Equality Streets

This post, which reiterates stuff I’ve written before, but bears repetition, was prompted by news that transport minister, Louise Haigh, intends to fund more cycle lanes (which as a cyclist I dislike).

Most if not all coercive traffic interventions are pointless because they react to a system which is flawed – the system of priority, aka inequality.

The system imposes dangerous, conflicting rights-of-way. It segregates road-users instead of integrating them in a sociable mix.

Whether you walk, cycle, ride, or drive, you are a human road-user. Human beings grew up to respect the rights of others. The traffic system and the driving test teach us to ignore the rights of others.

You see it every day. People on foot at the side of the road, and side road drivers trying to get out, are ignored by drivers on the main road. Those drivers are obeying the anti-social rule of priority which they learned when they learned to drive.

But the rule is diabolical. It puts road-users at odds with each other. It makes us compete for gaps and green time. It subverts our social instinct to take it in turns. It’s not based on the common law principle of equal rights.

Why can’t we act on the road as we act in other walks of life? Why not make junctions all-way give-ways, and roads sociable spaces where we give way to others who were there first? When will the authorities think outside the box marked priority?

Given equality, we could cooperate in peace. It would be “After you” instead of “Get out of my way!” It would eliminate most “accidents”, which are mostly avoidable disasters contrived by the unequal rules of the road.

It would enable the removal of the paraphernalia of traffic control which blights the public realm, maximises congestion and emissions, and makes getting about a misery when it could be a pleasure.