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”. Continue reading
Author Archives: rdrfuk
The DfT Cyclist Safety study, risk compensation and cycle helmets
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 Continue reading
Is Peter Hitchens a hypocrite?
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? Continue reading
A victory
RDRF is pelased to have supported Martin Porter in hisaction described below in his press release: Continue reading
How motoring has got cheaper. Yes, CHEAPER.
By any measures that make sense, anyway, the costs of motoring since the era of Blair and Prescott (1997) and from 2000 can be seen to have gone down. This is according to two tables of statistics publcihed by the Department for Transport Continue reading
Self pity, language and the Great British Motorist
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?
RDRF submision to House of Commons Transport Committee
This has now been accepted as evidence:
House of Commons Transport Committee: Reply by Road Danger Reduction Forum to “Call for Evidence” into the Government’s “Strategic Framework for Road Safety”.
Lecture by RDRF Chair Robert Davis, October 27th 2011
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 Continue reading
A (small) victory!
Following the last post, RDRF supporter Professor John Parkin wrote to J Murphy and received the following reply: Continue reading
Why should there be any “inconvenience” caused?
I noted this panel on the back of a J Murphy and Sons van:
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…. Continue reading
Road Danger Reduction Forum 