The devotion of a whole front page by The Times to cyclist safety is quite extraordinary. RDRF has, along with other organisations and 17,000 individuals as of today (05/02/2012) signed up to it. But will this campaign fizzle out like the ones waged by The Independent and the London Evening Standard – let alone safety campaigns launched throughout the last century? At the risk of seeming overly negative, we have to question features of this campaign and ask what will be required to effectively pursue the good intentions that exist.
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. Read more »
Transport practitioners should be aware that there are a number of current campaigns for the safety of cyclists. Following on from direct action in London, these include probably the highest profile campaign for cyclist safety ever by The Times. But will any of them actually achieve anything? We will examine them in depth, starting with that of “British Cycling”. Read more »
Headcam footage
RDRF is pelased to have supported Martin Porter in hisaction described below in his press release: Read more »
It’s time to write again about the costs of motoring (no, not to its victims, just to car users), as we are in another spasm of a particularly unpleasant feature of car culture. This is the presentation of alleged motorist victimhood through the mangling and abuse of the English language. It’s worth examining this self-pitying culture as we have – as so often with “road safety” ideology and parts of car culture – an inversion of reality displayed to us.
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?
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I was interviewed by Jack Thurston about Road Danger Reduction and cycling for the entire July 4th edition of the excellent “The Bike Show” on Resonance FM. You can hear the interview here.
Saving people and planet
a road danger reduction approach for a safer fairer world
So here’s some good news for a change – an event promoting road danger reduction : do get along to this event next week (May 11th at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) organised by our friends RoadPeace. Read about it here. It is based on a very traditional “road safety” initiative which hopefully RoadPeace will distance itself from.
LB Lambeth hosted the seminar under this title on March 16th. Below RDRF Chair Dr. Robert Davis gives an account and his views of where this productive seminar takes the Road Danger Reduction agenda: Read more »
In London it’s consultation time for Local Implementation Plans and the occasion for seeing what your local authority might be saying with regard to road danger and sustainable transport. What follows is relevant for Local Transport Plans throughout the country, but I’ll be concentrating on London as I know more about it.
London Borough of Lambeth (first Highway Authority in the UK to have a Road Danger Reduction Manager) is going to be running a seminar on March 16th: “Embedding Road Danger Reduction in Local Transport Plans” at which I’ll be giving a version of this post. Places are pretty much taken up, but if you want to come – it’s invitation only – do drop me an e-mail at chairrdrf@aol.com . So: what is happening with the London LIPs? Read more »
As we enter 2011 there is a strong chance of a step change in the adoption of Road Danger Reduction (RDR) policy by a local authority – and by a city, no less.
While some of the ideas of RDR have filtered through to at least parts of the mainstream – and to all those bodies with any kind of genuine concern for the well being of cyclists and pedestrians and for sustainable transport policy in general – the uptake of RDR has been patchy, to say the least. Even the 30 or so local authorities that have signed the RDR Charter have either fallen by the wayside, or else been unable to address the problems of traditional “road safety” ideology and practice, even where key Councillors and officers are sympathetic.
Hopefully this may be about to change if Bristol City Council follows up on the report Road Danger Reduction in Bristol? , a report organised by Bristol City Council Road Safety, Bristol PCT and the University of the West of England http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/content/Transport-Streets/Road-Safety/road-danger-reduction-in-bristol.en .
While there is a lot which is heartening in the report, plainly a great deal of work needs to be done to embed the positive attitudes displayed in the work of the Council. Read more »
Alright, now that Transport Minister Philip Hammond has repeated his claim that he would reverse New Labour’s “war on the motorist”, it really is time to comment on what is nothing less than an inversion of reality. Seasoned campaigners and hardened professionals alike were gob-smacked when he first mentioned this phrase. But as – we hope – polite professionals who work, one way or another, with Government, we desisted from saying what first came to mind.
But now we are prompted by a rather good Editorial in the 2nd September Guardian which leads: “Unthinkable? Declaring war on motorists: When the transport secretary said ‘We will end the war on motorists’, the obvious question was: what war on motorists? Regrettably, the article restricts itself to suggesting the subsidising of public transport, but does at least refer to the reduced cost of motoring brought in by the previous Government.
Of course, in a sense there has been a “war on motorists”: a continuation of unnecessary levels of danger on the road which many motorists are prepared to oppose and from which they may suffer.
Many would like to have a greater option for themselves and their families to use more sustainable transport and to have more people-friendly communities. They might not want scarce public money to be squandered on road building, or the damage to public health and the local and global environment from current levels of car use. Although they may be a minority of the motoring public, they are still motorists and want a more civilised, less car-centred society: they have had a war against them.But that’s not what the Minster is talking about. So perhaps the following could be pointed out – and they really are just a few parts of the story:
These are a few points which could be brought to the attention of the Minister. As with so much in transport policy and road safety, what we have is not so much a mistake as – this needs to be repeated – an inversion of reality.
Read more »
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The devotion of a whole front page by The Times to cyclist safety is quite extraordinary. RDRF has, along with other organisations and 17,000 individuals as of today (05/02/2012) signed up to it. But will this campaign fizzle out like the ones waged by The Independent and the London Evening Standard – let alone safety campaigns launched throughout the last century? At the risk of seeming overly negative, we have to question features of this campaign and ask what will be required to effectively pursue the good intentions that exist. 
