















And just a few yards away, obstructing a cycle stand... If you ask me it's not Daleks we should be worried about. It's London Borough of Waltham Forest trade refuse containers which are taking over the world.




















The Council claims it is Positive about disabled people. That's 'positive' as in 'positively indifferent'. No access for wheelchair users on Brandon Road (below)





















More problems for wheelchair users, on Carisbrooke Road.

Whipps Cross University Hospital Trust: promoting car dependency

Whipps Cross Hospital. Spot the cycle parking.


I had an appointment at Whipps Cross Hospital as an outpatient. So I cycled. And when I got there:

There were numerous signs indicating car parking. There were no signs at all indicating cycle parking.

There was parking for hundreds of cars but no cycle stands located by the numerous buildings used by members of the public.

Eventually I found one cycle parking site, which I suspect is the only cycle parking provision in the extensive grounds of this very large, car-choked hospital. It has cycle parking for just 16 bicycles. Perhaps this is supposed to accommodate the needs of staff as well as visitors.

All 16 stands were in use. So, like other cyclists, I had to use railings to D-lock my bike.

Now I tend to think this is a scandal and a disgrace but I’m not exactly surprised. Some years ago I had the same problem at another local hospital run by the Trust. It had ample car parking but not a single cycle stand. I wrote to the Trust and politely asked it to tell me how many car parking spaces and how many cycle stands are provided, at each local hospital and health facility used by members of the public.

Back came the answer:

We don’t know. We don't care. We have no intention of finding out. Fuck off you pathetic cyclist and next time come by car.

(The wording may have been a little different, but that was the gist.)

Well, things haven’t changed a bit. Promoting car dependency - that's the culture of this crap Trust. And the grounds of this shambolic, badly managed car-cluttered hospital site are just as unfriendly to pedestrians as they are to cyclists.

The Trust prefers tokenism over substance. (Which moron at the Trust came up with the category “Main road unsuitable for bikes!”, I wonder?) There’s a map of the car parks here, with the revelation that We have 400 spaces for patients and visitors and 700 spaces for staff. That says it all, doesn’t it?





















(Above and below) The 16 cycle stands. Inconveniently sited on a raised concrete platform. The stands also consist of a weird device evidently patented by the Spanish Inquisition, which you have to clamp around your bike. Several cyclists had given up trying to work out how to use these bizarre devices and just locked their bikes to the open frames. Unlike Sheffield stands, these Whipps Cross contraptions can only be used by a single bike.

And another crash...

A motorist, presumably driving at a reckless, lawless speed and perhaps not paying attention, has 'lost control' and collided with the traffic island on Forest Road - yes! Forest Road yet again - by the junction with Ruby Road E17. The vehicle demolished both the yellow KEEP LEFT sign - look carefully and you'll just see the stump of the foundation - and the lighting column (which had a blue KEEP LEFT sign attached to it, at height). Had a pedestrian been waiting on the pedestrian refuge they might well have been killed. This is yet more evidence of the problem of reckless, high speed driving on Forest Road.

This crash site, opposite the William Morris Gallery, is situated on the Council’s new suicidal cycle lane and is a short distance from where Michael McLean was knocked down and killed by a speeding driver last year.




















You can see the lighting column which was hit (with a blue KEEP LEFT sign attached) in the photograph below.