After all, “safety on the road” can mean all kinds of things: from misguided and counterproductive fantasies through to getting the most vulnerable out of the way of the most dangerous. Public figures have signed up to The Times campaign – as they would to motherhood and apple pie. Below we analyse the campaign in detail: its potential for reducing danger on the road to cyclists and other road users, what will be required to pursue these objectives – and the problems that have already surfaced.

Let’s take a detailed look at The Manifesto: “Cycling should be both safe and pleasurable. Ministers, mayors and local authorities must build cities that are fit for cycling.”

The Times has launched a public campaign and 8-point manifesto calling for cities to be made fit for cyclists:

1. Trucks entering a city centre should be required by law to fit sensors, audible truck-turning alarms, extra mirrors and safety bars to stop cyclists being thrown under the wheels.
2. The 500 most dangerous road junctions must be identified, redesigned or fitted with priority traffic lights for cyclists and Trixi mirrors that allow lorry drivers to see cyclists on their near-side.
3. A national audit of cycling to find out how many people cycle in Britain and how cyclists are killed or injured should be held to underpin effective cycle safety.
4. Two per cent of the Highways Agency budget should be earmarked for next generation cycle routes, providing £100 million a year towards world-class cycling infrastructure. Each year cities should be graded on the quality of cycling provision.
5. The training of cyclists and drivers must improve and cycle safety should become a core part of the driving test.
6. 20mph should become the default speed limit in residential areas where there are no cycle lanes.
7. Businesses should be invited to sponsor cycleways and cycling super-highways, mirroring the Barclays-backed bicycle hire scheme in London.
8. Every city, even those without an elected mayor, should appoint a cycling commissioner to push home reforms.”

COMMENTS:

1.

MORE TO COME

Peter Hitchens is part of a tendency in right-wing Conservatism, including the satirist Peter Simple , which has criticised some of the problems of mass car use, not least the “road safety” engineering of the modern car and its environment. I recommend that you read his latest piece on the subject. In such a piece you get more human insight into car and road safety culture than in so many professional articles. But there are -as always – problems. In fact, we should wonder: Is Peter Hitchens not something of a hypocrite on this subject? 

Let’s take a look at the article first. Some good points from Hitchens:

1. A realisation of the difference in the danger to others between errant cycling on the one hand, and errant driving on the other – something largely denied by official “road safety” discourse.
2. A correct awareness of the effects of “safety improvements” to car engineering on the behaviour of motorists (“I think this has encouraged a subconscious carelessness which is really, really important where there are pedestrians or cyclists within range”).
3. An honest and welcome  – unusually from a motorist – willingness to accept his own fallibility and potential danger to others when driving.
4. An understanding that the road environment is now not necessarily safer – particularly for people outside cars – just because the aggregate casualties per head of the population are lower.

One would like to think that Hitchens has been informed by “Death on the Streets: cars and the mythology of road safety”, a copy of which he received some years ago.

We may take issue with his central theme of assault – although that is how many victims of danger on the road feel. And if motorists do demand rights as individuals they need to accept responsibilities as individuals.

I would suggest a more appropriate analogy would be with a failure of appropriate health and safety procedures: in a highly risk-averse culture the one area where there is little enforced requirement to not endanger others is on the road. Hitchens is absolutely correct to point out the difference between what is apparently acceptable to motorists compared to what is acceptable to ordinary citizens who are not driving.

 Of course, the cry of “I hate cars” doesn’t take us very far: we could do with suggestions as to how to get us away from where we are.

But that may be carping at a welcome refusal to countenance  – at least some of – the depredations of car culture without protest.  There’s nothing wrong with a primal scream at the problem. All in all, this article is not at all bad for any publication, and remarkably good for the Daily Mail.

Which brings us to the charge of hypocrisy.

Hitchens is known as a man of principle. In particular, his career has been marked by his departure, in December 2000, from the Daily Express in response to the title’s acquisition by Richard Desmond. Hitchens felt that his own moral and religious conservatism was incompatible with Desmond’s ownership and publication of sex magazines and TV outlets.

He has since been a columnist on the Daily Mail. For those not familiar with this publication, it epitomises all that is worst about modern car culture. Motorists are continually presented as victims of the non-existent  “war on the motorist” . Motorists are seen as victims of unnecessary control by the law, for example in its relentless criticism of speed cameras. Cyclists are seen as the danger to pedestrians.

It is a world where the oppressor sees himself as oppressed and the subsidised as taxed. It is a world of self-pitying victim wannabes. It is a world where reality is turned upside down.

Now, obviously we can’t expect every journalist to be held responsible for the views of the publication they happen to write for. But at some level – and Hitchens, as we have seen, is a man who cares deeply about fulfilling personal responsibility – this issue does come up. And for a man who publicly left his paper because of the activities of its proprietor, all the more so.

At the very least Hitchens could explicitly criticise his paper’s coverage of motoring matters. He could demand that there are regular counterblasts to anti-cycling prejudice and motorist irresponsibility. We can supply the columnists.

Over to you, Mr. Hitchens.

RDRF is pelased to have supported Martin Porter in hisaction described below in his press release:

PRESS RELEASE:  HELMET CAMERA SECURES CONVICTION OF MOTORIST FOR A PUBLIC ORDER OFFENCE

Today at West London Magistrates Court, Scott Lomas was convicted of using threatening or abusive words and behaviour contrary to the Public Order Act 1986.  He was sentenced to a fine of £250, a victim surcharge of £15 and prosecution costs of £300 (a total of £565).

 The circumstances that gave rise to the conviction took place on the A315 near Hounslow in West Londonon 4^th November 2010.  Lomas had hooted at, and then shouted abuse at, a cyclist, Martin Porter, when he was unable to pass at a restriction in the carriageway width caused by a central traffic island.  The cyclist and motorist had passed and repassed each other several times with Lomas shouting abuse that culminated in a threat to kill Mr Porter.

 Porter recorded the incident on a helmet camera and later the same day reported the incident to the police who were disinclined to investigate.  After casual contact with the CPS in Hounslow the officer responsible for investigating the case decided upon ‘no further action’.  Mr Porter, who is a practising QC, wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the CPS then required the police to investigate the offence and to submit the evidence to them.  Following an investigation, the same investigating police officer declined to defer the decision to the CPS and again chose ‘no further action’.    Only after a further complaint from Mr Porter, did a more senior Metropolitan Police Officer refer the file to the CPS, who agreed that a prosecution should take place.

 Lomas denied the charge against him until his submission that the case should be dismissed as an abuse of process, because the police officer had indicated to him that there would be no further action, was rejected by the Judge.  Thereafter he changed his plea to one of guilty.

 Lomas, who was aged 24 at the time of the incident, was in breach of a suspended prison sentence imposed by the Crown Court in April 2010 following his conviction on a count of malicious wounding.  It was decided not to refer the matter back to the Crown Court for possible implementation of his suspended sentence.

 Commenting after the verdict Martin Porter said

            “I am pleased that justice has now been done and that the Crown Prosecution Service had the moral fibre to reverse the Metropolitan Police’s attempts to drop this case notwithstanding the strength of the evidence.  It is sadly too much to hope that all mindless aggression and violence directed at cyclists will instantly cease but at least this conviction may help to discourage similar incidences of mindless ‘roadrage’ against vulnerable road users.”

            “I am very grateful to prosecuting counsel (a cyclist it transpires!) who dealt with the case efficiently and courteously. I am grateful too for the moral support I have received from the CTC, Roadpeace, The Road Danger Reduction Forum and the vast majority of cyclists who have contacted me.”

 Martin PorterQC is a leading personal injury lawyer practising at 2TempleGardens,LondonEC4Y 9AY and is also a keen amateur racing cyclist with Thames Velo.  All enquiries should be directed to his chambers on 020 7822 1200.  Martin is considering writing an article about his experience, as a victim of a crime, at the hands of the police and if you would be interesting in publishing such an article to a wide audience please contact him at mporter@2tg.co.uk

 ++++++++++++++

Dr. Robert Davis writes: A number of RDRF supporters have commented that this case only came to court because:

1. The victim was a practising QC with an interest in safety on the road.

2. This person was skilled enough in his knowledge of the law to write to the CPS and the DPP in a way which would make sense to them, and to persist after an investigating officer had twice declined to proceed.

3. He had to provide evidence from a camcorder.

Most people will not be in this position, although many will be members of cycling organisations like the LCC or CTC which can give the neccessary assistance.

The main point for me was that a police officer did not take this case at all seriously enough – an example of institutionalised discrimination against cyclists / for unlawful motorist behaviour - but that the police were pressured into doing so. Hopefuly this case will elad the Met and other Police forces to take this sort of incident more seriously in future.

According to Robert Halfon MP, families are being “crucified” by high petrol prices But should we see the Great British Motorist as Jesus nailed to the cross?

According to Halfon:

“High petrol and diesel prices are crippling our economy. Many motorists now pay a tenth of their income just to fill up the family car, and millions of families are suffering. Businesses are under immense pressure, especially the road freight industry. But petrol and diesel are now so astronomically expensive; it is COSTING the government money. This is because fewer people can afford to drive, leading to lower tax revenues. Therefore, this petition calls on the government to: 1) Scrap the planned 4p fuel duty increases, which are scheduled for January and August 2012. 2) Create a price stabilisation mechanism that smooths out fluctuations in the pump price. 3) Pressure big oil companies to pass on cheaper oil to motorists. 4) Set up a commission to look at market competitiveness, and radical ways of cutting fuel taxes in the longer term”…

So what exactly is actually happening? While a well organised campaign is orchestrated to present motorists as having the status of an oppressed minority, with little or no opposition, a quick fact check should be in order.

1. Over the New Labour years the costs of motoring fell dramatically.  While some price rises over the last few years may have slowed the overall reduction in the cost of motoring, overall the cost has fallen.
2. By comparison – and I’m talking about before the current government’s austerity packages were introduced – over the same period other financial problems became worse. For example: a massive increase in the costs of housing, both for sale (pushing a generation into money down the drain in renting, and in renting itself. Or the loss of private pensions. Or the need to pay far more for university education. More recently, the freezing of public sector workers pay – to take, again, just one example – is hitting many “ordinary families” just as much, if not more.
3. Then we have had numerous costings – using quite conventional methods of cost-benefit analysis, which normally tend to support the status quo - of the economic costs of motoring which far exceed the revenue raised from motoring.
4. A lot of the costs of motoring could be easily reduced – and should be – by more careful driving (to reduce insurance premiums) and more fuel-efficient driving. Most motorists could reduce some of the mileage they do. Then there is selecting more fuel –efficient vehicles. Or car sharing. Or walking and cycling short journeys.

But ultimately, rational argument is of limited value. Even the Daily Mail, in a typical rant has to quote that: “the relative tax take has been going down for a while: for every pound drivers spend at the forecourt, about 60p is now going to the Treasury compared to around 80p in every pound between 2001 and 2003”. It won’t stop the flow of inverted reality. Facts are not relevant.

But let’s examine the language:

• “Crucified”. Crucifixion was a particularly nasty punishment, quite apart from the iconic suffering of Jesus. Is being nailed alive to a cross really the same as having to pay as much for driving as you did a few years ago? Or having to drive in a more fuel efficient way? Or driving carefully to bring your insurance down? Or maybe working out a way to drive 5 or 10% less miles to bring your costs down? The self-pity is, of course, a special feature of car culture. As one blogger notes, train fares are rising rather more than the cosst of motoring: somehow train passengers are not being “crucified”.
• “Astronomically expensive”. Not compared to the costs it incurs, even by conventional cost-benefit analysis. And the costs of motoring have declined not just  compared with inflation over the years since New Labour came to power, but compared to vital areas of expenditure such as housing, or compared to the decline in pensions in the private sector, to take just one example.
• “It is COSTING (note block letters) the government money”. What is actually costing the government money is the usual billions of road building expenditure. Or the costs to the NHS of the adverse health effects of mass car use. Or not getting enough revenue in because the taxation on motoring is not high enough – massively raising the cost of petrol  would be a great way of pushing those still driving into far more fuel efficient cars with more revenue to government as well as the other benefits arising.
• “Crippling the economy”. That’s right: our disabled economy is in its wheelchair not because of the crises in finance capitalism, the collapsing Euro or any of that – it’s that motoring might not be getting progressively cheaper. That’s why “millions of families are suffering”.

But it isn’t. And this latest orgy of getting hold of the wrong end of the stick has to be seen for being just that. We do not have, “A War on the Motorist”. We have a war for the careless, rule and law –breaking motorist with a thoroughly inequitable system of funding transport choices

For if you have decided to become more and more car dependent – or just failed to question this process – anything that fails to fulfil ever more car dependency will disappoint.  Locked into the cycle of addictive behaviour, the feelings of victimhood – whatever the reality may be – are ever present.

I quote the blogger again: “Lowering fuel taxes may give a small amount of temporary relief to motorists who have no choice but to drive and are spending a lot of their income on fuel, but it will also disproportionately benefit motorists who are not very hard-pressed, choose to drive big thirsty cars and can well afford to fill them up. Also, taxes will have to rise elsewhere to compensate, at a time when there are calls to lower them to stimulate the economy.

Instead of debating the cost of fuel, which is largely out of the control of the Government, we should be debating how we manage down the use of fuel. Oil dependency is the underlying problem, and it’s what is delivering blows to the economy every time the underlying price of oil goes up”.

If your life, and your economy, is bound up with shifting more people and stuff further and faster, maybe the thing to do is to think about having different kinds of economy and ways of living. An abeyance of feelings of suffering and paranoia ( fed by endless descriptions of how you as a motorist are “hammered”, “punished”, “squeezed” etc.) would be just some of the benefits. Not to mention a rather more realistic view of the world, and less abuse of the English language.

Vol 17 kicks off in Professor John Whitelegg’s usual welcome mode: ““Sustainable transport in the UK continues its steady decline into the dustbin of a mobility obsessed governmental agenda.” But Vol 17.2 is a classic becasue of the return to Appleyard’s work, a classic remembered by those of us in the 90′s using  his work – literally then one of a kind – in 1981. For us in the RDRF this gives us an important way of addressing  the crucial question of measuring danger. Appleyard’s famous diagrams showing how motor traffic impedes pedestrian movement and community life are revisited here and shown to be relevant as the bases for study in contemporary Britain.

I leave the rest of this post to Professor Whitelegg’s introduction:

“This is an unusual and important issue of the journal. We are delighted to carry an article by Bruce Appleyard in the United Sates which is his introduction to a new edition of Livable Streets.

Livable Streets by Donald Appleyard was published by the University of California Press in 1981 and is one of the most important transport texts to be published in the last 40 years. It immediately identifies the street as an important social milieu and an asset of the greatest importance for  ociability, neighbourliness, friendliness and community life. Donald Appleyard made a huge leap forward leaving the tawdry world of transport economics, costbenefit analysis, highway construction and foolish notions about higher car based mobility feeding higher quality of life well behind. It  establishes a new paradigm and to the shame of most transport professionals and politicians making decisions on transport choices its message is diluted, misunderstood and ignored.

Donald Appleyard’s book opens with the sentence: “Nearly everyone in the world lives on a street”. He goes on to say that the book has two objectives:

§ To explore what it is like to live on streets with different kinds of traffic

 § To search for ways in which more streets can be made safe and livable

 These two objectives capture a great deal of the spirit and purpose of World Transport
Policy and Practice and the revised edition of Livable Streets will be warmly welcomed by everyone
who lives on a street and would like to see life made better by celebrating the quality of those
spaces rather than treating them as sewers for the rapid movement of lumps of metal. This article
is followed by a UK application of the Donald Appleyard methodology. Joshua Hart and Graham Parkhurst report on an original empirical application of “Livable Street” in Bristol and confirm the original findings about the negative impacts of traffic on sociability and conviviality and the need to assert a new transport paradigm that puts streets and human life at the top of the priority list and not somewhere below the level of a car driver speeding through a residential area to visit a gymnasium in order to keep fit. “

..against those who (presumably) think that human beings do not adapt to perceptions of danger. I also draw attention to the hierarchy of danger (the “who kills whom” question) as follows:

John Adams and Ben Hamilton-Baillie (LTT 576) are absolutely correct in
their debunking of Phillip Sulley’s (and the “road safety” establishment’s)
mythology of the supposed benefits of highway engineering with regard to safety
on the road.   My article in LTT’s supplement “Road Safety: Towards 2020?,  (LTT570 06 May – 19 May 2011) states the case against the dominant ideology of road safety more extensively.

Adaptive behaviour by all road users (often referred to as “risk
compensation”) is not just a key explanatory factor for overall changes in road
death numbers, as Adams and Hamilton-Baillie show, but an indicator of crucial
elements in shaping a properly civilised policy on road danger.

It shows how the idiot-proofing of the vehicle (seat belts, roll bars,
crumple zones, air bags etc.) and highway environment (crash barriers, removal
of road side trees etc.) has connived with, if not produced, idiot drivers.

Risk comensation shows, for example, how “road safety” professionals may
consider a section of highway “safe” for pedestrians  when the absence of pedestrian casualties may
be due to an absence of pedestrians – often precisely because of the level of
danger. On a positive note, it shows how road users can adapt to not endanger
others: such as the phenomena of reduced cyclist KSI rates in London since 2000
due to “safety in numbers”, or the beneficial effects of guard railing removal
on pedestrian casualties.

It also prompts questions about what we want as an objective from a
proper approach to road safety. While the study of road deaths at the macro
level across societies gives us the information gathered by Smeed and correctly
commented on by Adams and Hamilton-Baillie, aggregating casualties from all
road users groups does not otherwise tell us anything of real value. It does
not tell us about the chances of people in particular road user groups becoming
a casualty (although thankfully there is at last now some official
consideration of “rate-based” targets for pedestrians and cyclists). It glosses
over the difference in lethality of different groups, ignoring the central
moral question of who kills, hurts or endangers whom.

All of this points to the position taken by groups such as those
representing pedestrians and cyclists, and RoadPeace and the Road Danger
Reduction Forum, namely that the only civilised approach is to aim for safety
for all road users by reducing danger at source – namely from inappropriate use
of motor vehicles – and by making those responsible for it accountable.

Moving in this direction will require a genuinely scientific assessment
of what has happened, including a willingness on the part of practitioners to
accept how they have been part of the problem of danger on the road. Many will
find this difficult: but facing up to this task is what science – and morality
– is about.

Robert Davis; Chair; Road Danger Reduction Forum; LONDON NW10

…the debate continues…

I was interviewed by Jack Thurston about Road Danger Reduction and cycling for the entire July 4^th edition of the excellent “The Bike Show”  on Resonance FM. You can hear the interview here.

This book, one of the main sources of evidence for the road danger reduction approach, is now out of print.  A few copies are available from the author. Here are what reviewers have said:

“Another book which is so interesting that it makes my head hurt is by Robert Davis… I’ve been reading it for ages. A couple of pages is enough for me to put it down and reflect. It’s chock full of facts and references, as well as thought-provoking observations about the role of the car in our societies.” Mikael Colville-Andersen, Copenhagenize, 2010

 “This book is a compelling assemblage of the evidence for the danger to civilization posed by the continuing unrestricted use of the private car. Written lucidly ‘from the heart’ the documentation is wide-ranging and meticulous.. A book to be warmly recommended” H.S. Eisner, Safety Science 17 [(1994) 227 - 230]

 “If I had sufficient funds, I would give everyone who reads a copy of Death on the Streets. Please do read it and then take up the cudgels with your MP, your District Councillor and your Chief Constable and do not stop until matters are sufficiently improved to enable us all to share our roads in safety” Peter Cannon, British Horse (British Horse Society), [Autumn 1993]

 “Highly recommend as reading for those associated with roads and road safety”. Karl Briggs, New Civil Engineer [12/19 August 1993]

 “A totally brilliant book, which will go down in history as a classic….fully referenced in one invaluable work…. chockful of useful quotes……The issues it raises should dominate our thoughts”. Don Mathew, London Cyclist [April/May 1993]

 “Personally, I shan’t be reading his book.” David Benson, Motoring Editor, Daily Express (6/11/92) Possibly my favourite review, RD.

 “Even if you regard yourself as environmentally aware and safety conscious this book will raise your consciousness still farther….the statistical information is presented in a lively, readable way….His arguments, backed by statistics are very convincing….an excellent antidote to most of the rubbish written on road safety..” CILT Journal (Centre for Independent Transport Research in London) [1,1, April 1993]

“This is a radical critique of road safety policy and practice written with a strong vein of polemic and bound to irritate many readers. Yet I feel it should be read, not just to become familiar with a position which is critical of our own, and relate work, but because there are some good arguments which should be listened to.” Inroads (Journal of the Institute of Road Safety Officers)[15,1, July 1993]

 “This enlightened and detailed book…spares no-one. This book….should be made compulsory reading before one can join the Institute of Road Safety Officers, the judiciary, become a motoring correspondent or even drive a car. If it fails at all it does so only because it is too comprehensive to be read by sceptical road safety professionals and attitude shapers. Highly recommended.” Colin Graham, Cycletouring and Campaigning, April/May 1993.

 “..as powerful as Mick Hamer’s “Wheels Within Wheels”….the way he presents his argumentation and evidence will make many readers change their minds about many things we take for granted. As such, this book should be essential reading for anyone interested or involved in transport safety and environmental issues. Chris Bowers, Going Green (Environmental Transport Association) [Spring 1993]

 “…makes sobering reading for those seriously concerned about road safety….A challenging read..” ‘The Hawk’, Commercial Motor  6 – 12 May 1993.

 “This is a book which does for road safety what Galileo did for astronomy. For pedestrians concerned about the literally deadly threat they face from motor vehicles, it is no exaggeration to say this is probably the most important book ever published on the subject….a devastating book…. Davis seems to have read every book and paper ever published on transport and road safety.. he writes in a lucid but scholarly manner, with all the facts at his fingertips….Death on the Streets is, quite simply brilliant. it amounts to three-hundred pages of stunning argument and authoritative analysis that takes the road safety industry and our car-dominated transport status quo apart. If readers of WALK only ever buy one book on transport, this should be it. Ronald Binns, WALK (Pedestrians Association), Summer 1993.

 “..I would recommend this book to any road safety practitioner, especially to those who believe in engineering as the great cure-all. It is a book which should also be made available to every teacher who covers road safety in his or her classroom.” Richard Doherty,  Care on the Road (RoSPA) August 1993.

 “This is an important book…..I remain both scientifically impressed by the sheer weight of evidence and emotionally swayed by the contrast between adjacent photographs showing children playing in the streets 30 years ago and the barricaded truck routes of today.” Richard Mayou,  The Lancet  Vol 342, July 24 1993, p.226.

‘Death on the Streets; Cars and the mythology of road safety’, by Robert Davis, was published by Leading Edge Press. ISBN 0-948135-46-8. (1993) at £11.99. As it is now out of print and there are only a few rare copies left, I am charging£25 (inc. p&p in the UK ) for private copies (signed if wished). Send cheque made out to Robert Davis at  P.O. Box 2944, NW10 2AX    

No, I’m not saying Lewis Hamilton is a Nazi. Nor that Mercedes-Benz are (not now anyway). Nor that the “road safety” lobby is Nazi. I’m not, really I am not. I am not falling foul of  Godwin’s Law. I promise.   

There are just some interesting connections between the four of them which I noted after my eye fell on the following Press Release (from 2009) and which I think are revealing: “Lewis Hamilton has launched a new initiative at Mercedes-Benz World to give teenagers a greater understanding of road safety.”    Linked in with the main global initiative for “road safety”, this is another example of the dangerous nonsense which sends out the opposite of the messages we need to present to achieve real road safety. Just in case you think this is a wildly radical sentiment, consider the following from the Chief leader writer of the Daily Telegraph:  ”Are these really the chaps to persuade boy racers to slow down? Whatever next? A new crackdown on violent crime, with Peter Sutcliffe and Donald Neilson in attendance?”.   

As David Hughes says:”Just one niggling little problem. I can’t think of worse role models for safe drivers than these two speedsters“.  Hamilton’s record is:   

1. 2007, banned from driving in France after being clocked driving at 123mph (200kmh).   

2.  In June 2009 he appeared to have repented, and in an earlier version of one of these “road safety” stunts said  there was “nothing cool” about speeding.   He said: “Everyone has made mistakes including even myself, but you learn from those. “You could easily make such a mistake and lose your friends or lose your own life.”   

3. Reckless driving in Australia in March 2010 – charged with improper use of a vehicle and he accepted guilt.   

4.  In June 2010 the Swiss foundation for victims of road accidents RoadCross (the Swiss equivalent of RoadPeace) condemned both Hamilton and his singer girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger, who has recorded a song called “Baby can’t drive”, for their unruly driving. According to RoadCross, the Pussycat Dolls singer told British tabloid newspaper the Sun that Swiss authorities would no doubt expel the couple from Switzerland if they knew how fast they had driven in the country. RoadCross said that Lewis Hamilton had already caused an accident in March 2009, because of his “irresponsible way of driving”. The Formula One driver hadn’t respected a stop road sign and had hit the car of a woman and her child; no one was injured.   

5.  About his Formula One racing, former ace Niki Lauda says: “He is completely mad….You cannot drive like this — as it will result in someone getting killed.”   . . What he does off-road should not concern us: the only people like to suffer are – unlike ordinary road users – those who have chosen to put themselves in a hazardous position. And the advanced “safety” engineering on race cars and circuits means that they won’t have to worry too much, unlike in Lauda’s day – which is why Hamilton and others can get away with what they get up to. It does, however, send an interesting message out if he is selected as a role model for “road safety” programmes.   

So, back to the Press Release:   

“The Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy has developed the RoadSense (sic)  scheme, which offers children as young as 14 the chance to enhance their learning of road safety through hands-on driving experience.Wilfried Steffen, President and CEO of Mercedes-Benz UK, said: “RoadSense is a great initiative to teach the basics of road safety to teenagers. It highlights the responsibility that even non-drivers have to make the roads a safer place. (It’s very sweet of him to consider that the vast majority of people on the worlds’ roads have something to say about safety on the roads, isn’t it?)

 “Working with schools to offer this as an add-on to the school curriculum will mean that when pupils start to drive or be driven by their friends they have developed a responsible attitude towards driving.”   

This is interesting because one of the few reliable pieces of evidence most road safety professionals agree on is that what is referred to as “pre-driver training” most emphatically does not result in lower chances of crash involvement for those who have it. This is because  it encourages them to drive earlier, boosts their confidence (one of the most dangerous things you can do with a young driver) and – insofar as any real road safety message is imparted – fails to deliver on this in the way that almost all “road safety education” fails to transform behaviour.

But lets’s continue:   

Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz World also offers young drivers the chance to prepare early for their driving test through the Kids’ Driving Experience. Children of all ages, as long as they can reach the pedals of a Mercedes-Benz A-Class (my emphasis) , can learn everything from simple car controls to skid management.   

Before you think that this is some aberration, remember that the UK Prime Minister welcomed Hamilton (and Jenson Button)  to Downing Street to launch the dreadful UN Decade of Road Safety: this nonsense is part of mainstrean “road safety” ideology. It has been supported by the Surrey Police , who should of course be out enforcing highway law.   

MERCEDES-BENZ  AND HISTORY   

 

 

 

   

 

Mercedes (Daimler-Benz) Pendant in Silver Presented to Women Employees

Everybody has seen pictures of Hitler in Daimler-Benz cars, and obviously the company functioned under the Nazis. However, the company history that was put out in 1986 for the 100th anniversary of the first Daimler and Benz cars gave the official line was that ”Daimler-Benz supported the National Socialist regime only to an unavoidable extent for a company of its importance.” No research was permitted in the company’s archives about the labor force during the Nazi period. And there was a lot more to it than the official line suggested.  

  

“Mercedes in Peace and War: German Automobile Workers, 1903-1945″ by Bernard P. Bellon ( Columbia University Press) gives  ” a chilling account of how the great automobile and arms maker prospered on the backs of its workers, including the use of thousands of concentration camp slave laborers right up to the final days of the Third Reich. After its own official history came out, the company relented and opened its archives. Several German historians interceded on behalf of the author of this book, Bernard P. Bellon, who at the end of 1986 was permitted to examine the company’s closed records. Mr. Bellon is assistant professor of history at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a fellow of the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Free University in Berlin.”

 ”Leading managers of Daimler-Benz lent valuable assistance to the National Socialists before Hitler became Chancellor in 1933,” Mr. Bellon writes. ”The corporation even claimed that it was responsible for ‘helping to motorize the movement.’ ” One way the company aided Hitler’s party was to take out large advertisements as early as 1931 in the Nazi newspaper, the Volkischer Beobachter, known for its virulent propaganda and anti-Semitic tirades. The author believes that the ads may have been part of a quid pro quo arrangement under which Daimler-Benz cars were given or lent to Hitler and his party’s officials.”

 

Neil Gregor’s “Daimler Benz in the Third Reich” traces the early history of the Daimler-Benz company and examines how opportunities offered by Nazi rearmament in the 1930s led to its rapid expansion and a surge in profits. Focusing mainly on the war years, Gregor demonstrates how the company succeeded in exploiting the demands of the war economy while situating its operations most advantageously for resumption of commercial activity in peacetime. Despite Allied bombing, says Gregor, Daimler-Benz AG emerged from the war in good shape—with a clear operating strategy, a largely intact inventory, and core production lines geared for the peacetime market. With its own interests and preservation as prime motives, the company acquiesced in the exploitation of forced labour, thereby actively intensifying the suffering of civilians, prisoners of war, and Jews and other victims of concentration camps. He concludes that the ability of Daimler-Benz to protect its interests during the war and to manage the transition to peace was predicated upon collusion in the racial barbarism of the Nazi regime.

 

 

THE NAZI MOVEMENT AND MOTORISATION

 

I would argue that there was an intimate relationshiop betweent he Nazi movement and motorisation. It wasn’t just Hitler’s close friendship with Henry Ford, the building of the first motorway network (“autobahnen”), the people’s Car (“Volkswagen”) engineered by Ferdinand Porsche , or the “motorisation of the movement” by the car builders. Outside the USA, the only places where there was a realistic hope of car ownership becoming available to ordinary families by the 1940s were the two fascist countries. The mass motorisation of the western world in the post-war years is prefigured by features of the motorisation in these two countries. There are a number of links betwen car culture and the fascist movements which can be drawn out, but now is not the place to do so. Suffice it to say that the denial of awkward facts needs to be challenged. This applies whether it is Mercedes-Benz opening up its archives, or road safety professionals questioning the past of their movement’s interventions.

 

  

DENIAL AND ROAD SAFETY

  

There is a murky history to “road safety” which needs exposure.  The failure to accept that interventions associated with the idiot-proofing of the car and road environments has impacted on the safety of the more benign modes. Considering the movement of these modes out of the road environment as a “good” because there are fewer more vulnerable human beings around to be hurt or killed. Denying the persistent adaptation of human beings to perceptions of risk. Presenting an integral part of  car-dominated transport policies as natural and inevitable. Etc.,etc.

 

Boy racers fronting ludicrous “road safety” camapigns are part of something which has a murky present as well as a past, and it needs to be revealed.

 

 

 

     

     

 

 

 

The continuing saga of Blackfriars Bridge has revealed a more high profile and combative London Cycling Campaign, preparing a new strategy for the organisation the year before the Mayoral elections. Will this be the way towards getting “the cyclised City”?

Consider LCC CEO Ashok Sinha’s approach as described in London Cyclist June-July 2011 (pp.16 – 18). Having stated that London is indisputably not a cyclised city, and not on a trajectory towards becoming one, how are we to remedy the situation (an issue we have addressed before here , here ,  and here ? The answer for him is “everything”

“Everything means (hold your breath) more money for cycle promotion, more road space for cyclists, lower volumes of motor traffic, slower motorised traffic speeds, more cycle training, safer lorries, more cycle awareness training, for drivers, better wayfinding, more segregated tracks, more mandatory lanes, no one-way streets for cyclists, ending rat-runs, providing ample and secure cycle parking, integrating cycling targets into planning gain, zero-tolerance cycle theft policing, opening up greenways, car-free routes, places and/or times, integrating cycling into public health, air pollution abatement, climate change strategies, and stricter liability for insurance claims purposes. You get the picture”.

Basically, I have four problems with Ashok Sinha’s “everything”.

1. “Everything” becomes “one thing”. Following up from the wish list of “everything”, we get an account of how we might get the political leadership to make this happen. In his article (London Cyclist June-July 2011,pp.16 – 18) he moves on to arguing for  the need for LCC to run “a popular, positive single-issue campaign …If we can target a single totemic issue that, while not a panacea, is big enough to help pave the pathway towards a cyclised city, then we may have traction.”  So now we are on to what is not “everything” – but the single totemic issue, with options such as ”Getting 100,000 children cycling to school regularly”.

 2.      What “everything” actually means. Looking a bit closer you see that it gets a bit more complicated – the peril of a thrown-together shopping list. So, in more detail:

(a)    Infrastructure: the debate about segregation is going again, so what exactly is it that people want? If it is to be fully segregated tracks, then that may be opposed to other kinds of engineering, and raises a host of issues about changes in motorist behaviour at junctions, costs, and how the space necessary is to be removed from parked and moving motor vehicles. If we are to remove road space from motor vehicles, do we want it to be for segregated cycle tracks? Just saying we want more of mandatory cycle lanes, greenways, car-free routes/places/times may raise possibilities but doesn’t provide actual objectives. What would a small amount of road space being re-allocated in one part of London actually mean for cycling on the vast majority of London’s roads?

(b)    Cycle awareness training for drivers. An important area for not just lorry, but all drivers at work. But what proportion of drivers can actually be reached by working through Councils (the main thrust of the LCC campaign on lorry driver training)?

(c)    Secure cycle parking. A desirable aim, but how does this fit in to the almost unrecognised area of home parking?

The problem with a shopping list like this is you can easily end up with some small local improvements at the expense of more important things elsewhere. I suggest we need a whole more than the sum of its parts: but shopping lists can end up with not many parts, let alone a whole that is more than the sum of them.

Also, some key areas of “everything” have been missed out:

3.         Not enough of “everything”.  Elements that have been missed out:

(a)    I refer above to home parking: about half of London’s homes are flats, mainly with inconvenient or insecure cycle parking – and many houses have the same problem. LBs Lambeth and to a lesser extent Hackney, Southwark and Ealing have made attempts to improve this.

(b)    Adequate retail facilities. In large areas of London there are no specialist cycle shops – a necessity for novice cyclists. Government can help retailers through business tax exemptions and/or assistance through apprenticeship schemes. There is an obvious demand for cheap bicycles which can be addressed through recycled, recovered and second-hand bike outlets.

(c)    Support with equipment and accessories, particularly in winter. One of the reasons for the middle class preponderance in cycling is that cycling, particularly with more reliable equipment and clothing, can be expensive. There is also a very distinct reduction in cycling in the winter months which may be alleviated if assistance is given with “winterizing” cycling with support for purchasing wet and cold weather accessories, as carried out to a small extent in LB Ealing’s “Keep Riding in Winter” programme.

(d)    A sea change in law enforcement for careless and dangerous driving. Of value to all road users, and hardly on the agenda.

4.      An overall organising principle.

Road Danger Reduction is essentially about reducing danger at source as part of a sustainable transport policy.  The principle is actually simple. What the LCC is not doing is stating what the problem is.

 For RDRF the problem is: danger from a transport system excessively based on motor vehicle (particularly car, motorcycle, van and lorry) use, with sustainable and more benign modes, particularly cycling, discriminated against.

 The answer is to oppose this through making accountable and reducing the source of danger as part of a more sustainable transport policy. Discrimination is opposed by an equitable approach to the different transport modes. This means equity – fairness – with regard to two basic elements: resource allocation and danger. Instead of “everything” we have the simple response of equity, or fairness.

 The merit of the fairness approach is that it is simple and based on the idea that we are not asking for anything special, just an equal deal without discrimination against cycling. It is based on an idea of natural justice which is morally difficult to oppose.

 Of course, it will be opposed because the motoring lobby sees itself as oppressed. That is an ideological battle which will have to be joined. Let’s look at the two basic elements we need to consider.

Resource allocation.

Essentially every transport user both pays for their mode of transport (in fares, purchasing vehicle, VAT etc.) and also inflicts costs on society through use of the transport mode of choice. This is a hotly contested matter, not least because of inevitable argument about how to calculate the costs of, for example, pollution – and whether we should do so in the first place. In fact monetary forms of calculation are traditionally used in cost-benefit analyses which tend to reinforce the transport status quo.

Nevertheless, we can argue that private motoring has net costs to society and the environment even after all the various forms of motorist taxation are paid – and that there is a good case for requiring motorists to pay more, primarily through increased costs of fuel. http://rdrf.org.uk/2011/01/266/  But even without discussing car and road freight costs, we have to remember the subsidy to public transport.

While Mayor Johnson has been cutting TfL’s expenditure, subsidy for public transport is still far higher than spend on cycling. Roughly speaking, a typical bus passenger gets at least 80p per trip, or some £350 per commuting year, subsidy. Tube and rail passengers get more, and that’s without the extremely expensive (£15+ billion) Crossrail scheme.

By comparison, without the Bike Hire and  Cycle Super Highway (CSH) schemes, undefined TfL spend on cycling is supposedly about £20 million annually (it is unclear whether this includes Borough LIP spending on items such as schools cycle training)

If cycling were to get more or less the same amount of subsidy as bus transport, we could expect a ring fenced amount approaching £100 million per annum. (£350 x 275,000, the number of cyclists daily). That is for a mode which is generally far healthier and environmentally benign, as well as being more convenient in outer London. Cycling England (the now abolished advisory body to Government) gave a figure of a £10,000 (over a lifetime) as the benefit of an extra regular cyclist.

In addition, where highway infrastructure is the target for expenditure, one can argue that costs should be borne out of general highways budgets.

And still £100 million annually would be a very small part of even a much reduced TfL annual budget – some 1% of the 2009/2010 budget of £9.2 billion.

Before getting too bored with figures, it is worthwhile reminding ourselves that – before he got to power – Ken Livingstone’s advice to cycling campaigners was to aim for more than 1% of the transport budget. Under his regime it never got to half of that – and then mainly for the “LCN+”. And then there is the additional massive subsidy over-60s get with public transport – what about free bikes for over-60s?

What would equitable resource allocation actually mean?

Above I have tried to show that it makes sense in terms of equity for cyclists to expect a substantial tranche of ring-fenced funding of some £100 million per annum.  This represents a tiny proportion of the existing TfL budget which – whatever the climate of economic austerity – could be diverted from the massive general budget with minimal detrimental effect to other modes. All of this is without comparison with, for example, the Dutch model of 25 Euros per head of the population annually for investment in cycling, or some £170 million in the London context.

Where would it go?  A range of areas of support are mentioned above:

• Support with subsidised equipment, wet and cold weather clothing and other necessary accessories to individual cyclists.
• Support for cycling retailers and second hand / recovered bikes schemes.
• Subsidised home parking; on-road confidence and maintenance skills training.
• Anti-cycle theft programmes including secure parking at workplaces and in public places.

The idea is to actually assist people who want to cycle by dealing with obstacles that will occur whatever kind of danger there is on the road or whatever kind of infrastructure exists. Programmes like LB Ealing’s Direct Support for Cycling make a minimal effort to achieve this. The loss of cycling culture means that a variety of groups, such as women in black and ethnic minority communities is particularly distanced from cycling and can benefit from specific support.

This equitable resource allocation could include the financing of necessary highway and off-road infrastructure and policing- although these should arguably be financed out of general budgets.

Danger

The RDR approach is to address the reduction of danger at source for the safety of all road users, by making those responsible for that danger accountable. That can mean real accountability for whoever is considered responsibility for danger from motor traffic – highway authorities, vehicle engineers or individual motorists. It ranges from the volume and flows of motor traffic to specific vehicle manoeuvres and ways of reducing them by whatever means are necessary.

The approach has to be based on the fact that the kind of rule and law infractions by motorists implicated in endangering other road users are commonplace, and that current levels of law enforcement do not even scratch the surface of the iceberg of motorised rule and law breaking. Furthermore, the idiot-proofing of the road and car environment by “road safety” professionals has exacerbated the danger posed by the motorised to other road users.

The shopping list of danger reduction initiatives normally wheeled out (enforcing existing speed limits, more 20 mph areas or zones; higher levels of police enforcement, pressure on national government to reduce lenient sentencing, specific HGV measures etc.) has  to be looked at through this perspective.

What this means is that we become aware that the initiatives will not only have minimal impact, but that they may occur in an environment with danger increasing elsewhere. RDR also suggests that pressing down on road danger in one area leads to it appearing elsewhere: it is crucial to keep the overall picture in mind and not allocate all the effort in a few specific areas. Urban cyclists know that there are a number of potential manoeuvres by motorists which can lead to collision with cyclists (or pedestrians), and there is little – if any – advantage in concentrating on just one or two.

Some reminders on road danger

• Speak English, not “roadsafetyese”. Very often all you have to do is invert the speech to get the real road safety meaning. For example, more crashworthy cars which encourage less careful driving are not “safer”, but more dangerous. A “safe road” which has few reported casualties may be one where there is a lot of motor danger which reduces pedestrian and cyclist traffic. Check up on these basics when engaging with the official “road safety” paradigm presented in local and central government. Always remember the “who kills – or just endangers – whom?” question.
• Safety on the road is above all a moral and political question involving a pronounced hierarchy of danger. Inevitable attention to cyclist (or occasionally pedestrian) rule/law breaking can create the space to draw attention to the more important kinds of danger which tend to evade media and public consciousness.
• The aim of real road safety is reducing danger at source (e.g. primarily from motorised traffic) and holding those responsible for it accountable. The numbers of people reported as injured is another issue – even the better indicator of casualty rates (per journey or distance travelled) is less important than reducing danger and holding those responsible for it accountable.
• Always remember that people adapt to perceived danger. This can be in both the short and long term, with cultural change accepting practices previously thought unacceptable. The strategy is to get adaptation so that danger is reduced at source.

Raising the real road safety agenda

The kind of measures we could have for real road safety are not on the agenda yet – although they could be – and discussion needs to involve suggesting what we might require if we are to have safe roads for all:

• Call for black box recorders for motor vehicles to establish cause for post-crash criminal and civil law investigation.
• Call for a shift to driver liability for collisions involving cyclists or pedestrians for both civil and criminal law – based on (a) the fact of the “iceberg” of motorists rule and law breaking (b) the assumptions by “road safety” professionals of the inherent danger posed by the motorised and (c) the insurance industry actuarial estimates of danger from motorists compared to cyclists or pedestrians.
• Consideration of technologies (pedestrian activated motor vehicle braking systems, citizen road user camera users, on-board speed governors etc.) not so much for actual implementation, but for raising the issues of RDR.
• Use targets and indices should not just be the “rate-based” (casualties per journey or distance travelled), but should move on to rates assessing whether a third party is at fault. Indices relating to perception of safety can also be used.
• Give proper evidence-based information on supposed “safety” initiatives such as helmet and hi-viz advocacy

These are the thoughts of someone who has been cycling in London for 35 years and a member of LCC for most of them. Your comments to chairrdrf@aol.com will be considered.