If the FTA gets its speed increase, we want our safe passing law

The government has gone with the FTA lobby -the NRA of the roads- and plans to raise the rural speed limit for HGVs. That is despite the majority of responses being against it. The DfT petulantly said "this is not a poll", before highlighting that the FTA response "represents many". That translates to "we had hoped the majority of consultees were in favour, as they aren't we will ignore that and listen to the FTA as they are the one lobbying for this change".

The change is announced with a claim of money being saved -the FTA's agenda, tacking in a "will save lives" claim to sell it to a wider audience: everyone who drives. As for the cyclists and the horse riders -we don't count. We aren't a big enough group to have any influence on central government at all -and this shows it, as does the pickles parking rules.

Government transport policy changes are being written to benefit drivers and HGV owners, sold as benefits to car owners because they are the ones that matter.

And what do we get? Cyclists Dismount signs.

We need our own laws to push for, to either get them or to force the government to show its hand, to say "we don't care".

In Scotland there is a push for strict liability -but is that really the one to fight for?

1. It does fuck all if you are dead.
2. It goes straight up against the "all cyclists are criminals" haters, many of whom are in positions of power.

What then?

Mandatory Safe Passing distances

1. The highway code already says "should give as much distance as when passing a car"
2. All the legislation does is change that to a "must give", and sets a distance.
3. With cameras, cyclists can now provide evidence of the unsafe passes.
4. Its harder to argue against video evidence of an unsafe pass than it is to push the "careless driving" story, which is a lot more open to argument.

Either someone passes with safe distance or they don't, you can't argue that "they are a churchgoing, charity-giving middle class person who is very nice and just happened to squeeze past a cyclist at a distance which they felt was safe"

It also tells the FTA that they can get their speed limit increase, but in exchange the cyclists get better protection from unsafe HGV passing than we do today.

Autonomous Lorries may aid safety -but so would EHS enforcement

Self-driving cars are going to be as much a solution to cities' problems as e-cars. They still take up space, they still need parking and they still will be full of cylist-haters who will resent being held up by bicycles.

If there is a benefit, a self-driving car probably isn't going to squeeze past with 3 cm to spare. Probably. But at the same time, the car lobby will be telling stories about how wonderful it will be -and how the government just needs to spend a bit on infrastructure to help. As well as the millons already promised on charging bays, access to bus lanes is going to be the other one. No doubt they could code it up nicely, "reward early purchasers", and maybe even explain how it could be congestion aware, the auto-cars allowed into the lanes under central management when traffic is heavy and no buses due. But they will still treat cyclists as shit, still blame them for holding up e-cars, and pretend that they don't cause pollution or congestion.

It's also going to take a long time for any portion of "the private vehicle fleet" to go self-driving, until then the safety benefits will be low. We can get an estimate of the times by the resistance car manufacturers have shown to any mandatory "safety feature" (i.e. risk transference feature): ABS, airbags &c. The vendors wanted them to be premium so that they could charge lots of money for people who wanted it, and keep selling price low for people that didn't. Overall it kept the market big and the profits high. Mandatory safety features hurt sales at the bottom and profits at the top. Bear that in mind when someone praises self-driving features like volvos that look ahead: its a premium feature because they can bill some people from it, even though lives are a lot more likely to be saved if all vehicles had it.

The other example: the eight year delay on rolling out truck safety features in the EU. This is a major setback -lives will be lost at the expense of profit. But it represents an opportunity

Rather than wait eight years for the safety features proposed today -we should say: in exchange for the delay, we want integrated autonomous safety features too.

HGVs do a lot of miles. Banning them from cities at peak hours is the fix that will save the most lives without hoping for any EU legislation to deliver changes on the streets. But even after a ban, they still nearly hit people on roundabouts, squeeze past cyclists on A-roads, run people over "I mistook him for a bollard" , "I didn't expect a cyclist to be there", etc. As HGV drivers work long hours -and regularly fake their log books- fatigue is an issue.

Making HGVs safer would save more cyclists lives than making all private cars autonomous. As about 50% of the causes of cyclist death, improvements there have the best return on investment. So what could we do with autonomous HGVs that would save lives

1. Speed limiting co-ordinated with area speeds. 40 mph road: 40 mph maximum speed. No doubt the HGV transport companies will complain about this, but they are really arguing for the right to break the law.
2. Enforcement of no-HGV signage. If the signs say "no", the trucks shouldn't go.
3. Safe distance maintenance. That's motorways as well as normal roads. the HGVs can keep the stopping distance in front of them, and as they speed up, back off more. This is what drivers are meant to do, but never do: the more "professional" they get, the more aggressively they drive.
4. Automated pedestrian and cyclist detection: if its in Volvo cars, it can go into Volvo trucks.
5. Collaborative convoys. M-way convoying could be partially automated. Maybe it could be fully done to the extent that the drivers could sleep. There's risks there, but if it downgrades hours on the M5 to rest hours, they may be more alert in town.

Are these unrealistic? No. Google cars can do 1-4 already. What do you think they can do in five years? In eight? If the EU is delaying safe trucks by eight years, we should go back and say "fine, we want the safety features a modern car will have in 2022, not features proposed for HGVs in 2014".

And until then? Given how many truck drivers don't even seem to have hands free phone kit, truck companies need to care. That means Healthy and Safety legislation has to apply to trucks. Why aren't lorry companies fined if their drivers are caught texting while driving? Why, given automatic GPS tracking of trucks in become common, aren't speed limit violations being auto-reported to the police? HGV shipping companies -and worse, tipper truck companies- have built business models about dodging laws whenever they can. EHS enforcement could get them to care. And once that happens, maybe they'll actually want autonomous HGVs before the EU tells them to.

White Vans and their costs

the RAC foundation have an analysis of the White Van.,

This also includes Tipper Trucks, bringers of death to the city.

• 53% of vans are private; of these 45% of km driven are used for commuting, 17% personal. 1% for between jobs , 23% for collection and delivery. 
• 47% company, 32% commuting and 3% personal. Presumably these journeys constitute a taxable-in-kind benefit and taxed as any other company car.
• Of the company cars, 35% for goods, 19% between jobs. 
• 99% of private owners are men. You knew that, right?
• 39% of LCVs are less than 25% full. When you consider the percentages of vehicles used for commuting and personal use this is unsurprising. A lot of these vehicles are used as substitute for corporate or personal cars.
• The majority of LCVs are diesel. You knew that too.

Selected quotes from page ix

• There is evidence that LCVs have been used to substitute for HGVs
• A key factor is pay – an LCV driver might earn £15k, an HGV driver £25k
• Regulation will have an influence; vans, their operation and their drivers are less heavily regulated than HGVs

That page also predicts a doubling in size by 2040, even though page viii showed that vehicle registrations make it clear that demand is elastic: when the economy is in trouble, less vans. Therefore their growth estimates contain implicit estimates about economic growth.

The safety details on p.xi are relevant. 

1. Overall collision rates are down
2. peak collision hours are 8-9 and 5-6. These are also peak commuting hours, so vehicle use may be highest at this time.
3. 50% of vans fail their MOT first time round
4. 89% of vehicles pulled over are overweight. This contrasts with the percentage-full numbers, implying that a specific set of LCVs aer massively overweight. Tipper trucks?

The report (p.14) implies that LCVs are only in 5% reported RTCs, despite being 14% of traffic. What is not looked at is what the percentage of KSIs arise in those RTCs. Tipper trucks have a justified reputation for being lethal in London. meaning even though their percentage may be down, their damage is significantly higher.

LCVs and personal use.

Any LCV used for commuting and personal use is a taxable benefit. Yet as the paper notes,  "Although Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs record personal LCV usage for tax purposes, this is somewhat unreliable and not a true representation.". They get more detail F2F -which means that van drivers under-report their personal usage. 

LCVs and working hours. P17

only 44% of drivers know the legal limits on hours, which is ~ten working hours excluding commuting. If a driver commutes 1 hour a day each way -that's 12 hours on the road.

LCVs and Costs

The paper implies that the highest operating costs of the vehicle are fuel, at an approximate maximum of  £3,600/year. Yet the salary of a driver is a higher factor in the operational costs of the vehicle -as noted when the paper discusses how a motivator for LCVs is their reduced salaries than HGVs. 

The cost saving of switching from HGV driver to an LCV driver covers the entire annual fuel bill of the vehicle

HGV and LCV safety 

The paper highlights that the staff cost savings are a key factor driving a switch from HGV to LCV. Yet that cost saving comes at the expense of training -HGV drivers have to pass more tests. When you consider how dangerously HGV drivers can drive, how so many of them appear to be on the phone when you look at them on the motorway (try doing this from a coach, you get a better view), the fact that the driving qualification requirements of LCVs is less than HGVs is important.

When the "staff cost savings" of switching from HGVs to LCVs are mentioned, it really means "it is cheaper to employ staff without the stricter qualifications of HGV drivers"

Tipper Trucks

The article includes tipper trucks in this class -clearly part of the EU designation.

This implies 

1. that the qualifications to drive a tipper truck are less than for an HGV
2. assuming the knowledge is spread across all vehicle categories, only half the owners of tipper trucks know the working hour limits for driving LCVs.
3. Assuming the MOT failure rate is spread across all vehicles, 50% of tipper trucks are not in a condition to pass an MOT.

These are things to consider in any road safety discussion. It is also highly likely that these are the vehicles found to be overweight. One does not observe an overweight white van, but a full tipper truck is visible -and this could lead to the higher success rate on VOSA searches.

To conclude: the numbers here show the trend towards the LCV becoming a ubiquitous vehicle in the UK cities. While safer vehicles than HGVs, the fact that the driving standards are lower may increase risk, especially for the larger vehicles, the tipper trucks in particular.

Finally: 

People may whine about the cost of fuel, -but only the VAT-deductible cost of business travel is relevant. Commuting costs are not a business expense unless the owner is lying to HMG about personal use -and even trying to claim VAT back on those journeys.