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

 At this point I confess experience – I briefly held the honour of being the “National Rights Officer” for BC’s precursor, the British Cycling Federation (BCF). This post didn’t last long. The BCF and now BC are basically not geared up for addressing transport policy and safety issues involving cyclists in the way that the CTC has been over the last decade or so, let alone the various urban cyclists groups.

Some old letter head...

 The current campaign is based on 800 self-selected BC members giving their views. (An interesting feature of all membership organisations is the way that policy is decided by members opinions being collected in various ways).

 And these views have a lot to do with what is required to reduce danger to cyclists: reducing speeds from 30 to 20 mph in urban areas; trying to get drivers to be aware of the right distance required for safe overtaking; removing lorry drivers “blind spots”; and not having cycle lanes that end suddenly.

 The BC Chief Executive is also correct to echo the idea of Safety in Numbers put forward by the CTC “…evidence suggests that the more people who cycle, the safer it becomes.”. This is a notion based on the adaptive behaviour of road users to perceived hazards, explored by the road safety academic Reuben Smeed decades ago, elaborated here , and here and studiously ignored by the road safety establishment ever since.

Where it gets dubious is when it comes to our old friend “mutual respect”. We are, so we are told, All in This Together. The BC Chief Executive, Ian Drake, says:

“It’s essential that we get away from this sense of ‘them and us’ between motorists and cyclists. Most people who ride a bike also drive a car which suggests there should already be some mutual understanding. Now more needs to be done to build on this and create culture in which all road users can better respect each other.

“And it’s important to stress that cyclists have as much of a role to play in this as motorists, by ensuring they adhere to the rules of the road with regards to things like stopping at red traffic lights and signalling correctly.”

Let’s be clear about this: I’m all for courtesy and being polite to one another. It’s nice to be nice. If we all do the Right Thing (whatever that might be) then nobody will be hurt or killed. It will all be just peachy. To mix the fruit metaphors, life on the roads would be a bowl of cherries.

The only problem with basing on a strategy on this “even-stevens” approach is that it is at best rubbish and at worst a recipe for continuing danger wrapped up with victim-blaming. It won’t work.

Why, when I think it’s a good idea to be nice to people, do I say this? It should be obvious, but after 90 years of the “road safety” lobby, we need to explain.

The brutal fact of the matter is that we have power a differential on the road. This involves some road users (basically the motorised ones) having massive potential lethality and some others (generally speaking, those walking and cycling) having a lot less. This is apart from the fact that the latter – referred to as “Vulnerable Road Users” because, like the vast majority of travellers in the world, they happen to be outside cars – are particularly vulnerable to the danger posed by the former.

This absolutely fundamental feature of safety on the road has been systematically glossed over by the “road safety” lobby throughout its existence. We should all just try to be nice to each other. The fact that some types of road user are inevitably going to pose a threat to others, and that these others are going suffer however well they try and behave – whereas the converse is not true – is just left out of the picture.

But it gets worse. Far worse.

For at the same time as it advocates everybody being nice to each other, this same lobby has insisted that motorists are so inherently likely to break the rules and regulations – that they are inherently unwilling to and/or incapable of doing so – that their danger must be accepted and accommodated. It must be colluded and connived with.

Basically this comes down to engineering the vehicle and highway environment to idiot-proof motoring in the full knowledge that doing so will produce the idiots and exacerbate their idiocy. The relatively non-dangerous are urged to obey rules while the far more dangerous to others (let’s call them Dangerous Road Users, or “DRUs”) are actually being accommodated in their rule breaking.

This is then accepted by those claiming to be interested in the safety of their members: note the way in which a cyclist disobeying  traffic signal is put on the same level as far more lethal behaviour by motorists.

Or take the support for BC’s campaign by the representative of an organisation which came into being to pass through legislation (compulsory front seat belt wearing) based on the assumption that motorists are inherently likely to crash their cars. And which has been shown to increase danger to cyclists and pedestrians, actually being associated with more cyclist and pedestrian deaths immediately after it was introduced.

(The following is quoted without comment by the normally sensible BikeBiz site  “The findings were also welcomed by Rob Gifford, Executive Director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, who said: “This is very consistent with what we know about how best to further improve road safety and I think that the overall theme that measures should promote mutual respect and understanding between road users is exactly right.” )

Exploring these background issues may seem irrelevant, but I believe it is absolutely necessary in order to work out what may, or may not, be achieved. Take the “I’m also a motorist” trope: “Most people who ride a bike also drive a car which suggests there should already be some mutual understanding.” This may be true for adult BC members, but not necessarily the rest of humanity, but let’s leave that for the moment – let’s look at people who use different modes of transport.

Motorists who ride bicycles may – and I repeat “may” – may be aware of some relevant problems for cyclists, such as overtaking too close, but that doesn’t mean they will become better drivers generally. Most of the problems created by motorists for other road users do not involve general bad intent towards others, and feature a general lack of ability or unwillingness to obey the regulations. Most motorists are pedestrians, but that does not mean they obey the regulations and laws whose infringement threatens pedestrians.  

In fact, it could make them more unlikely to support measures necessary for cyclist safety. Note that the measure to support 20 mph is qualified: “The reduction of urban speed limits from 30mph to 20mph would reduce the severity of injuries sustained in any accidents, although it was acknowledged that drivers might become agitated if they had to drive at that speed.”

So what will happen to this campaign? How exactly will it be pushed forward? I confess to having doubts about the best based of campaigns. And it is crucial that a campaign is based ona real understanding of – and willingness to confront – the power structures that underlie transport policy and safety on the road.

 I leave you with a new website which preaches a benign attitude by cyclists towards motorists – but, as its name implies, doing so from a position where cyclists claim a position of power and entitlement. This kind of claim is not evident in campaigns such as the one by BC.

We hope to be writing an extensive review of the Department for Transport’s major programme of studies carried out in 2008, 2009 and 2010 on Cyclist Safety. We think that there are a number of serious problems with what was produced and how the programme was structured – most notably the emphasis on the work on helmets, which we see as being fundamentally misconceived and executed.

 While preparing this I was reminded of some DfT-commissioned evidence-review of the (in)effectiveness of road safety education: The Development of Children’s and Young People’s Attitudes to Driving: A Critical Review of the Literature by Kevin Durkinand Andy Tolmie

 “Children may learn to respond to wearing safety equipment by increased risk compensation (Morrongiello, B. A., Lasenby, J. and Walpole, B. (2007) Risk compensation in children: why do children show it in reaction to wearing safety gear? Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 28(1), 56–63). This is a familiar phenomenon to analysts of road-user behaviour. Risk homeostasis theory (Wilde, 1998) holds that individuals maintain an acceptable level of risk and that, if the risk is moderated in some way (e.g. by the intervention of a safety restraint) then they adjust some other aspect of their behaviour to restore the acceptable risk level. While this model is controversial and it is uncertain how extensively children’s behaviour conforms to the predictions of risk homeostasis theory (cf. Pless, I. B., Magdalinos, H. and Hagel, B. (2006) Risk-compensation behaviour in children: Myth or reality? Archives of Pediatrics and adolescent Medicine, 160(6), 610-614. ), it is very plausible that patterns of balancing risk/preferred behaviour are established in the course of development.

Morrongiello et al. (2007) found that children (ages 8 to 11) offered a range of reasons to explain why wearing a helmet when bike riding would be protective, all of which indicated a risk compensation bias. These included suggestions that they were more competent when wearing safety gear (‘Because when you are wearing a helmet you have more balance’), or that they were invulnerable (‘Because you just wouldn’t fall off your bike or get injured’), or that the protection would reduce injury severity in the face of an accident (‘Because if I fall, I wouldn’t get hurt as much if I wore a helmet’).

Interestingly, Morrongiello, B. A. and Major, K. (2002) Influence of safety gear on parental perceptions of injury risk and tolerance for children’s risk taking. Injury Prevention, 8, 27–31 found that parents tended towards the same biases. Thus, parents allowed their children to engage in greater risk-taking in activities such as bicycling when wearing safety gear than when not, and the parents’ explanations showed that they assumed the gear would fully protect their child – including even parts of the body not covered (e.g. a bike helmet would protect limbs) – and prevent injury regardless of the child’s level of risk taking. This optimistic, almost magical, reasoning seems to be shared by children and their parents during periods that may be formative in the development of safety orientation. (my emphasis)”

And yet other sections of the report still make the assumption that it’s important to persuade children to wear helmets…!

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.

House of Commons Transport Committee: Reply by Road Danger Reduction Forum to “Call for Evidence” into the Government’s “Strategic Framework for Road Safety”.

 30^th October 2011

SUMMARY OF MAIN POINTS:

• While there are fundamental flaws in the Government’s approach to safety on the road, nevertheless we can say that:
• The absence of traditional road safety targets being set is not necessarily a problem: however, there is a need for alternative targets to be set to reduce danger on the road, and they have not been.
• The decentralisation programme of the current government will impede any efforts to reduce danger on the road.
• The current legislative framework, combined with inadequate levels of traffic policing, is utterly insufficient to properly reduce danger ion the road, particularly towards cyclists and child pedestrians.
• The action plan will not be able to achieve reduction in the chances of cyclists and child pedestrians being hurt or killed on the road.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

1.  Introduction: The Road Danger Reduction Forum (RDRF)   

1.1     The RDRF was formed in December 1993 after the “Is it Safe?” Conference organised by Leeds City Council, itself prompted by the publication earlier in the year of “Death on the Streets: Cars and the mythology of road safety” by Dr. Robert Davis. The RDRF exists for professionals working in and for local government as highway and traffic engineers, road safety officers and others supporting road danger reduction (RDR) as part of the sustainable transport policy agenda. It has 20 local authorities as members that have signed the Road Danger Reduction Charter.

1.2      We also try to form partnerships with organisations that support the RDR, or “real road safety” agenda, such as the national cyclists’ organisation CTC, the Environmental Travel Association, London Cycling Campaign, the national road crash victim’s charity RoadPeace, Slower Speeds Initiative, etc.

1.3      Road Danger Reduction (RDR) – the “real road safety” agenda: We believe in “Safe Roads for All”, and that much of traditional “road safety” has been part of the problem of danger on our roads. We highlight these problems as they appear in the text of“A Safer Way: Making Britain’s Roads the Safest in the World”, as shown on our website www.rdrf.org.ukMore detailed explanations of road danger reduction and the steps required to achieve it are elsewhere on www.rdrf.org.uk The principal feature of RDR is the commitment to reduce danger at source – the inappropriate use of motor vehicles.

1.4      As such, we have fundamental problems with the Government’s strategic framework for road safety which we are asked to comment on. These are detailed at http://rdrf.org.uk/2011/05/a-bad-day-for-safety-on-the-roads/ and  http://rdrf.org.uk/2011/05/what-else-is-wrong-with-the-strategic-framework-for-road-safety/. Nevertheless, there are some comments we believe we should make:

1. 2.   “Whether the Government is right not to set road safety targets and whether its outcomes framework is appropriate.”

2.1       There is substantial evidence, as evidenced in the Smeed curve, and discussed at length by us and authorities such as Professor John Adams, that road deaths per head of the population decline over time irrespective of the type of road safety intervention introduced by Government. We believe it likely that road deaths will decline with a likely decline in general levels of societal risk, which appears to be associated with a likely reduction or stagnation in economic activity.

2.2        It is also the case that many “road safety” interventions shift the burden of risk from the road users more dangerous to others (the motorised) on to the more vulnerable and benign modes (walking and cycling). It is therefore the case that reductions in overall road deaths can be at least partly due to a smaller share of the traffic mix by walking and particularly cycling.

2.3       As such, the absence of “road safety targets” by Government may not be a problem. Nevertheless, there are objectives which can be quantified which should be specified by Government as aims. These are:

2.4       (a)The targets referred to as “rate-based targets”, that is to say casualties (Killed and Serious Injuries – KSIs) expressed in relation to levels of exposure, e.g. casualties per journey or distance travelled. These should be the desired primary targets for reduction for cyclists, with more importance than the overall numbers of KSIs for cyclists nationally or in local areas. These can be used in areas where there are significant amounts of travel by bicycle and where there is therefore adequate data.

     (b) For pedestrians, where data on numbers of journeys is more difficult to secure, the target should be casualties per journey at specific sites.

     © Even where the “rate-based target” is used, this does not adequately refer to the danger to cyclists and pedestrians. It is possible to illustrate the rate-based targets by referring to the issue of legal fault: the long-term aim should be to reduce the rate of cyclist and pedestrian casualties where other road users are primarily legally at fault.

     (d) As a subsidiary target, it should be desirable to survey people as to whether levels of road danger are high enough to dissuade cycling and walking for them and their children.

2.5     Other targets which should be used are those relating to levels of dangerous behaviour, principally rule and law breaking behaviour by motorised road users, such as reductions in proportions of drivers and motorised riders who are:

(a)         Breaking speed limits.

(b)         Consuming alcohol or drugs (proprietary and prescribed psychotropic drugs as well as recreational).

(c)         Having inadequate eyesight.

(d)         Having medical conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.

(e)         Engaging in inappropriate behaviour in the vicinity of cyclists such as breaking Highway Code recommendations with regard to overtaking distances, opening of car doors inattentively, etc.

2.6    Interventions to achieve the reductions which we refer to as desirable should be financed by central Government. Precise amounts can be related to savings in the normal manner, but should also include the costings in terms of health benefits of increased cycling and walking which can occur as a result of increased safety on the road.

1. 3.   “How the decentralisation to local authorities of funding and the setting of priorities will work in practice and contribute towards fulfilling the Government’s vision.”

3.1     We think that the current decentralisation strategy will involve a reduced level of economic activity and – for the reason referred to above (2.1) – will, in that sense, be associated with a decline in overall reported road casualties. It will not, however, be associated with the desirable objective of achieving safety for all by reducing danger at source, and will not increase real road safety.

3.2      The decentralisation strategy will inevitably involve a reduction of spending on attempts to reduce danger on the road by local authorities. We notice that this is already happening with our supporters in various local authorities.

3.3      We are asked to “ensure that … the relatively high risk of accidents amongst some groups, such as cyclists and children from deprived areas, is quickly reduced. The Committee will examine whether the strategic framework will fulfil this vision.” This will not happen with the current decentralisation programme.

1. 4.   “Whether the Government is right to argue that, for the most part, the right legislative framework for road safety is in place, and, in particular, whether the Road Safety Act 2006 has fulfilled its objectives (see Post-Legislative Assessment of the Road Safety Act 2006, Cm 8141, published by the DfT, July 2011)”

4.1      We do not think that the Road Safety Act 2006 can be said to have achieved its objectives.

4.2       We do not believe the correct legislative framework is in place, because:

4.3       The current and likely future decline in levels of policing mean that already inadequate levels of enforcement will be unable to give the required levels for legislation to have a proper effect.

4.4       In order for danger to be properly reduced for cyclists and pedestrians, it will be necessary to have collisions between drivers on the one hand, and pedestrians and cyclists on the other, defined as offences of strict liability for the driver. This should be the case under civil law, and as far as is possible under criminal law.

4.5       It will also be the case that in order for legislation to be effective, adequate forms of evidence gathering, such as with on-board “black-box” type collision recorders will have to be in place.

1. 5.   “Whether the measures set out in the action plan are workable and sufficient”.

5.1      The measures set out in the action plan are in no way sufficient to: “ensure that …  the relatively high risk of accidents amongst some groups, such as cyclists and children from deprived areas, is quickly reduced.”

We are available to expand on any of the above issues to the Committee.

Dr. Robert Davis, Chair, Road Danger Reduction Forum www.rdrf.org.uk  

CONTACT ADDRESS: chairrdrf@aol.com  PO BOX 2944, LONDON NW10 2AX

Faculty of Engineering, Science and the Built Environment, Department of Urban Engineering:    Extra-curricular transport lectures series

“What’s wrong with the ‘road safety’ industry?”

A lecture by Dr Robert Davis

Chair of the Road Danger Reduction Forum

Thursday 27^th October 2011 12.30pm to 1.30pm Room LR375

LSBU London Road Building, Building Number 11 on the map at

http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/about/maps.shtml (Access via London Road only)

 Synopsis

 Dr Davis will argue that the ideological and institutional basis of what is officially known as ‘road safety’ is actually part of the problem of danger on the roads. A radical reappraisal of the theory and practice of ‘road safety’ is necessary to formulate a civilized approach to safety on the road – for real road safety – for the 21st Century.

 Biography

 Dr Robert Davis is a founder member and now Chair of the Road Danger Reduction Forum www.rdrf.org.uk, set up in 1993 after publication of his ‘Death on the Streets: Cars and the mythology of road safety’. He has worked as transport planner in local government the last 25 years.

 If you would like to attend, please inform Professor John Parkin so that your name may be added to the list for access purposes

(j.parkin@lsbu.ac.uk, 020 7815 7160)

Subject: RE: 70mph National Speed Limit

Dear Mr Parkin

I am not sure if anyone from another department has responded to your email, but I have now been informed that the notices are being removed from all our vans!

Best regards

Nuala Keys

Business Development Assistant

J Murphy and Sons Limited Hiview House Highgate Rd London NW5 1TN

T: +44 (0)20 7267 4366 F: +44 (0)20 74823107 M: +44 (0)

Safety underpins everything that the Murphy Group plans and delivers.

****************************************************************************************************

While we are on this matter, why do BT vans have these signs?:

Isn’t , as we said in the last post, because it is illegal to go over 70 mph now?

And… how often do Royal Mail vans go on motorways anyway?:

Still, a small victory: thanks to John Parkin, Graham Paul Smith and others who wrote in.

Now, why should there be any “inconvenience” caused to a law-abiding motorist? Well, none of course, because they wouldn’t want to go over 70 mph as it’s the highest allowed on any UK road. Let’s consider this case in a bit more detail….

Here’s the J Murphy and Sons van, with reference to the membership of said company in Optimise, a consortium carrying out a 5 year, £500 million contract for Thames Water.

Now all these organisations have web sites with “Visions and Values”, or similar, and Optimise is no exception: as part of this they have: Optimise Vision :
“Everyone got home safely because of our positive Health, Safety and Environmental culture.”

Or look at the Murphy group’s site: “Maintaining our health and safety record”

It is simple – safety has to be paramount in all that we  plan and do, across all the market sectors with which Murphy are involved. We  keep our people, our clients and the public safe…We also maintain strong links with the wider industry  (presumably they mean the “safety industry”, through our Trade Association  Memberships with: The Royal Society for  the Prevention of Accidents; the British Safety Council; the Institution of  Occupational Safety and Health; the Construction Health and Safety Group; the  British Standards Institution; the Institute of Risk Management; and the  International Institute of Risk & Safety Management.

And.. Corporate Responsibility/ Maintaining our responsibilities

“Maintaining these values has long made us market leaders, consistently enabling us to win repeat business and ensure we breathe life into all our projects”

Now, I don’t for a minute think that not having that panel will, in itself, make any difference to anything. The 70 mph limit is just one part of regulation of speed, which may be achieved by policing, higher petrol prices, speed governors and ultimately the change of a culture to one which is less tolerant of higher speeds.

Indeed, emphasis always has to be on cultural change, rather than just physical measures like speed governors, if only to allow such real controls in the first place – and certainly not any kind of reliance on polite requests to obey the law.

It’s also the case that we might want to direct an anti-speed message elsewhere, more towards default 20 mph limits in urban areas, or enforcement of existing 30 mph limits. Also, risk compensation suggests, that reducing risk taking based on speed reduction, may reduce the effectiveness of efforts to achieve danger reduction measures, such as driver liability in collisions with pedestrians and cyclists, elsewhere.

So, why bother? A key issue for the RDRF is pointing out the inverted reality of the “road safety” lobby in its various manifestations. That can include the connivance of respectable bodies – replete with commitments towards safety – with law breaking behaviour. Apologizing for a supposed inconvenience which is only inconvenience for law breakers is just one example. Of course, when the “road safety” industry has connived with rule and law breaking by motorists for decades – accepting illegal behaviour as  a fact of life to be accepted by creating more idiot-proof highway and vehicle environments. Or by appealing to a supposedly typical rule or law breaking motorists as the arbiters of appropriate behaviour (or at least that section of “road safety” dealing with law official enforcement and sentencing). The fact that his been going on for decades is, however, no reason to stand idly by and accept it.

So…
You may try questioning the company and the consortium at info@murphygroup.co.uk   and    info@optimise.co.uk.

or one of these bodies: The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents; the British Safety Council; the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health; the Construction Health and Safety Group; the British Standards Institution; the Institute of Risk Management; and the International Institute of Risk & Safety Management - that the Murphy group have such “strong links” with.

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…