"I can't help it if a cyclist gets in my way"

Today in the Daily Telegraph we not only have a cyclist killer, but one that refuses to acknowledge that any of her actions resulted in the death of a young woman.

Judging by the statements made so far, Dr Helen Measures,

1. Was driving near Stonor by Henley on Thames on a shopping trip on Monday  15 July,  2012
2. Was held up by some cyclists on her lane
3. Overtook them at a blind corner
4. Was "surprised" to meet some oncoming cyclists
5. Didn't back off her manoeuvre
6. Killed one of the oncoming cyclists
7. Refuses to accept any responsibility
8. 
   

While doing the usual court-sympathy-gambits, "weeping" at the death, saying she herself was "a keen cyclist", she absolutely refuses to accept that her actions were at fault.

• She was "surprised" to see Mr Pontin and his girlfriend suddenly coming towards her as she rounded the curve in the road, but felt they still had enough room to get past.
• "I don't know why I didn't see them," 
• "I felt the safest decision was to continue straight ahead because they were in single file.
• "If I had been concerned, I would have stopped suddenly."

Rather than admit that you shouldn't be surprised to see anything as you round a curve in the road, she thinks continuing on was acceptable -presumably they were just cyclists- then blames the cyclist for getting in her way while trying to squeeze past them

"I can't help it if a cyclist, with all due respect, falls over as I'm approaching them and comes into my line of travel."You do not make a manoeuvre if you don't think it is safe to do so. Had everyone stayed upright, there would not have been an issue.”

Imagine she'd come round the corner and seen an HGV coming. Would she have braked? Of course she fucking would. Yet just because it was cyclists she felt she could carry on, that it would work out -and instead she killed one of them.

Yet she refuses to accept her guilt.

This woman killed a cyclist who was doing nothing wrong, because she was so impatient to reach her destination she not only chose to overtake blind, she decided that once she'd seen the cyclists, she would continue the overtake. And now she pretends it wasn't her fault.

To add insult to fatal injury, the CPS only has her down from careless driving, so even if this killer is convicted, it'll be a non-custodial sentence (think of the child left on her own), and 3-6 months without the car. If overtaking on a corner and being surprised by oncoming traffic isn't driving dangerously, they may as well repeal a law that is clearly not needed.

LFGSS discuss the death in 2012 -again the surrey commuter problem: drivers expecting speed  round country lanes, and unable to accept the existence of cyclists or the need to overtake them safely.

It ends up with whole stretches of country road that you can race down without dipping below 70mph if you know them well - and you're fine, so long as there isn't a stationary or slow-moving obstruction in the road.

Sounds exactly like what this unrepentant killer was doing.

At the same time,  in coverage of the death and its impact on family and friends, the vice-chairman of Stonor Parish Council wanting a triathlon rerouted, for the safety of the cyclists -rather than attempting to make any attempt to improve safety, such as pushing for a lower speed limit.

The winding country roads of England stopped being a pleasant place to cycle on weekdays some time ago -at least in commuter suburb zones, such as Surrey, the Chilterns and South Gloucs. The rural roads are rural ratruns, and even on a quiet road you fear the sound of a car coming up past, worrying if this will "be the one".

And what do we get: we get the residents of Surrey trying to ban the cyclists.

The school run: Fiat telling the dads to get an SUV

in 1970s, the NL had their "stop the Kindermoord" campaign.

In 2013, what does the UK get? Fiat trying to sell a micro-SUV on the fiat 500 chassis, advocating "city brake control" traction control on their cars "so you can get home safely"

Think about that. The main contribution Fiat thinks can be done for child safety is to make it easier to drive you children to school and back on snowy days.

The main thing Fiat say that you, the father, can do for your children is drive them to school and back in a shiny new car. That your children will be so excited by tinted windows and alloy wheels that they will be pleased to see you. And that your status amongst school parents ('daddy cool' and 'rock up to the gates').

There's a message here: whatever car you are picking the kids up today is boring and unsafe, your children will think you are uncool, and all the other parents will look down on you.

There's another implicit message, one they probably didn't even think of: that you never, ever, walk or cycle your children to school. Instead you "rock up to the gates" -legally or not. That if your old car, without city braking and traction control isn't safe -just think how even less safe it would be if you walked with them to school -or even let them walk on their own.

What the can be done about fighting the millions that get spent in marketing SUVs like this for the school run? Even if papers occasionally write pro-everyday-cycling articles, colour pages are dedicated in every edition saying "drive your kids to school" and "get a new SUV or your own kids will look down on you"

School engagement would be ideal: imposing a walk-zone round the entrance so you cant "rock up to the gates", but instead have to drop the kids off 500 yards away and walk them in.

1. It eliminates that final stretch of double and illegally parked dropoff cars which make walking and cycling more hazardous.
2. With a wider parking zone round the school, the parents aren't so likely to park dangerously there either
3. It cuts back on the whole status game. You aren't showing off your toy to the other parents, just walking in with the kids
4. It equalises the status game with anyone walking their kids in
5. It encourages you to walk. With better safety, no status gains and 500m to walk, if you are in the 1-2 mile catchment area, why not walk the whole way.
6. It rewards cycling because you  can now do the entire journey faster, even at family 8-12 mph speeds

That would be ideal. Unrealistic? Maybe, but it happens sometimes in France. And if some UK schools adopt, then it sets an example for others.

The other tactic: create the social norms that walking and cycling to school is the way to do it. Niceway-style "cycle them to school so your ponies grow up to be healthy horses" isn't going to cut it, but if there a MAMIL group growing up at the school, pull them in: get them to do dropoff by bike before the morning ride, -even if that ride is just the commute. Make it social event with the kids going in with their friends. Maybe persuade the school to do more to reward the kids than give them stickers on a card in walk-to-school week.

Shaping these social norms is going to take some dedication by multiple parents -but it could be the only way to fight back against companies like Fiat selling a lie that a dad needs an urban SUV with traction control to do the school run

@Racfoundation: why so scared?

The RAC foundation have just published a document on costs of fuel.

First, its a PDF file, which shows they are still in a world where they expect people to "print" things before reading them. Quaint and rapidly becoming irrelevant. Maybe its something they expect to print themselves and hand out. But to whom? Because even the politicians will have iPads where they read news on their first class jollies in to London -and PDFs look even worse on a tablet than they do on a laptop or desktop. Whoever their target audience is, it's well, some relic of the past.

Second, it claims that cars are buses

To all intents and purposes cars are public
transport: they carry most members of
the public, most of the time

That's even though they own up that to the people with the least amount of money don't have cars, don't suffer from petrol poverty

In those households in the lowest income quintile (fifth) 48% have no car

100% of the people in the lower quintile have houses to heat, gas bills to pay, electricity bills to clear. If someone who cares about that lower 20% of income's energy poverty, addressing the cost of heating and lighting houses benefits 100% of that group, whereas any change in petrol and diesel pricing is most significant those people who drive a lot -business who can offset it against tax, and people with big-engined cars who drive a lot.



Finally, and this is where it gets to its most ridiculous, it pretends bicycles don't exist.

Here's page three of the sob story:

Number of journeys by car
Of all the trips made in Great Britain:

• 64% are as a car driver or passenger (main mode)
• 22% are on foot
• 6% are by bus;
• 3% are by rail and Tube

78% of distance travelled by all modes, including walking, is as a car driver or passenger.
Source: DfT National Travel Survey NTS0301, NTS0302

They get the text of those links wrong, but the links themselves to NTS0901 and NTS0303 are valid DfT surveys.

Except what happens if you add the numbers?

64+6   = 70
22+3   = 26
70+26  = 96
100-96 =  4

The numbers the RAC Foundation give don't add up to 100%. Four percent left over? An error? In a paper that is focused on percentages and numbers? Perhaps there's been a mistake and one of the numbers is mistyped, the way the links were?

Time to look at the data, the excel spreadsheet the Dft serve up, with a ready-to-paste chart.

Lo and behold, 2% other, and 2%  bicycle.

Why is the RAC ignoring that 2% of bicycle? Are they scared? Do they want to pretend it doesn't exist? Do they want to pretend that we don't deserve 2% of that 28 billion pounds -560 million? And that walking deserves 6 billion pounds -both out of the road budget and not the HS2 money.

The RAC foundation seem to be hoping that bicycles will go away, that all will return to pre-1973-land, where petrol was dirt cheap and every city was going to be rebuilt the way Leeds was.

Which puts them in very limited company

1. The ABD
2. The UKIP
3. The Department of Transport
4. Gideon "paddock mortgage" Osborne

The first two are the Kingdom of the Swivel Eyed Fuckwits -a lost cause not worth worrying about, except when other fuckwits like Pickles try to come up with policies that divert bottom-feeding Daily Mail commenters to his party and not the UKIP party.

The other two are trouble -especially with lobby groups like the RAC foundation.

Here we have it then, now its apparent why the document is PDF formatted -it was designed for: handouts at the upcoming party conferences, something they can give away at their lobbying booths trying to make the case that fuel costs are too high and that "something must be done". That something isn't HS2, more likely fracking.

But their lobbying doesn't include that 2% of bicycles: it really is pretending they don't exist.

Which is why everyone should ask them a simple question: why so scared?

RAC foundation: Should road infrastructure come from road infrastructure budget or somewhere else?

The RAC foundation seems to be drifting more and more off tangent. For a "research" organisation, well, their blog post seems like a daily mail content generator.

Today, Should cycling money come from road or rail funds?

Here it picks on the fact that Maria Eagle, Shadow Transport Secretary, called for a proportion of the UK road budget to be spent on cycling infrastructure, and calls it out:

Ms Eagle talks only about diverting funding for roads to boost cycling infrastructure. 

See that? The RAC foundation has just come out and declared that none of the billions spent on roads should be spent on bicycles. Instead they question whether HS-2 should be it.

Well, the HS2 economics are bogus, and as the RAC note, you could get everyone in the UK a bicycle and have lots of spare change -£36B to be precise, which would come in handy making it safe to cycle.

Yet why does the RAC seem to be resisting spending money on infrastructure to make it safe to cycle? Is that meant to be completely separate from the many bypasses and roundabouts being built from the £28B spending spree?

Because if they do think that cycling should come out of a separate budget than roads, then why do pedestrians get pavements in most road developments? Why isn't the RAC bemoaning the fact that pavements and zebra crossings come out of the "road budget" and not something else?

The answer is obvious: if the RAC said that HS2 should fund pavements rather than the road budget, everyone would laugh at them. Yet here they seem unable to accept or recognise that bicycles are a legitimate form of transport, and that the money spent on the UK road infrastructure should accomodate them.

The daftest bit is when they come over all defensive and say "is the demand there?".

Another thought, of course, is whether there is or is not the significant latent demand for cycling infrastructure that the suggestion of much more spending on cycling implies. Here, a recently Parliamentary written answer suggested that nationwide only a tiny fraction of journeys are undertaken by bike, and that this is not expected to change significantly for at least a couple of decades, which suggests that spending lots of money on cycling infrastructure is not a good idea.

That parliamentary question is flawed in that it compares #of miles per transport, not no. of journeys, so the long-haul drives would skew the figures. If you look at short-distance journeys the percentage, while atrocious, is less so: we are seeing about 10% of adults cycling per month (again, bogus numbers, but a different way to look at them).

So here's a proposal to the RAC. Why not give the cyclists the exact fraction of the road budget that reflects their use in a region? In central London, that would mean 25% of the spend; in central bristol, probably 10-15%. Spend that money to make cycling safe and a virtuous cycle would kick in: more people cycle, more cycling budget. Eventually it would even propagate to places like S. Gloucs.

CTC: who do they represent these days?

This is not a critique of the CTC membership, nor of their magazine. It is a denunciation of their political approach.

So far this month we have

1. The CTC endorsing the niceway code -the victim blaming shite from Scotland.
2. The CTC issuing a welcoming note to the DfT's complete denial of the APPCG proposals. Yes, there's a hint of dissatisfaction, but it doesn't come out and say "a few months after announcing billions to be spent on roads, the DfT confirms it is prepared to do nothing to address the growing numbers of cyclists and pedestrians being killed on our streets, failing to even accept that cycling has a role to play in Britain's transport options, and instead trying to put us off with yet another recycled announcement of the crumbs pushed our way"
3. It becoming clear that the CTC's school policy "more training needed", is actually at odds with how the CTC staff let their children cycle -because they know that infrastructure is the solution.

Given the CTC claims to represent cycling in Britain -and it is the organisation with the largest membership- it need to look hard at its actions and rethink them. In particular, it needs to stop thinking about the needs of its members -a niche group in a minority activity- and think of the needs of the cities -what will transform them without waiting for the cars to go away.

That comes down to quality infrastructure, which comes down to a government providing serious funding and the technical guidance needed for it. Which they are not going to do with the current DfT policy -so "welcoming" is a complete waste of time. 

The CTC needs to stop with the politeness, and come out with condemnation that makes headlines. The ABD do it after all, and they are three people who won't even let their dog join.

1. Accept that massive infrastructure changes are the solution.
2. Push it using the "save the children" argument, instead of "train the children and all will be well".
3. Condemn failures of the DfT like this weeks announcement.
4. Refuse to support victim-blaming niceway code campaigns -particularly when they divert funding from the cycling investments we really need.

It's too late for the CTC to re-issue a press release on the DfT report -but not too late for them to have a a harder hitting one ready for any unsatisfactory outcome from next weeks debate. Get the quotes ready from the vocal campaigners -including hembrow, get the the plans ready to double up the campaigning, not be fobbed off with DfT "nothing we can do" toilet-paper-grade reports.

And, the same week, publicly withdraw support for the niceway code on the basis that it is a victim blaming failure. 

There is no time to be wasted trying to politely hint that things could be better: that has been tried for 40 years and done nothing whatsoever.

The anti science, anti-cycling government

A lot of the arguments in favour of cycling are based on health, cost -it will save the NHS billions, and congestion: nobody has any other solution.

These arguments make sense to anyone who looks at the figures.

Except we have a government that doesn't give a fuck about scientific arguments.

This weeks badger cull is an example: the scientists say it won't work and be a waste of money, but it is going ahead. Why? To keep the NFL and rural tories happy. 

Those billions of new roads. No, they don't make sense, but the DfT doesn't care. It wants the money, the politicians the headlines. 

Then there is Fuckwit Pickles. His proposal effectively abolishes double yellow lines, would make driving worse though congestion, and, once the corner shop is surrounded by illegally parked cars, not even let you park near the shops. Yet the fuckwit -and remember this is a fuckwit who claimed for a second home as 37 miles was too long a commute- thinks double yellows should go.

Now we have "speed bumps will save the cities from online shopping". This is so bollocks its clear that Fuckwit Pickle just doesn't like speedbumps and is trying to justify it. Except: online shopping has been hurting out of town stores more -look at the John Lewis results showing reduced sales out of town malls as fuel costs increase. Paying to drive for half an hour each way to wander round a featureless mall? Shop online and pay less? All shops need a reason to be compelling, and speed bumps are not it.

The government is clearly anti-science, anti-evidence. Instead: headline grabbing measures that Daily Mail commenters like. Because those are the voters being fought over; the swivel eyed loons who don't want data, talk about "common sense" instead. Loons who only demand -then discount- data when it's bad news, like global warming. 

This creates a problem for cycle campaigning: we can't expect economic or health arguments to win, not when the politicians and the swivel eyed view cycling as a hobby for eco warriors -not a realistic option for themselves. 

Somehow we need to get the Daily Mail on our side, so the swivel eyed will follow - and then, perhaps, the politicians.

Nicewaycode : wake up, time to die.

Introducing a new law for the Internet

Hembrow's Law: whoever cites Franklin in a debate about cycling loses.

This week the losers citing Franklin are @nicewaycode trying to defend their bus ad:

Cyclecraft author John Franklin is strongly in favour of overtakes on the right unless the nearside lane is free of traffic in a multiple lane situation. 

(from @EdinburghTom)

The correct riposte to anyone who cites Franklin is: so fucking what?

Franklin criticises dedicated cycling infrastructure and claims that having it makes the Dutch lazy. Yet the fact they have that  infrastructure means that they can get to and from their destinations alive, irrespective of age or skill. By denouncing infrastructure and advocating taking the lane, Franklin has got the UK into a situation where about one cyclist a week is dying, yet all the Scottish government is prepared to is divert some of the tiny amount of money dedicated to cycling into an advertising campaign that says, essentially, "do not use what shit pieces of paint we've put in so as to claim that we are cycling friendly -as that  will only kill you"

(photo: Nicewaycode GB)

They have a point: the red-paint routes are shit. The showcase South Causeway cycle route is shit. What is proposed in Leith Walk is an even bigger pile of poo as they are actually spending money on road redesign there -but still producing something shit where there is space for it.

The nicewaycode people are just victim-blaming cyclists for even imagining that the shitness provided across Scotland for them is safe to use.

That "don't go up the left" advert is reflecting what campaigners like pedal on parliament are saying: what we've been given today is shite. The other sign, "maybe", means "maybe if you are fit and brave you could cycle in the traffic"

Which summarises the problem of cycling in Scotland. Except the niceway code fuckwits are just repeating a fact to cyclists, cyclist who, unless this is the first 15 minutes of a bike ride in Britain they will know: cyclists are not welcome.

These bus signs are the cycling equivalent of the Home Office "immigrants go home" racist vans. Here they are instead sticking buses in the bus lanes that cyclists are forced to use as they are the least unsafe par of a road, with a sign on the buses saying "cyclists: fuck off to the Netherlands". 

Why are they doing this? Because the MSP with responsibility for cycling doesn't seem able or willing to make cycling a safe transport option in the country, and he lives in the imaginary Franklin Land where he, Franklin and the nicewaycode team can pretend that cyclists will live if they take the centre of a lane, don't run lights, and instead pretend that they are a horse.

Keith Brown, MSP has passed the poisoned chalice to the niceway code agency, with a brief "stop the cyclists running red lights and maybe wankers with a history of killing cyclists won't kill another one then get a light slap on the wrist as a penalty" 

Those naive fools took the bait -and so are getting vilified and ridiculed for producing what will go down in history as the "what not to do" example for any road safety campaign;  an example whose YouTube videos will be watched and laughed at by media studies students in future courses on the effective use of social media.

Here is the message of the cycling front to the niceway code: stop it before you make things even worse.

Go back to the minister and say "we are spending cycling money telling cyclists to not use the shit you build for them". Say "cyclists ride on pavements as you have provided nowhere else safe for them -and an advert isn't going to change that". 

Finally, say "stopping now will save cycle fund money which can actually be used to make cycling in Scotland safer for pedestrians."

Because if you don't: you will just dig a deeper hole for yourself and your paymasters. The more bollocks you put out, the more of a reaction you will get from the cycling campaigners. Eventually those organisations naive enough to sign up: CTC, Sustrans, will drop put -and the publicity from that will mean Keith's spin doctor will be on the phone to you swearing  like Malcom Tucker, blaming you for the press disaster.

Stop now and tell the politicians that Franklin's approach is exactly what left Scotland in the condition it is in: a nation where most sit in traffic jams on their way to coronary heat disease  sounding their horn whenever one of the few cyclist does what Franklin says and gets in their fucking way.