Posts Tagged ‘ Road Safety ’

Like many, I watched that programme on the tellybox last week - “The war on Britain’s roads“. Like many, I was left feeling rather depressed by the whole thing - its sensationalist chasing of the biggest shouting, and whole futility of it all left me feeling empty. The two parts that were worth watching was...
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The Times provides a more realistic analysis of the Institute of Advanced Motorists so-called research on this: Just 2% of cyclists “frequently” jump red lights. Meanwhile, there’s this from a couple of years ago - in 2009, 2.8% of all drivers in a study involving 14,000 vehicles were using a hand-held mobile phone. Let’s be charitable and...
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To the driver I’ve just watched “driving” down the road, gently swerving from one side to the other: The trouble is, you were probably never taught to multi-task in this way. If only it had been part of your driving test, you’d have mastered this skill and been perfectly safe with one hand on the...
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No, really, it is. Apparently, you’re more likely to be injured in an hour of gardening than in an hour of cycling. Yet there’s that campaign from The Times, that ends up getting a mention in PMQs: There’s an excellent commentary on this piece of Parliamentary history over on As Easy As Riding A Bike (bottom line: the...
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Yesterday there was a whole lot of twitterings about this Ross Lydall article. It’s all about how a lorry driver got off scott free after running over a cyclist. James Moor suffered horrific injuries after Nigel Gummer turned his lorry left across Moor’s path, dragging him under the vehicle: ‘Mr Moore had been riding on...
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I’ve just spent a depressing half hour listening to the Guardian’s Focus Podcast - Are Britain’s Roads Safe For Cyclists? The answer is of course, “Yes, but…” Statistically, cycling really is pretty safe. Yet time and time again, those locations which are more dangerous are treated with lowest common denominator thinking that’s always slewed in favour...
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I was reading the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin’s hilarious post today about the European Cyclists’ Federation fantastic report on the relative carbon emissions of different forms of urban transport. Part of BFW’s post included a graph of relative cyclist safety, % of trips by bike, and the % of cyclists who wear helmets. I used their...
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… to accommodate the size of monster lorry that we have now, let alone the 44 tonne ones proposed. Apparently, “…in 1962, the maximum lorry weight allowed on our roads was 24 tonnes. Over the succeeding 40 years the size and weight has risen inexorably to 32 tonnes, 38 tonnes, 40 tonnes, and now 44...
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Picture the scene - you’re driving along the motorway at 70 mph when as you crest a hill, you suddenly notice a constellation of red brake lights ahead. There’s been some sort of incident, and the traffic has come to a complete stop. You stand on the brakes and do everything you can to stop...
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On Thursday morning I had a breakfast meeting in Gosforth, so I was driving to work. There’s a stretch of road leading out of Tynemouth where the speed limit is 60mph: I was doing a bit less than this, watching the cyclist in the lay-by… who then rode straight out and diagonally across the road...
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