Category Archives: Uncategorized

Drop in the ocean

The AA calls for graduated driving licences for young drivers with a 6 month moratorium on carrying passengers their own age. It’s a gesture in the right direction but a drop in the ocean. We need wholesale reform of the … Continue reading

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Falling on deaf ears

Annual casualties on our roads are equivalent to more than one Grenfell a day. Yet while Grenfell gets blanket media coverage, 30,000 equally avoidable road casualties – given that my umpteenth pitch to the Press has just been ignored – … Continue reading

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Ministerial mess – corporate manslaughter

Updated in July 2024, the DfT’s accredited “accident” statistics reveal that 29,643 human beings were killed or seriously injured in 2023. It’s an estimate of the number of personal injury road traffic casualties in Great Britain reported by the police … Continue reading

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Never the carrot

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 … Continue reading

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More coercive control in the public realm

Transport Secretary Louise Haigh has given her “absolute support” to more 20mph zones and LTNs (low traffic neighbourhoods). Funding always seems to be available for coercive, divisive measures, yet re-education and road redesign – the consensual way to calm traffic … Continue reading

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An accident?

Now Mike Lynch’s colleague, Stephen Chamberlain, has died in a car “accident”, hit while running. Was it an accident, or an event contrived by the dysfunctional rules of the road? Do investigators take the unequal rules of the road into … Continue reading

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Perverting the nature of justice

This Telegraph piece about imprisonment for “perverting the course of justice” by getting someone else to take speeding points has a wider significance. Ill-conceived statutory regulation perverts the very nature of justice. It forbids appeal on grounds of reason. Preventing … Continue reading

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20mph?

Part of the case for 20mph is that if you’re on foot and hit, you’re less likely to be killed. So it’s OK if you survive with a broken body, is it? Is it beyond the wit of government to … Continue reading

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Dysfunctional rules of the road

On Desert Island Discs (24.3.24), we heard that Professor Alice Roberts was hit by car in her home town of Bristol. She wondered if her “accident” had any bearing on the decision to pedestrianise the street. To me it’s a … Continue reading

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Idiot Minds

In this Mail article (thanks to FFDF for posting), a “spokesperson” for Sadiq Khan claims the major cause of urban congestion is roadworks. Not in my observation and experience. The chief cause of congestion (and to paraphrase Joni Mitchell, I’ve … Continue reading

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