Road Danger Reduction and Local Implementation Plans

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? Continue reading →

Conniving with Violence?: Part Two

Here are some additions to the previous post which should help you deal with the inevitable opposition. Any suggestion that idiot-proofing the car environment (as shown in the Horizon film) is anything less than positive will be met by one crucial argument.
This argument is this: Measures such as seat belts, roll bars, air bags, collapsible steering wheels are the main reason (along with highway engineering such as cutting down roadside trees, installing crash barriers, anti-skid treatments etc.) are the main reason why road traffic deaths per motor vehicle distance travelled have declined through the twentieth century in countries experiencing motorisation.
This argument is wrong: take a look here for a very brief explanation why. Continue reading →

Horizon's "Surviving a Car Crash": does the BBC connive with violence?

My answer to this question is: Yes. If you want to see how the BBC displays the worst of “road safety” culture, look at this programme broadcast on February 9th 2011: (If you want to protect your screen, watch with no heavy objects to hand).

What makes this connivance even worse is that it occurs in the name of safety and “saving lives”. If you are unfamiliar with the principles of Road Danger Reduction, let’s start off by defining some basic terms: Continue reading →

How motorists have it so cheap


Take a look at the graph above from the DfT’s annual Transport Trends report. It shows, as we have before and will again, how the “War on the Motorist” is not just a fiction, but an inversion of reality. We have actually had a War for the Subsidised and Careless Motorist, and the graph shows that the total cost of motoring – shown by the red line – is now only around 85% of its 1997 level. Continue reading →

Road Danger Reduction in Bristol?

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. Continue reading →

How are you going to cope? An RDRF Guide to Survival: Part Two – Basic Texts

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 →

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 →