Equality in a car park? Pull the other one!

Often cited as places where drivers behave considerately are car parks, because they are not part of the regulated road network. In a Tesco par cark yesterday, when I was on foot and asserted my equal right to the road space, I was given the finger not only by the male driver, but by his wife. They were in a big car with a personalised number plate, whatever that tells us. The unpleasant experience reinforces my belief that street redesign – while an essential component in the quest for civil road-user relationships – is not enough on its own. Equally essential (arguably even more so) are re-education, culture change, and legal reform (to put the onus on motorists to beware pedestrians instead of the other way round as the current system has it). We need to zap the anti-social habits instilled by the priority-based rules of the road. Meanwhile, a hex on the houses of the traffic engineers and policymakers who support those unspeakable rules!

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Smacking children = disabling drivers

On the subject of smacking on Any Questions, the excellent Steve Jones said he was hit a lot at school, and that smackers often smacked to show who was in charge, which created nothing but resentment at injustice. There is a parallel here with traffic regulation which disempowers and smacks us for using intelligent discretion or straying from the rigid framework it imposes.

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A question of justice

If Chris Huhne’s alleged act perverts the course of justice, does non-discretionary traffic regulation pervert the cause of justice?

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Chris Huhne

A reminder of my post last year (18 May):

Whether or not Chris Huhne tried to pass the buck, his saga reveals the contortions to which citizens can be driven to escape the tentacles of a system that values the letter of the law above the spirit. Speed does not kill. It’s inappropriate speed that kills, or speed in the wrong hands. Instead of driving by numbers, we should drive according to context. BRAKE! would claim that freedom to exercise judgement based on context is a licence to drive carelessly. On the contrary, it’s a blueprint for driving with true care and attention. If pedestrians, especially children are near, let us proceed at walking pace. As a reasonable trade-off, when the road is clear, let us, within reason, drive at our own chosen speed.

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Exhibition Road

I’ve said as much before, but in response to this Observer piece about Exhibition Road, I’ll say it again.

Is streetscape redesign enough on its own? Not in my view. People need to unlearn the bad habits of a lifetime instilled by the anti-social rules of the road. A wider programme of reform is needed, above all, abolition of priority in favour of equality. Priority imposes aggressive rights-of-way based on artificial status of road or direction of travel. It encourages vehicle domination, inappropriate speed, neglect. It denies infinite filtering opportunities and expressions of fellow feeling. It produces a “need” for traffic lights – to break the priority streams of traffic so others can cross. (Yet traffic lights are no guarantee of safety – Westminster City Council’s latest safety audit shows that 44% of personal injury “accidents” occurred at traffic lights.) Most traffic control a grotesque exercise in self-defeat and waste of public money. The priority-based system makes roads dangerous in the first place. It puts the onus on children to beware motorists, when it could and should be the other way round. By contrast, equality harnesses our instinct for cooperation and stimulates empathy. As we rediscover our humanity, we start looking out for each other and taking it more or less in turns, as in all other walks of life. Given equality, our children would not have to learn age-inappropriate road safety drill. Blind people would be able to go in perfect safety. As a trade-off for proceeding at walking pace in urban settings, drivers should be free to go at their own chosen speed on motorways or the open road.

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Shared space pedestrian casualty

I’ve always said that to achieve Equality Streets (or Roads FiT for People), deregulation is not enough on its own. Nor, in my view, is streetscape redesign enough on its own. News of a serious pedestrian casualty at one of Coventry’s shared space junctions underlines the importance of re-education as part of a wider package of reforms. It’s appalling that a professional driver – a bus driver – failed to give way, but on my walkabout last month with Colin Knight (Coventry’s deputy traffic chief), I saw plenty of examples of aggressive bus driving. If bus drivers had help in unlearning the bad habits of a lifetime instilled by the anti-social, priority-driven rules of the road, they would see things differently and adjust their conduct accordingly. There must be less pressure on them to make up time lost at traffic lights, and with the freedom to go on opportunity instead of having to obey signals, there must be less need for speed …

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AUTOcracy v DEMOcracy

Most traffic regulation is a vicious circle incorporating a dead end. It champions AUTOcracy over DEMOcracy. Most urban and suburban junctions could be thriving civilised spaces, but they are dehumanised by traffic regulation which imposes unequal rights and discriminates against vulnerable road-users. Government abdicates responsibility for road policy to technocrats. Technocrats remove responsibility from where it belongs: the people, uniquely equipped to negotiate safe movement.

 

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19th v 21st century resistance to rail

PM (Radio 4) had an item about Victorian resistance to railway development, implying there was a parallel with today’s opposition to HS2. Seems a narrow comparison, because in the 19th century, there were no telephones, cars or Internet.

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HS2

(Update of 2011 post at Free to Choose): Apart from the likelihood that the £32bn estimate for HS2 will increase to at least twice that sum, the trade-off, whichever way you cut it, is negative. HS2 would shave minutes off a journey between cities already well-served, while doing nothing to connect outlying regions currently starved of viable links, at a time when web interconnectivity is rendering face-to-face business meetings increasingly pointless. Traffic policy presides over casualties, congestion and environmental damage on a colossal scale. Instead of making roads fit for people and improving local rail connectivity, the government wants to sacrifice some of England’s most green and pleasant land on the altar of the high-cost HS2 vanity project.

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Gulliver’s travails

Congestion caused by volume of traffic is acceptable. We’re in the same boat. No problem. But congestion caused or aggravated by unnecessary traffic control – you know, making us stop for no reason other than the light is red – is unacceptable. Human intelligence is a superior, wondrous thing. Yet traffic control reduces us to the level of unthinking robots. The red light brigadiers are Lilliputians disabling Gulliver.

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