Clapham Common - Saturation Policing

Over the past month or two, there've been a few visits of law enforcement officials to Clapham Common. It seems there have been a few complaints about cycling on the Common.

First of all, cycling on Clapham Common is legal, provided of course that you observe the usual rules of the road, give way if necessary where indicated and so on.

This morning, I thought I'd wandered into a student fees protest. There must have been a dozen officers on the Common. It was a rather comical sight, with all the commuters cycling ridiculously slowly. One of the officers stopped me - I had committed no offence by the way - and advised me of the fact that I needed to give way at the 'give way' line a few yards ahead. Fortunately, I have a reasonable acquaintance with the Highway Code, so I was already aware of this fact. The officer gave me a leaflet.

Further on, an officer was advising a dog walker whose dog had wandered on to the cycle path that 'if your dog was hit by a cyclist, it wouldn't be the cyclist's fault'. He didn't advise him that this could cause a serious accident (not in my hearing anyway).

At the other end or the path, an officer was helping a female cyclist fix a puncture. Nice touch.

I have no problem with the law being upheld. In fact, I support it, but it has to be done without fear or favour, in an even-handed and proportionate way. I don't see police in the 20MPH zones where speeding is endemic (ostensibly because they don't have the resources to enforce the speed limit). I don't see police advising motorists that they need to give way at a 'give way' line (try walking across a road junction in Merton and see if you don't get run down). I don't see police advising motorists in the Trafalgar Square Advanced Stop Line of its true purpose. I don't see police stopping motorists busting the red light at the toucan crossing in Plough Lane, or speeding along the Morden Road, or overtaking where there's traffic calming. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. So why do I see the highest concentration of police in a place where there's little lawbreaking of any consequence? I'm not aware of any serious incidents on the Common.

It is rather hard for cyclists not to detect any suggestion of bias in law enforcement if complaints from a small number of dog walkers and local busybodies attract more police than a Masonic Convention, whereas the daily intimidation, lawbreaking, serious injury and occasionally death that is meted out to cyclists attracts less response than a Greek Government bond issue.

Narrow Street - Well-Behaved Cyclists

Surely some mistake. The residents of Narrow Street have kicked up a right old kerfuffle about the Comedy Cycle Superhighway going down their street with all the -er- noise, danger and disruption that will cause.
So the Mayor duly dispatched a crack police hit-squad to monitor the situation and here's what they found:

"As part of our investigation, traffic officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Cycle Task Force
were deployed to the area on 28th October, 1st and 2nd November during the morning rush hour.
Officers determined that cyclists along the route were adhering to road regulations, with no
evidence of speeding or cyclist/pedestrian conflict."

Funny how when it's cyclists clearly NOT breaking the law or causing intimidation, the police are down there before you can say "Territorial Support Group". Yet in the 20MPH zones in Merton where speeding is endemic, you're more likely to see a Siberian Tiger than a speed gun.

Roadsafe London

The indefatiguable Cycling Lawyer reports that Roadsafe London don't just ignore your reports of dangerous driving - it just looks that way because you get no feedback beyond a spam email.

I had given up using the site, but if as m'learned friend indicates, letters are "sent to the registered keepers of the vehicles concerned", then I'll start using it again.

Cold enough for ya?

I can't be bothered to see what the Daily Mail comment boards have to say about the current cold snap, but I'll bet a pound to a penny there's more than a few saying it's further proof there's no global warming. But the Guardian reports 2010 will likely be the warmest year since 1850, and the next five years could see faster warming than hitherto predicted. This last research is by eco-nutters the US Naval Research Laboratory, and  Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Another prediction the Guardian makes is that this is "expected to silence global warming sceptics". Here's my prediction: Hell will freeze over before that happens.

Dangerous or Just Newsworthy?

A refreshingly media-critical piece from the BBC about how the media distorts reality by ingoring the commonplace and highlighting the unusual or bizarre.

"When considering societal problems over the long term, news-worthiness is often in inverse proportion to frequency. If problems become commonplace, they are not new - so do not qualify as 'news'. This means the media often guides politicians to focus on less serious acute problems at the expense of more serious systemic problems." 

So road crashes seldom make the news, while rail crashes always do, in spite of the fact that far more people die on the roads. So the public's attention is focussed away from the more deadly problem.

Cycling is somewhere in between. Cycle deaths are unusual enough to make the news from time to time (at least the Evening Standard), but not unusual enough for any in depth analysis or for any calls for 'something to be done'.

But here's the thing. It is in the media's (and particularly the BBC's) gift to correct this perspective. With new media there isn't the pressure on space or the need for a set number of stories every day to fill up a newspaper or TV show. Blogs and websites free the media from the deadline-driven culture of the dead-tree era. It's possible to present statistics and analysis about the commonplace in an engaging way. So why don't they do it?

Well, funnily enough, the BBC are happy to report mundane matters like speeding or parking tickets with regularity. That doesn't fit the theory. Surely the BBC don't have a secret agenda?

How to Ride Safe ?

Aussie researchers have identified that drivers were at fault for most cycle accidents (*gasp*) in a survey in which cyclists were given head-cameras to record their rides.

There were only 13 riders and a 4-week period involved, (and it was 'down under' rather than in the UK) but there's some important lessons to learn if you want to stay safe, in terms of the causes of collisions and near misses.

This kind of research is difficult to do. If you analyze collisions rather than general riding, your sample is likely to include more unsafe riders. There's a risk that giving people head-cams will change their riding behaviour, but it's instructive nonetheless.

Some of the 'safe' behaviours identified were:

• Checking left. Don't assume a vehicle will give way.
• Riding more defensively around cars.
• Being particularly vigilant when it comes to drivers turning left at junctions, especially if they're in a large vehicle like a 4x4 or lorry.

Riders who frequently looked over their shoulders to check for other traffic were the most successful at avoiding collisions.

All of the above seems pretty obvious to me, but maybe not to everyone. Here's a few of the things I try to do. I'm not setting myself up as an expert by the way - I'm just saying what I've found works for me. What works for you may be different - although there are some behaviours that are flat-out wrong, some things are tradeoffs involving how fast you need to be, how fit you are, how much route-research you can do, whether you're prepared to break any laws, what clothes you want to wear and how much hassle from motorists you're prepared to put up with.

1. I use a mirror. With a mirror, I'm pretty much continuously aware of what's going on behind me.
2. With a side road on the left. I'm usually in the centre of the road approaching it. I can see into the road better, and I can be seen better. If there's a vehicle that might emerge, I'll set myself up so that I can avoid it if it does fail to give way, either by turning into the road and going behind the vehicle, or by going to the right of it.
3. Mindset. I try to stay relaxed and think about safety when I ride. I find that allowing other road users to wind you up makes you feel more aggressive and that makes you ride less safely. I try to think of vehicles as hazards to be avoided; almost as mobile road furniture. I try not to think about the drivers: 'de-humanizing' the vehicle helps me to stay calm.
4. I wear hi-viz.
5. I give pedestrians a pretty wide berth whereever they happen to be. They can be unpredictable so they're well worth avoiding. One thing I've noticed is if you ring your bell, they're likely to stop and get in your way. I generally try to pass behind them if they're crossing the road because it's less likely to startle them but I'm always prepared to give way if need be.
6. Any risky situation I'll always have a 'Plan B' - where to bale out or swerve if I need to.
7. Planning ahead. I try to look ahead a fair way and plan the best line.
8. I'm very wary of any large vehicle. I avoid undertaking them, and never undertake if they might turn left.
9. I avoid busy roads and especially multi-lane roads. (Call me a chicken if you like.)
10. After a 'near miss', I try to figure out how I could have avoided the situation.
11. Generally, I ride pretty fast. I try to avoid getting overtaken, but I don't deliberately try to block anyone who's determined to overtake. With my mirror, I can usually tell if they're likely to do something silly, and if so I'll get out of the way.
12. I usually get to the front of the queue at junctions, 'take the lane' and accelerate away quickly, to minimize the chance of a dodgy overtake.
13. I generally assume that another driver hasn't seen me, but especially if their vision is somehow obscured. That includes any van or goods vehicle, vehicles with 'privacy glass', and cold mornings where drivers have not bothered to clear frost or dew from all their windows.

Here's a the worst things I see other cyclists doing:

1. Rear light obscured by clothing (skirts, long coats, messenger bags etc) or hanging off a bag pointing at some random angle.
2. No lights at all. Not the smartest idea. Surprising how often I see it.
3. Too far left. Gets you into all sorts of scrapes.
4. Racing traffic/other cyclists. Nothing wrong with going fast, but I see some folks taking unnecessary risks to avoid slowing down.

Anyone else got any tips/tricks?

Predicting the Future

When I got my first 'proper' job, rather a long time ago, if you were male you wore a suit. It didn't much matter what you did, unless it was something oily or sweaty or food-related, or something that otherwise required specialist clothing, you wore a suit.

Suits are useless. They're not waterproof; you have to dry clean them, decent ones cost a fortune, they are too hot in summer and not warm enough in winter. You have to take the jacket off and hang it up somewhere or it'll get all creased. But still, back in the day, every man wore a suit to work. It was an unwritten, or often written, rule, but either way if you didn't wear a suit you might as well come in naked, suitless was that shocking a concept.

Then something happened. Stories started to filter through about the computer firm Apple, where everyone wore jeans. In more progressive companies, they started to have 'dress-down Fridays', where you could were what you wanted one day a week. Then people started to realize that if you could do it on a Friday, you might as well do it every day. Then the balance changed. Any company where suits were still de rigeur for men was a bit starchy, a bit stick-in-the-mud, not very forward looking. Salesmen still wore them, but other than that if you wore a suit you were a bit of a spiv (or possibly foreign).

What on earth has this all got to do with the price of chain-lube? Well, the Government plan transport for 10, 15 or 20 years in the future, partly because it takes a long time to plan and build new roads and railways, but also because there's not much money around at the moment so anything big gets put off in the hope that the economy will recover sufficiently. But the common assumption running through these plans is that attitudes and travel behaviour won't change much over that time. Well, I'd suggest that attitudes are already changing. Many people don't go into their office or workplace 5 days a week. With high-speed broadband it's possible in many professions to work from home and be effective. Companies are starting to realize they can save a huge amount of money by having smaller offices or renting space as needed, rather than having one central location with one desk per employee. In other words, in 10 years the commute, like the suit, may look outmoded.

Decarbonizing the UK economy is going to have effects. The current target is to reduce carbon emissions by 34% by 2020. It seems unlikely that can be achieved without having any effect on the balance of the economy or on patterns of travel. If the oil price increases significantly, which many observers consider likely, this will also significantly change the economics of travel.

So to have a 20-year transport policy which is based on business-as-before, when attitudes, technology and economics are clearly likely to change significantly, and to bet significant sums of money on it, seems - well, a little rash. Like bogus clairvoyants, Philip Hammond it seems is simply telling people what he thinks they want to hear. Clearly, we need a long-term transport policy, but one of the advantages of being in Government is that you have some control over the future - you don't simply have to predict it. Would it not be better to plan on less travel rather than more? To try to reduce unnecessary journeys, and increase the efficiency of transport? To help people live closer to their workplace rather than commute longer distances? Dare I say it, to increase active travel? If we did that, we'd be in rather better shape for the coming era of expensive energy.