20mph again

Posted on 22nd April 2013 by Martin Cassini

20mph zones are spreading fast, according to another email received from the pressure group, 20 is Plenty for Us. Everyone wants safer streets, but are blanket 20mph zones the answer? I don’t think so. For one thing, they open up fresh avenues of enforcement, extending state control over our daily lives and actions. And they express a misreading of human psychology. Our streets will only be genuinely safe when we are taught to drive according to social context, not coerced into driving by numbers. The transformation of a dangerous junction in Poynton, Cheshire, shows that intelligent design, not speed limits, produces the desired results: gentle speeds, civilised interaction, deference to vulnerable road-users. Link to video, Poynton Regenerated, here (or search Poynton in YouTube).

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“Obnoxious autocrats”

Posted on 13th April 2013 by Martin Cassini

From Alan Rusbridger’s Guardian interview with Google’s Eric Schmidt: He decided against exploiting facial recognition, which he sees as wide open to abuse, and warns of the dangers of combining such technology with London-style traffic cameras. “You could imagine aggressive, obnoxious autocrats saying, ‘We need this to keep our people under control’, and once those things are in place, they are very hard to turn off.” Who installed 1800 new sets of traffic lights to London streets? Ken Livingstone. Who introduced the punitive, premature congestion charge (premature because it was imposed before natural flow/Equality Streets had been tried) with its rampant surveillance system? Livingstone. Who keeps it in operation and does nothing to remove the yoke of control over our freedom of movement? Boris Johnson

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Deference be damned

Posted on 12th April 2013 by Martin Cassini

The 1960s were supposed to have seen off doff-capping class deference, but deference on the road – people on foot deferring to people in vehicles (even waiting for permission to cross at zebra crossings) – persists to this day. The Highway Code says that walkers have priority at junctions, but in the time-honoured fashion dictated by the anti-social rules of the road, motorists routinely assume priority. I assert my equal right to the road space and just walk out, sometimes to honks and stares of astonishment. One day I’ll be killed. But one day there will be equality among road-users, and walkers will command equal respect.

 

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J’accuse

Posted on 10th April 2013 by Martin Cassini

Research fellow at UCL, Dr Katharine Giles, is the latest cyclist to die on London’s roads.

Dr+Katharine+Giles

Crushed under a tipper truck in Victoria. The report in the Evening Standard calls it a “tragedy”. For once the word is correct, partly at least, in the original Greek sense of a disaster made inevitable by circumstance, although there is no catharsis. As usual, the dock is empty. It should be filled with traffic engineers and policymakers, responsible for a traffic system that enshrines inequality and sets the stage for dangerous conflict. Also in the dock should be media editors who fail to commission material that exposes the system, and fail to broadcast the only real solution to our road safety problems: Equality Streets.

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Worst peacetime disaster?

Posted on 10th April 2013 by Martin Cassini

As mentioned before, no-one died of phone-hacking, but coverage has been wall-to-wall. Meanwhile, on the roads, every year, 25,000 human beings are killed or hurt, many of them children. Yet my pitches to press and broadcast outlets about authentic solutions to our (man-made) road safety problems go unanswered.

The Poynton video shows that our roads need not be a misery. They can be a joy. It is said that there is no alternative to painful spending cuts. But there is, as I wrote three years ago in this 2010 piece which went unnoticed.

Is the current system of unequal priority and counterproductive control our worst peacetime disaster?

Equality Streets are widely applicable and could bring peace to our roads. Meanwhile, the current system continues to put us in danger.

Another irony in the fire: in this era of health and safety, the traffic control system is failing in its duty to keep us safe and healthy.

 

 

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Sir Walter Scott and traffic control

Posted on 10th April 2013 by Martin Cassini

Is there a link? No. Humour, humanity, empathy – these abound in Walter Scott, I learned in a Radio 4 programme presented by James Naughtie. By contrast, all are conspicuous by their absence in the mean-spirited murk of traffic control and enforcement.

 

 

 

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Balls bowled

Posted on 7th April 2013 by Martin Cassini

So Ed Balls is caught “speeding” (a fabricated crime if ever there was one). What beats me about incidents like this is the abject acceptance by intelligent people that they are wrong and speed limits are right. Never do they question or criticise the one-dimensional regulation that makes oafs of us all. Injustice is built into road regulation. It presumes guilt. The mean-spirited technical parameters don’t allow you to establish innocence on grounds of reason or commonsense.

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London buses hit two walkers or cyclists a day

Posted on 6th April 2013 by Martin Cassini

Hardly surprising given the vile traffic system by which we are forced to live and die -a system that enshrines inequality and is supported by the state. Story here.

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US article about Poynton

Posted on 4th April 2013 by Martin Cassini

Thanks to Ian Walker for bringing this article by Sarah Goodyear to my attention. Judging by many of the comments, a lot of people still don’t get it. The phrase “shared space” has a life of its own. Equality Streets doesn’t seem to be gaining currency, but I’m sticking with it.

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Chris Huhne

Posted on 12th March 2013 by Martin Cassini

“Any element of tragedy was entirely your own fault,” said Mr Justice Sweeney. No. Huhne is the victim of an inflexible, black-and-white system that elevates the letter of the law above the spirit. Life is about infinite shades of grey. Context is what counts, or should count. If the law is an ass, nowhere is it more asinine than in the field of traffic regulation.

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