You can get comforted by visions of alternative transport scenarios or just find out similar souls arguing against the status quo. But at some stage fighting against the War for the Careless and Subsidised Motorist needs some heavier theoretical ammunition.
It’s time to start reading again and back to some basic texts.
If you have been through professional or academic training as a transport professional what I suggest below will challenge some of the fundamentals you’ve been taught. But coping doesn’t mean acceptance of the status quo: it means learning what’s wrong with it. Our strategy for survival involves challenging preconceptions.
So here’s a list of suggested reading Continue reading
Category Archives: Road Danger Reduction
How are you going to cope? An RDRF Guide to Suvival: Part One – Enter the Blogosphere
The first thing to do is to make regular visits to the blogosphere. Staring at a screen, after a hard day staring at a screen, may not sound attractive – but that’s where the voices of opposition to the status quo spend much of their time.
What can you expect?
- Sarcasm.
The dominant (but not only) tone of the independent cyclists/pedestrians/sustainable transport blogosphere in the UK is persistent sarcasm. Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit, but when you consider what we often have to put up with, it is understandable. And at its best, it can be funny. Sometimes the odd chuckle from bloggers who know how to spot greenwash is just what you need.
- The local.
The radicals are good at showing how local authorities fail, often give regularly updated examples of what has been going wrong. It could be what’s needed to chase up the powers that be. On the down side, when you’ve seen a few photographs of illegally parked cars and lorries, you’ve seen them all. Also, local issues are often only important to the people who happen to live there.
- Horror stories.
Reporting of cases of motorists who have lenient sentences (or who don’t get caught) for killing or hurting others. Not exactly fun reading, but it shows that someone is taking note.
- A journey outside the mainstream.
A fair amount of time is taken up criticising the mainstream lobbying (particularly cycling) groups. Sometimes I think this is misguided – are better policies actually being presented? But it shows that some people are just not prepared to accept the inevitable compromises that lobby groups – which by definition have to be in bed with the authorities – will make. And even if compromises and failures are inevitable, at least we need people who can say that is exactly what they are.
- Segregationism.
A dominant theme among the cycling blogs is the desire for fully segregated cycle tracks. Not all, but most, push for what appears to be a transposition of (some) Dutch-style cycle tracks to the UK as the solution to cycling’s problems. Currently the Lo Fidelity Bicycle Club is hosting a Cycling Embassy of Great Britain to push this agenda – and as posted on their site, I don’t think this is the way forward.
A key element of the RDR programme involves accepting risk compensation/ behavioural adaptation: this lends itself to the critical mass for cyclists theory, and most of the RDRF backers support this. For many this will be a breaking point – but we’d like to keep the links open. I think the cycling bloggers agree more with us than disagree. Fortunately some are prepared to handle the issue delicately, and if they want to down an alley that I think will turn out to be blind, then they have to do it. Continue reading
How are you going to cope?
The car dominated transport policies of New Labour continue – with knobs on! We have the added feature that those now in charge appear to think that we had “a war on the motorist”. Similarly, “road safety” policy is still often an inversion of reality: greater danger can be presented as a “better road safety record”.
Then your job as a transport professional, funded (directly or indirectly) by Government, is under threat, as is the support for any voluntary sector backed campaigns that you may be involved with.
Tackling global warming? Making those responsible for danger on the roads accountable? Having some UK cities with a cycling modal share just somewhere remotely near that of, er, Cambridge? Accepting that the aggregated number of “Road Traffic Accidents” may not be a good measure of how safe a road is?
A civilised road safety and transport policy seems as far away as ever.
So how are you going to cope? Continue reading
"Why We Shouldn't Bike With a Helmet"
Do take a look at Mikael Colville-Andersen’s presentation: “Why We Shouldn’t Bike With a Helmet”
Read this book!
At the founding of the RDRF in Leeds in 1993 we were confronted with the issue of, well, what would our name be? Would anybody understand or use the phrase Road Danger Reduction? I think we can give ourselves a pat on the back: RDR has been formally endorsed by (among others) the CTC (National cyclists’ organisation), London Cycling Campaign, RoadPeace, Living Streets, Twenty’s Plenty, the Environmental Transport Association, and the Road Danger Reduction Charter signed up to (if not actively pursued) by a number of local authorities. Of course, getting the approach understood – differentiating us from “road safety” and publicising the sustainable transport agenda – is another issue from getting it accepted by the powers that be. After the Comprehensive Spending Review, it looks like we’re going backwards – or at least not forwards…
But now the good news: if we can’t actually get the RDR programme on the official agenda, we have got a forceful endorsement of RDR in this superb book: “Real road safety means reducing road danger, which implies far fewer motor vehicles travelling at much lower speeds” (p.84) and, on the twinned themes of the book:” The only practicable response to climate change and population weight gain is that walking and cycling are re-established as the predominant modes of urban transportation“(p.119).
Epidemiologist Professor Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is well known to us for his work on the effects of 20 mph zones and his critique of the pressure for road building from the global “road safety”/car industry lobby in developing countries. As with his previous work, the links between different parts of the effects of mass motorisation are established. Except it is not just the two main themes of the health disbenefits of mass car use and the greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles, but road danger, the effects on local community, and dependence on oil. On top of this, obesity and global warming are shown to be linked more intricately and deeply than we might have ever thought. All of this is presented in a polemic fuelled by (justifiably) righteous anger and backed up by a solid evidence base.
We have some criticisms (see below) but this short book is a must read for transport practitioners with a conscience and a genuine interest in the problems of the current transport system – and at least an indication of what we can and should do about it. Continue reading
Health on the Move
Take a look at this report from the Transport and Health Study Group: http://www.healthandtransportgroup.co.uk/research/research20_july2010.php. Health on the Move: Active travel – a preliminary report from the THSG. February 2010, by N Cavill, A Davis, M Wardlaw, S Watkins, J Mindell.
So far just the first three chapters are published, but we understand the whole report will be out later this year. The health benefits of the “active travel” modes are a key argument in the sustainable transport case, and are presented here by some of the top experts in the field in the UK. Continue reading
War on the motorist?
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.
Bicycle Politics Conference at Lancaster University
RDRF Chair Dr. Robert Davis was privileged to give not just one but two papers at this conference hosted by Drs. Dave Horton and Aurora Pereira-Trujillo at the Centre for Mobilities Research last month. One was on the general principles of Road Danger Reduction, the other on cycling in London (see photo above: I’m the one doing something funny with his hands, I can’t remember what). For a report go to http://thinkingaboutcycling.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/bicycle-politics-workshop-report/ and while you’re there, take a look at Dave Horton’s blog “Thinking about Cycling” http://thinkingaboutcycling.wordpress.com/, particularly the excellent article “Fear of Cycling”.
RD 2nd October 2010
Let's get rid of "the vulnerable road user"
By which I mean, of course, the term “vulnerable road user”…
“Men are always trying to protect me, I wonder what they are trying to protect me from…”. Mae West
A lot of colleagues think that it is helpful to refer to pedestrians (particularly children and elderly people) and cyclists as “vulnerable road users”. I disagree: seeing people who just happen to be outside metal boxes as being special easily morphs into seeing us AS A PROBLEM. It is often connected to what has been referred to as the “Fear of Cycling”. It misses out on the elephant in the room – or what the excellent Mikael Coville-Anderson of Copenahgenize.com refers to as “The Bull in the China Shop”. Continue reading
Oh no, not seat belts again…
You might think that discussion about compulsory front seat belt legislation in the U K (introduced 26 years ago and confirmed 3 years later) is about the last thing that those of us interested in safety on the road should be considering at the moment.
Surely there is no need for detailed statistical discussion about this event, still less questioning what has become a – or the – major triumph for those officially charged with safety on the road?
But no. A recent debate has seen the proponents of compulsory bicycle helmet use drag the issue out again – and this time some revealing facts have been shown up. Some uncomfortable truths about the effects of the seat belt law in the UK and the “road safety” establishment have critical relevance to everything that those of us working for safety of all road users should be aware of.
So, if you’re interested in real road safety, do read on… Continue reading
Road Danger Reduction Forum 