This may appear to be a break from discussion of the current major campaigns for cyclist safety – but it is not. While cyclists are not directly mentioned, consideration of this issue is crucial to addressing safety for all road users, including cyclists.
This issue is how – supposedly – trees, bollards and other inanimate objects are “dangerous”. It tells us much of what we need to know about the official view of “road safety”. Continue reading
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 the first draft of this post on 5th February 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. Continue reading
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
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
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
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”.
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
Following the last post, RDRF supporter Professor John Parkin wrote to J Murphy and received the following reply: Continue reading
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
World Transport, Policy & Practice is always an interesting read: the current issue, however, excels in revisiting an important classic text: Donald Appleyard’s seminal work on Livable Streets and its application in the streets of Bristol. Continue reading
Road Danger Reduction Forum 