Safety group urges 20mph in urban areas. As a non-driver I’m obviously in favour of this. Motorists seem to be using residential areas as rat runs more and more and they don’t half tear down them. I’d go further and say no vehicle can go faster than a bicycle (10mph?) except on main roads, but 20mph is a start.
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In June 2000 I started blogging at peteashton.com and 10 years later in June 2010 I decided to stop. Blogging here, that is. I started a clean slate over on I Am Pete Ashton and maintain all manner of other web presences which are all listed here along with my contact details.
You probably came here via a Google search or from following a link on some old blog post somewhere. I hope what you find is useful in some way, though do check the publication date - it might be rather old now.
Thanks for your eyeballs.
Pete Ashton
I’m both a driver and a cyclist, and cannot abide the sort of restrictions that are applied to motorists. I’d rather be passed by a driver doing 30mph who gives me a wide berth, than some dork doing 15mph who nearly clips my elbow. The problem isn’t, and has never been, speed per se – but simple lack of skill. I’m not advocating 40mph in a 30 zone (indeed, you’ll often find me tootling at 20 or less DEPENDING ON CONDITIONS). If a motorist needs speed signs to indicate prevailing conditions then they show they can’t read the road, and shouldn’t be on it. Make the driving test a complete bastard, with mandatory retests every five years or so. I’m up for that.
Oh, and speed cameras? You tell me how safe they are when everyone on an unfamiliar A-road is panicing down to 27mph, rather than pay attention to the baby in the pushchair being prodded out by a dimwit parent…
I’m thinking more of residential streets with a lot of parked cars and pedestrians crossing over. I’m reluctant to invoke the “someone think of the children” wine but that’s an issue too. Given residential roads are not that long and should only be used to get to and from people’s homes on those streets going at 10mph should only shave a minute or two off the journey. If you need to go faster, use the fast roads. That’s what they’re for.
For main roads I’m more than happy to have cars safely passing me at speed – gets them out of the way.
I’m with you on the mandatory re-testing. People need to remember that being allowed to drive a car is not a right and the license can be taken away very quickly.
I also think the burden should not be put on the pedestrian. They were here first and should always have right of way.
Damn right – whatever happened to the pedestrian has the right of way when the road crosses a pavement, eg. driveway, entrance etc. ?
The core problem is too many motorists in too little space. Rat runs only get used to the extent that there’s pedestrian endangerment when congestion is high.
Instead of trying to price drivers off the road (a stupid concept in that the folk will always find the money for their vices), we should be taking the low-skilled away from their keys. Set the bar higher, a lot higher, and, aside from those who drive without a license, we’ll see congestion plummet. It won’t happen, vested interests and all that.
Oh, and I believe we should test all road-users: cyclists included!
To finish: I’m a petrolhead to a certain extent, and even then I’m considering hanging up my keys. There’s no art to motoring any more. To be honest I think we’ll all be better off when the inevitable crackdown on car ownership happens. Get me my time-machine set for 1960.
Ken, I think you have to be really, really, careful with the “lack of skill rather than speed” argument. While I accept this may not be what you mean, it almost always ends up meaning “I’m a good driver, it’s everybody else that’s the problem”. Survey after survey back this up, showing most people rate themselves as having above average driving skill. Put them to the test and, whoa, they turn out to be entirely average, which is to say actually not very good. You see similar attitudes to reducing congestion. Most people’s responses translate into “cuttingcongestion is great, because I’ll be able get to where I’m going more quickly”. Doh!
As a cyclist I, too, would be entirely happy to be passed wide and at speed. However, I can think of only a handful of places on my regular routes where this is even a possibility. In reality, and our experience as cyclists bears this out because everyone has a recent story to tell, drivers are quite prepared to squeeze past, even if they are not necessarily breaking the speed limit. Not everyone, but enough to make us aware that cycling on the roads is potentially life threatening :) Slow everyone down and things automatically get safer. Not just for cyclists, but for pedestrians and drivers too. We know this. We can’t train everybody to be a better driver, so speed has to come down. We have, I’m afraid, to legislate for idiots. Idiots on the driving side, and on the sorry-didn’t-see-you-I-was-txting pedestrian side.
I’m perhaps on the radical side of this, as I think it should be legal, even encouraged, for mobs of pedestrians to drag crappy motorists from their cars and kick the living shit out of them. Running a red light at a pedestrian crossing, using a phone, not indicating when turning into a side street despite having looked the bloke waiting to cross in the eye, parking on the pavement without leaving enough room for people to get past your fucking car without shuffling in single file, gunning the engine of your Golf/Punto/Ferrari while waiting at traffic lights, that kind of thing. My patience for this kind of bollocks runs ever lower and I do fear the day that I set about someone with a u-lock is not far off.
Personally I don’t see how we extrapolate driver superiority from my advocacy of raising skill in preference to lowering speed. I certainly didn’t intend to sound as though I was lording it skillwise over anyone else. Indeed, I’m as ready as the next pilot to lose my licence if I don’t come up to muster in hypothetical periodic retests. We all are capable of making mistakes, but making the same one twice or more is, I think, the litmus test.
‘We can’t train everybody to be a better driver’ – putting /my/ radical head on, I ask why not? If we can’t, then to take a rather fascistical bent we should legislate the numpties off the streets *based on skill not finances*, regardless of what kind of vehicle they use. You’ll note I don’t suggest smearing them into pulp with their own legs, that would be cruel, though on occasion I yearn for bonnet-mounted machine guns – it’d be more humane.
You’ve misread me chum, and perhaps I have you too.
I accept, in theory, that a driver should be able to read the road and surrounds, then adjust speed and road position accordingly. In practice, however, a significant minority (if not a majority) of drivers either can’t or won’t. Further, since most drivers also consider themselves to be superior drivers to the rest of us, there’s no way on Earth you’d ever get the legislation passed for regular retesting and the possibility of being declared too shit to drive.
The only practical way of reducing speed, which is the only way of making the streets more pleasant (and coincidentally safer) is by reducing the speed limit. It’s still going to be a hell of a job to get the legislation through though. Even now I can hear the nutjobs at the Association of British Drivers sharpening their pencils.
I fully accept that continual retesting will not happen. Common sense and reality never seem to converge. I can dream though.
Did you see the demo recently of the public robot vehicle system (near Oxford I think)? Computer-controlled step-on-step-off buggies training along ahent each other with a 2ft gap? The demo was fundamentally flawed in that all the vehicles were moving slower than a fast walk, let alone cycling speed.
Walking, clearly, must be avoided at all costs – I mean, we might get wet. So this system is, I fear, the future.
I see all this wrangling with speed limits, punitive penalties, emission controls, engine hybrids and other bollocks as the death throes of our love affair with autonomously-controlled vehicles. It may take another 40 years but it will happen, certainly in the urban context.
The answer for those of us wanting better motorcraft, or at least some space? Emigration, expensive motorsport, or that time-machine I mentioned.
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I must thank Pete for the temporary use of his website as a pubcebo ;)
I like to think of my blog as a virtual living room where I provide reading material and let my guests chat. So thank you for participating.
*group hugz*