The steps

There is a small entrance to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, from St Giles’. It brings you into the grand central courtyard from the east, through a corridor in the building, rather than via the direct and obvious entrance from the south on Beaumont Street.

The view into the Ashmolean courtyard from St Giles’

On my recent visit I noticed that a walkway has been built across this corridor, linking the main Ashmolean building (to the left) to the wing of the building, on the right. 
This obviously makes it more inconvenient to walk along the corridor, than to pass across it.

Presumably these steps – or walkway, depending on your perspective – have been installed to allow step-free access throughout the museum buildings. The ‘extra’ steps for people passing along this corridor, rather than across it, are not much of a problem for those who have already come up the ten or so steps from the street. Anyone who can’t manage steps will be entering the museum from the main entrance on Beaumont Street, up ramps.

But the arrangement got me thinking about priorities, and about choices.

For short trips, most people have the option to walk or cycle to their destination. It’s technically possible to walk or cycle short distances. A great percentage choose not to, however – nearly 40% of all trips under 2 miles in Britain are driven. But why?

Because we’ve built steps across their routes – steps that make driving easier. Driving has the smooth, continuous route on this walkway, while walking and cycling have to struggle up and over the steps built for it. The ease and convenience of driving has been purchased at the expense of making walking and cycling more difficult, and more hazardous.

A concrete example. Take this roundabout in Didcot.

Courtesy of Google Streetview

It’s possible to walk or cycle from left to right, across this roundabout – but you have to come a huge distance out of your way, push a button, wait for a crossing signal, then travel back up to where you actually want to go. Driving from left to right, on the other hand, is a more-or-less direct route, that can be taken at speed.

This is the way we design for walking and cycling in Britain, in microcosm. It has to fit in at the margins, fenced away, and given indirect routes that skirt around and yield to the ‘dominant’ mode of transport, motor traffic. While this continues, all the talk of ‘encouraging’ and ‘promoting’ walking and cycling will ring hollow.

I don’t like it. The only continuous connected space is road space. Need more for cycling and walking. Tired of lillypadding around my city

— Katja Leyendecker (@KatsDekker) February 4, 2014

Pictured below is the junction between Biltstraat – a main road in Utrecht – and Goedestraat, a residential side road.

It doesn’t even look like a junction, because the cycle track and the pavement extend across the side road. It’s driving that has to go up and over the steps, while walking and cycling has the level walkway.

Yet at equivalent junctions in the UK we seem to go out of our way to make walking and cycling hostile and unattractive.

Courtesy of Google Streetview

This is the junction of Ashley Road and The Parade in Epsom. Ashley Road is a one-way road, that forms part of the A24 gyratory in the town. Needless to say cycling here on this fast and busy road is inadvisable if you are not confident. The Parade, on the left, is a residential side road – actually a dead-end. But it has a ludicrous flared treatment, and barriers to stop you crossing in the most natural place.

Walking and cycling are eradicated by this kind of design, just as they are in Horsham, where simply crossing the inner ring road into the town centre from the west means the use of four separate signalled controlled crossings.

In urban areas in Britain, it’s driving that has been given the most convenient and direct routes, without delay, diversion, interruption or inconvenience. It has been put up on the walkway, at the expense of walking and cycling, so it’s no surprise that it continues to dominate as a mode of transport, while walking dwindles and cycling remains essentially non-existent.

The steps need rearranging.

A small difference

Two news items popped up almost simultaneously in my inbox recently. Each described a collision, but in a slightly different way. The first –

Woman taken to hospital after crash with cyclist at Cawsand

A LADY was taken to hospital after a man on a push bike crashed into her.

Police were called to the scene at Forder Hill, Cawsand at around 4.30pm this afternoon by ambulance staff.

A first responder – member of the community with advanced first aid training – was on the scene first followed by ambulance staff and police.

And the other –

No criminal action taken against death crash driver

A speeding driver has been told he must live with the consequences of his actions for the rest of his life after the tragic death of a popular roofer.

Cyclist Brent Jelley, 23, collided with a Ford Fiesta driven by Halstead resident Joshua Rumble, in Swan Street, Sible Hedingham on October 21, 2012.

Rewording the first article in the manner of the second, we get

A lady was taken to hospital after she collided with a push bike ridden by a man.

Which doesn’t sound like gibberish at all.

The Advertising Standards Authority – not fit for purpose

Scotland’s The Nice Way Code campaign got an almighty and justifiable thrashing from campaigners last year, particularly for its nonsensical advice, and notions of collective responsibility. However, with one judgement, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has managed to make me feel sorry for it.

Why?

Here’s a still from one of the Nice Way Code videos – ‘Think Horse’.

Fairly unexceptional, you might think.

Yet this particular scene apparently prompted five people to write in complaint to the ASA.

Five complainants challenged whether the ad was irresponsible and harmful, because it showed a cyclist without a helmet or any other safety attire, who was cycling down the middle of the road rather than one metre from the curb.

‘Irresponsible and harmful’.

This is complete guff, of course. At no point was the cyclist travelling ‘down the middle of the road’. ‘The middle of the road’ in these cases never refers to a precise location, more to the fact that someone is in someone else’s way, or slightly inconveniencing them. And the lack of safety attire or helmet is neither here nor there – these are not legal requirements.

Over and out, you might think. Complaints dismissed, chucked straight in the bin. Reasonable points about national guidance on how to cycle, the need to make cycling look ordinary and attractive, and the lack of legal requirements are commendably made by both Cycling Scotland and the advert’s producers. Indeed, Cycling Scotland point out that the making of the advert was actually supervised by one of Scotland’s most experienced cycling instructors.

But it seems the ASA know better, for they have UPHELD – UPHELD – this complaint. They write

The ad must not be broadcast again in its current form. We told Cycling Scotland that any future ads featuring cyclists should be shown wearing helmets and placed in the most suitable cycling position.

In more detail, particularly about what the ASA think is ‘the most suitable cycling position’ –

We understood that UK law did not require cyclists to wear helmets or cycle at least 0.5 metres from the kerb. However, under the Highway Code it was recommended as good practice for cyclists to wear helmets. Therefore, we considered that the scene featuring the cyclist on a road without wearing a helmet undermined the recommendations set out in the Highway Code. Furthermore, we were concerned that whilst the cyclist was more than 0.5 metres from the kerb, they appeared to be located more in the centre of the lane when the car behind overtook them and the car almost had to enter the right lane of traffic. Therefore, for those reasons we concluded the ad was socially irresponsible and likely to condone or encourage behaviour prejudicial to health and safety.

There is so much wrong with this it is impossible to know where to start. But just a couple of things leap out. The advert has essentially been banned because it contravenes recommendations in the Highway Code about helmets. Not rules – advice. The word used is ‘should’, not ‘must’. Here’s the relevant section –

The Highway Code

This ruling opens the door to adverts being banned if the people cycling in them are not wearing ‘reflective clothing and/or accessories’. Even an advert featuring someone riding a bike in darkish clothes could be banned by the logic of this judgement – because you ‘should’ wear light-coloured clothing.

It also suggests that vast numbers of car adverts should be banned. Why? Rule 152.

You should drive slowly and carefully on streets where there are likely to be pedestrians, cyclists and parked cars.

You should drive slowly and carefully in urban areas. All those car adverts showing cars zipping around are toast, according to this judgement – at least they should be. Just one example.

Not especially slow and careful in areas where there are likely to be pedestrians. So I suggest people get busy and start filing complaints on the basis of this judgement.

If they were feeling mischievous, they could actually file complaints to the ASA about Department for Transport and Transport for London adverts suggesting cyclists ride centrally. Because, you know, that’s ‘socially irresponsible’ and might force a driver to even slightly enter a different lane, causing them to spontaneously combust. The ASA should be taking this seriously, and slapping down the DfT and TfL.

And the final silliness – look back at the still of the advert that’s the source of the complaint. There’s someone riding a bike, fairly slowly, without head protection, being overtaken by someone in an open-top car which can legally travel at 70mph, with his head fully exposed in the event of a crash.

Then ponder the absurdity of judging only the former activity as ‘irresponsible and harmful’.

Visibility in context

The winter is of course the period of the year when people riding bikes get urged to ‘lighten up’ and to make themselves visible. It is easy to lose count of the number of articles and police campaigns on the subject – the latest in a long line in recent months is this from Oakham Police, covered by the Rutland Times.

Police are advising cyclists to be seen and be safe while riding at night.

During January and February officers in Oakham will target cyclists who ride their bikes without lights at night.

PCSO 6017 Martin Clarke said: “We have received a number of complaints about cyclists riding at night without any lights.

“This is not only illegal, but presents a danger to other road users as well as the cyclist themselves.”

During the campaign police will stop any cyclists not wearing safety equipment and reminding them to use lights, helmets and visible clothing.

PCSO Clarke added: “Persistent offenders may be prosecuted.”

People who persist in wearing invisible clothing may be prosecuted?

But seriously. The subject of illumination and visibility is an interesting one, especially when placed in historical context. Over time, the burden of being seen has increasingly been placed on the people who pose little or no danger – to make themselves more and more obvious to the people who are posing the danger.

Where did this obsession with illumination come from?

Before motor cars arrived on the roads, the only piece of safety equipment someone using a bicycle would possess would be a front lamp. Obviously this showed other people using the roads in the dark that you were approaching, but its primary purpose was to allow you to see where you were going, and what obstacles might be in your way. There was no need to make yourself visible to the rear, because the onus was anyone approaching you from behind to spot you.

Interestingly, even after the numbers of motor cars that were on the roads had increased sharply, a front light remained the only piece of equipment that cyclists were expected to use. No hi-viz. No rear light. There was only one ‘extra’ tool of visibility required – a rear reflector.

The very first Highway Code – dating from 1931 – is quite clear on the subject, in its advice to ‘pedal cyclists’.

AT NIGHT

Remember that in the dark you are not easily visible to following traffic. Act accordingly and keep well to the left of the road.

If you do not use a red rear lamp remember to keep your red reflector clean and properly fixed. [It is an offence under the Road Transport Lighting Act to ride at night without either a red rear lamp or an obscured and efficient red reflector.]

So in 1931, you could quite happily and legally ride a bicycle that didn’t have a rear light, provided you had a reflector. In today’s world of hyper-illumination and garishness, this probably sounds incredible to most people, but, at the time, even the law requiring just a reflector was met with much grumbling by those who used bicycles. They were merely pedalling along, and it would be the person who was approaching them from behind who should have sufficient illumination to spot them, and to act accordingly.

There is a serious issue here. It is entirely possible that many drivers today simply do not expect there to be obstacles in the road that are not illuminated, or reflective. Trees can be in the road when it is dark. Cars can be parked on the road when it is dark. People can be in the road when it is dark. We don’t expect any of them to be reflective, or clad in hi-viz, or to have lights (although perhaps in the case of pedestrians it is only a matter of time, as we shall see below).

This was something the Cyclists’ Touring Club appreciated back in the 1930s, writing to the Times in 1934 that

The club does not see the necessity for supplementing the reflector (approved by the Minister of Transport after exhaustive tests) with a white patch or any second compulsory device. Anything of this kind merely tends to lessen the responsibility of the motor driver and to encourage faster and more careless driving, to the ever-increasing danger of the unlighted pedestrian.

And

If motorists drove in accordance with the Highway Code, so that they could pull up within the distance of the road they could see to be clear, they would never have any difficulty in avoiding running down cyclists. To make compulsory the use of rear lights on cycles might be one step towards legalizing a standard of night driving which would increase the dangers on the roads not only to cyclists but to other road users as well.

It was in this year, 1934, that cyclists using just a red rear reflector were now required to additionally have a white patch on the rear of their bike, by the 1934 Road Traffic Act. The traditional design of the classic Dutch bike is an artefact of this period (perhaps Dutch readers could provide some information on the legal history in the Netherlands!).

[UPDATE – see the comments from Bicycle Dutch, below].

From 1939, with restrictions on headlights required during  blackouts, it became compulsory, for the first time, for red rear lights to be used at night, in the Second World War. This proved to be the basis for a permanent law. In March 1945 (while the country was still at war) the government pushed a Bill through Parliament perpetuating the use of rear lights, once the war was over.

So, curiously, it is World War II blackouts that gave rise to the compulsory use of rear lights in on bicycles. Before this period, it was up to drivers – and indeed anyone cycling – to spot the presence of un-illuminated cyclists ahead of them.

Doubtless this use of lights was, and still is, largely a pragmatic measure. It just ‘helps’ to have a bit of illumination to allow drivers to spot you more easily, especially on dark roads, and with the speeds of motor vehicles increasing. In the modern world, it is unthinkable to cycle on dark country roads – where vehicles could have an approaching speed of 40-50mph – without a rear light. I certainly wouldn’t dream of doing this.

The picture in urban areas is rather different, however. Here street lights are almost universal, and vehicle speeds are (or at least should be) much lower – no more than 30mph. A reasonable question here is that, if it is so difficult to perceive a bicycle without a rear light, what does that mean for pedestrians without lights on their person, who are crossing the road, either at junctions or on zebra crossings? Bear in mind that a bicycle will be travelling away from a driver, giving an extra amount of time to be spotted, unlike a pedestrian, who will typically be stationary in the direction the driver is approaching from. Pedestrians are also far less likely to be wearing clothing with reflective patches. Or lights.

The absence of a rear bicycle light, when cycling in urban areas, under streetlights, is widely seen as reckless and dangerous, yet we do not insist on these standards of illumination for pedestrians who will, very often, be in the road. The increasing prevalence of ‘shared space’ – which has the intention of making it easier for pedestrians to mingle in places where people will be driving – makes this philosophical question all the more pertinent.

I always have a rear light on my bike, but it is entirely reasonable to argue that my higher standard of illumination puts un-illuminated pedestrians at greater risk when they venture into the road. Rear lights on bikes creates a general precedent for objects in the road being illuminated; un-illuminated objects (or people) will be less readily perceived under these conditions than otherwise.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the standards that used to be applied solely to people riding bikes are now shifting towards people walking too. There was the notable case last year of an insurance company appealing against a payout for a brain-damaged young girl, hit by a driver on a country road, because she wasn’t wearing a hi-visibility vest. Perhaps it is only a matter of time before we expect people crossing the road not just to have reflective clothing, but even lights. I hope that day never comes, but this is the direction we are travelling in.

Of course this doesn’t mean I think bicycles should not have front and rear lights, or that I ever ride without them. Indeed, the two bikes I use on a regular basis have lights permanently attached to the bike, and that will always be ready to go, at the flick of a switch – powered by a dynamo. The bicycle itself is my visibility tool, with reflective elements built into it – pedal reflectors, reflective sidewalls, and reflectors (in addition to lights) both front and rear.

This kind of visibility is largely unobjectionable, because it is subtly built into the vehicle, and requires no extra cost on my part – I don’t need to wear any special clothing, or carry around any extra items. Unfortunately bicycles in Britain are rarely sold with lights fitted to them, as part of the bike. When autumn rolls around, people find themselves caught out. This is true even for bikes which are explicitly marketed as ‘city’ or ‘utility’ bikes. You wouldn’t expect to buy a car without headlights, and yet it is apparently the norm for bicycles, even for those that will never be used for sporting purposes.

Riding without lights is, of course, illegal, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it – but it is not hard to feel that the reaction to people who do ride at night in urban areas without lights is often overblown. If you ‘nearly hit’ someone riding without lights, well you could just as equally have ‘nearly hit’ a pedestrian in the road. You should be driving – or riding – to the limits of your own visibility, not relying upon people or objects in the road to make themselves visible to you, because we don’t expect them to, unless they happen to be on a bike.

I suspect many people who fixate on this issue would have a heart attack in Dutch cities like Utrecht or Amsterdam where, at night, the levels of people who have functional lights on their bikes is considerably lower than in Britain – on some evenings, at a rough guess, typically around 50 percent are riding without any lights at all. Reflective clothing is non-existent.

Two gentlemen without rear lights on a cycle track in Utrecht

Lightless in Amsterdam – from this video by Thomas Collardeau

But this never strikes me as being particularly hazardous – the environment in these city centres feels safe, much more so than British urban areas. Encounters with motor vehicles are limited, and where they do occur, they are at slow speeds, and in areas where pedestrians are mingling in the street anyway.

Indeed, cyclists here essentially amount to wheeled pedestrians. They look like them, they move like them, except at running or jogging speed. Lack of lights just doesn’t seem like a serious problem, although there are frequent operations by Dutch police.  The broader issue is one of civility, and what we want our towns and cities to look like. Reflective clothing, and excessive lighting, just doesn’t feel appropriate in high density areas. It is the wrong answer to the problem posed by motor traffic.

If driving in Britain was like cycling in Britain

You need to make a short trip with your children, by car.

The first thing to do is to dress them (and yourself) appropriately. That means ensuring you are wearing dayglo reflective tabards, and crash helmets. Driving a car is very dangerous, and you also need to ensure that you are visible to other road users. They will not be expected to see you, unless you are glowing, and illuminated.

The next step is to get your car ready. There isn’t anywhere secure to store your car on the street, so you’ll have to fumble it out of the shed. You will need to unlock your car, and then attach lights and luggage to your it.

The vast majority of cars sold in Britain are for recreational purposes – for driving around in the woods, for instance – meaning that they have no coverings over their wheels, or anywhere to store possessions, or lighting systems. These have to be fitted by the buyer, in their own time, and at extra expense.

Most people don’t know how to do this, and so water and filth from the road will get distributed over them when the roads are wet. Consequently they don’t drive when it is raining. They don’t use their cars to shop either, because they don’t have anywhere to put the items they have bought.

The transmission of nearly all cars is exposed. Grease can easily get on your clothes, so you have to wear clips to keep them out of the way. Without regular maintenance, the transmission will go wrong. This means many cars languish, rusting, in back gardens, because they have quickly broken and people can’t be bothered to fix them.

Fortunately you are one of the few car enthusiasts, who has taken time to learn the intricacies of how your car works, and how to adapt it (as much as you can) for everyday use, and how to fix it. (Travelling by car in Britain is – strangely – the only mode of transport that requires this degree of intimate knowledge.)

You – and you children – sit in your car, open to the elements, with no protection from crashes with trucks. Being hit by one of these vehicles will obviously be catastrophic.

Unfortunately almost all the other vehicles on the roads are trucks, travelling at their normal, regular speed of 40mph, far faster than the maximum speed of your car, which is 20mph.

Driving cars is deeply unpopular. You are one of the few people who chooses to make short trips by car.

The government makes regular exhortations about the benefits of car driving, and ‘encouraging’ people to use cars, but to little or no effect. Car use remains the transport choice for a tiny minority of people.

Going anywhere by car will require you to travel in the same space as the trucks everyone else is driving, which bear down on you alarmingly. There is no legal alternative.

Your natural instinct is to drive to the side of the road, out of the way of these trucks, but official guidance is to drive your car in ‘the primary position’ at places where you sense conflict could occur (which is nearly everywhere in urban areas), directly in front of the trucks roaring up behind you.

No truck driver understands why you do this – you seem to be deliberately positioning your much slower vehicle in their way – and many will become furious, honking their horns and yelling at you to ‘drive your car at the side, in the car lane’. (Car lanes rarely exist, and when they do, they are functionally useless, being narrower than your car. Official training suggests you don’t use them).

This abuse – although unpleasant – is much better than the alternative of you (and your children) being hit or crushed in your car, because truck drivers feel free to squeeze past you. Roads are now designed for the way trucks travel, not the way cars travel, so truck drivers will frequently attempt to overtake you in dangerous locations.

There are a small number of cars on the market that would allow you and your children to travel side-by-side, but travelling in this way is, like the ‘primary position’, usually seen as a deliberate provocation.

You have reluctantly chosen instead to buy a narrow car, with your family positioned in a long line, safely spaced out from each other – out of the way of truck drivers.

While this car has the advantage of not annoying truck drivers, it means you can’t hold a conversation with anyone else in your car. Travelling in single file like this is something you do sadly, and you dreamily lust after a car that would allow you to travel with your children beside you, without being yelled at by truck drivers.

Being isolated from your children like this is frustrating, and you yearn to be able to listen to music, or to listen to the radio as you travel, like truck drivers do. Unfortunately this is extremely dangerous and you will be subjected to severe opprobrium by anyone who sees you doing this. How could you isolate yourself from the sounds of truck drivers speeding up behind you?

Even travelling by car with children is seriously frowned upon. Truck drivers say you are irresponsible, and putting them at risk, placing them on the roads with trucks. Better for you to transport your children in a truck, they say.

Stubbornly, you stick to your principles, although you are not entirely sure why.

Your town has a large number of one-way streets and roads. These roads used to be two-way, until the large number of trucks that appeared on the roads meant that they had to be adjusted, for ‘traffic flow purposes’.

Consequently what should be a short trip is about twice the length it could be, as you have to travel the long way round on these one-way roads, with the trucks. One-way roads aren’t too much of  a problem for truck drivers as, being much faster, they hardly notice the extra distance.

You wonder to yourself why on earth it is that your considerably narrower car can’t be allowed to travel in both directions on these streets, while trucks travel in just one direction, but don’t dwell on it too much, as it is depressing.

Sometimes you are tempted to just pop up one of these one-way streets to save yourself a huge amount of distance, and exposure to danger from trucks, but you are a Good Car Driver, and would never do anything to Give Car Drivers A Bad Name.

The same goes for driving on the separate bits at the side of the road. These are very tempting places to drive on, especially in places where the number of trucks is especially thunderous. However, you are strictly forbidden from doing this, and truck drivers will berate you for ‘being dangerous’. Again, you don’t want to Give Car Drivers A Bad Name. Your reputation as a car driver is bad enough as it is.

You wish that the simple act of driving your car from A to B could be simple, direct and painless, and free from scary interactions with trucks. You wish that you could drive it with your children beside you, and that you didn’t need to wear special equipment. You wish that driving a car didn’t require constant vigilance, and awareness of the potential hazards about to be presented by trucks being driven around you.

Surely such a place couldn’t exist?

The problem with the word ‘cyclist’

The news that the police should use some discretion and not issue Fixed Penalty Notices to anyone who rides a bike on a footway, irrespective of the local context, the type of person riding, and how they are behaving, was predictably greeted with a degree of outrage and hysteria – outrage and hysteria whipped up, deliberately or otherwise, by the British press.

A small part of the problem here is down to the word ‘cyclist’, which tends to conjure up in the mind of the average Briton an image of a young or middle-aged man, wearing odd-looking clothing, and travelling ‘at speed’ (although not faster than motor traffic) – or, failing that, a teenager or ‘youth’ tearing around antisocially on a mountain bike. Giving these cyclists ‘permission’ to ride on pavements is plainly not a good thing.

There are obvious reasons for this association – these are, usually, nearly the only types of ‘cyclist’ most people will see on a day-to-day basis. Other types of cycling – other types of people cycling – have largely disappeared in Britain, thanks to the hostility and/or inconvenience of our road system.

The Daily Mail chose to illustrate their news item about discretion on pavement cycling with this (old) picture –

A burly-looking man travelling purposefully on the pavement, which has plenty of people on it. If there is a kind of person who should be on the road – and who probably couldn’t complain about getting a ticket – this is it. Hardly appropriate to illustrate the issue.

The Daily Mail could, of course, have used a different kind of ‘pavement cyclist’ – one like this, for instance.

A ‘cyclist’ on the pavement

This is the kind of discretion that is being advised by the minister for cycling – not forcing young children to share space with motor traffic when they pose little or no danger or inconvenience to anyone walking.

Unfortunately when we hear the word ‘cyclist’ we don’t immediately think of very young girls riding tiny bikes with pink baskets. ‘A cyclist’ is not a child.

But it is this trickiness about the word ‘cyclist’, and what it suggests, that is part of a wider problem. When plans talk of ‘improvements for cyclists’ the public will unfortunately, and inevitably, have an image of the type of people cycling now, not the people who could be cycling, if conditions were right – people like them, or their children. ‘Why are we doing things for cyclists?’ they might ask – why are we doing things for a tiny minority of people, and strange ones at that, who wear funny clothes. 

There is no easy way out of this – for us to stop thinking about ‘cyclists’ in this way will require wholesale changes to the way our roads and streets are designed, so that the word ‘cyclist’ will encompass everyone and lose its divisiveness. But in the meantime it’s probably helpful to avoid using ‘cyclist’, when reasonably possible – not because it’s  intrinsically bad, but because it has unhelpful connotations.

Doubtless at some point in the (hopefully near) future we can reclaim it.

Consistency on helmets

Note: some of what follows isn’t actually true. But only slightly.

In a move that has caused controversy in the pedestrian community, James Cracknell has come out in favour of a law to make it compulsory to wear a helmet when you walk across the road.

Speaking on the Sportlobster programme, he said

I was cycling down Route 66 in America, and a fuel truck hit me. His wing mirror hit the back of my head. The truck hit me at 70mph, and I would be dead without the helmet I was wearing.

But I’ve been thinking. What if I’d been hit hit by that truck while I was walking at the side of that road? Surely a helmet would have saved me in exactly the same way?

You know, we need to protect our heads when we’re on the road. Not just while cycling. But also while we’re walking. Use your head. Wear a helmet.

Cracknell admitted that, when it comes to helmets,

The pedestrian community is strangely ‘anti’ being told what to do. So you can’t have legislation that you should wear a helmet, because it’s an invasion of your rights to do what you want.

However, he was quick to point out that there’s no real downside to wearing a helmet for crossing the road.

But what’s the worst that can happen if you wear a helmet? There’s no downside, apart from maybe having slightly messy hair. That’s it. Whereas the upside is enormous.

And if you think it’s an invasion of your privacy, or someone telling you what to do, to wear a helmet when you walk across the road, imagine having someone wipe your arse for the rest of your life. That is the downside. Or not even surviving! The best thing that could happen is that someone has to wipe your arse for the rest of your life. I would choose to wear a helmet, and have slightly messy hair.

Actor Ralf Little – also appearing on the programme – was quickly won over by Cracknell’s faultless logic.

Why wouldn’t you wear a helmet for walking across the road? What’s the worst that can happen? You’re out walking anyway. Who cares what your hair looks like? It doesn’t matter.

Indeed. Messing up your hair is trivial, compared to the risk of suffering a catastrophic brain injury, if you get hit by a driver. He continued –

I follow James’s missus Bev, and she’s been tweeting over the last few days about Schumacher, and the need to wear a helmet when you cross the road. And the anger – this bizarre anger – from people, this response of going ‘how dare you’, this real vitriol she’s been getting… All she’s saying is, ‘listen, it would be a good idea if everyone was safe when you are on the road.’

Quite right. It would be a good idea if everyone was safe when they are on the road. Just protect your head. What kind of idiot would object to that?

Cracknell also pointed out the extra importance of wearing a helmet while walking across the public highway. Racing drivers wear helmets on racing tracks, where they are surrounded by drivers who are competent and know what they are doing. However –

On the road, you don’t know what anyone else is going to do.

Wise words. Racing drivers are highly trained, whereas drivers on the road are amateurs, and are more likely to crash into you when you walk across the road. They might not be wearing their glasses, and hit you on a pedestrian crossing, causing catastrophic head injuries. Or they might be travelling at 55mph in a 30mph zone, and hit you on a pedestrian crossing, causing catastrophic head injuries. You don’t know what anyone else is going to do. 

It’s simple, says Cracknell. What’s the downside? Wear a helmet when you cross the road.  How can anyone argue against something that will save your life? How?

Please do read Beyond the Kerb’s piece The Brick Wall, if you haven’t already

There is no ‘us’

A few months ago I had a bit of a near miss with a driver who, in essence, failed to expect me to come around a corner on a bicycle. Likewise, I failed to expect him to appear so suddenly – a function of the speed he was travelling at.

He was driving straight ahead into a parking space, and I was cycling straight ahead, in a path perpendicular to his. I had arrived at our point of conflict first, and he was going far too fast for the situation, but (fortunately) slow enough to be able to brake and avoid hitting me.

I instinctively yelled out as this occurred, principally, I think, out of genuine concern that I was about to be crashed into. Then, reasonably calmly, I remonstrated with the driver – a thick-set elderly man in a Jaguar – about being a bit more careful. This didn’t get the desired response – instead I was told to look where I was going, and given some abusive comments for good measure.

With hindsight, I probably should have just pedalled away at this point, but his abuse prompted me to ask whether he would talk like that to the elderly ladies who cycle on this bit of road – ladies he could well have encountered instead of me.

The conversation then took a bizarre twist. The man was parking up in front a shop (recently closed) which he had owned with his wife, and he saw fit to regale me with the number of times ‘elderly ladies’ had nearly been run down by cyclists on the pavement outside his shop. The implication was that I was somehow responsible, by association, because I was using the same mode of transport. That I was reckless and irresponsible by default.

But – quite obviously – this had absolutely nothing to do with me. I have never ridden past his shop on the pavement, nor have I terrified grannies.

Somebody else was responsible. Yet the conversation had switched from a discussion about the actual danger he had just posed to me, to a general one about how ‘cyclists’ behave. I was no longer an individual – I had become a manifestation of general cycling wrongdoing.

This isn’t the first time something like this happened. In another instance, a year or so earlier, I followed a driver into a car park to ask him to give  a little more space the next time he was overtaking someone, only to be told that ‘you jump red lights’.

A psychological explanation of these kinds of responses must lie in the fact that people who cycle are a minority – a very small minority – of the general population. It is much easier to stereotype people when they are a minority, and to lump them together into one homogeneous mass.

I’ve explored before how a Kurdish friend felt the need to write to national newspapers to explain that not all Kurds in the UK are like this man, who killed a girl on a zebra crossing, and left her to die. Rationally, it didn’t make any sense at all for her to have done this, because a calm examination of the facts would serve to demonstrate that Kurds in the UK are probably about as well-behaved as everyone else. But I can understand why she did it – the story was headline news for some time, and might have served to create the impression – in the heads of bigots – that all Kurds are like the man in question, especially when not many people in the UK are Kurds, and none of them is well-known.

The attitudes of the two men who responded to me with the misdeeds of other people who were riding bikes are essentially enabled by the fact that cycling is a minority mode of transport, and therefore a ripe target for those people cannot differentiate – or choose not to differentiate – between individuals. If I had been walking, and we had got into a discussion about how their driving had endangered me, it would have been obviously nonsensical for them to respond with the misdeeds of other people walking around – perhaps someone who had bumped into a granny, or someone who had knocked over a pram while walking along. It would have been laughable. But precisely the same form of response seemed acceptable and serious to these two, purely because I happened to be cycling, instead of walking.

It’s deeply odd, and probably worthy of being explored in more detail. But what is just as odd is that people who apparently seek to advance the cause of cycling as a mode of transport – people who cycle themselves, and want to see more of it – actually accept the logic of these kinds of arguments. They think that drivers have a poor attitude towards cycling precisely because some other people break the rules while cycling, and that, consequently, the way to address this is to attempt to stop people breaking rules while cycling.

These arguments will often in appear in the form ‘giving us a bad name’, or that ‘we’ (‘we’ being anyone who rides a bike) ‘can be our own worse enemy’. The logic is that cycling has a bad reputation – which manifests itself in bad driver behaviour around people cycling – and that this bad reputation flows from the fact that ‘we’ are quite badly behaved as a group. Superficially, it therefore seems obvious that to improve this situation we have to stop people on bikes from breaking the law.

The latest example of this kind of argument appeared in the Times in December, in a piece written by James Kennedy. He wrote

What I am arguing is that in the absence of exceptional circumstance we expect everyone to obey the laws of the road. I completely believe that were we to achieve this then cycling becomes safer and more popular in every sense of the word.

If they felt [cyclists] were “playing by the rules” all road users would be more likely to be considerate of cyclists’ needs – at the ground level drivers would be less angry with cyclists and would give them more space on the road on a day-to-day basis, and at the legislative level everyone would be a hell of a lot more amenable to cycle safety law changes if the popular consciousness wasn’t so pissed off with cyclists in the first place.

The re-categorisation of cyclists as being within the road rules and the weight of expectation of behaviour that comes with it is the only way that we will make sure everyone gets along, and we keep the eggs on the plate and off our hands.

Roads on which everyone gets along are safer roads. That will only happen when we’re all playing by the same rules.

Once again, we have the call for us to ‘get our house in order’, as a way of gaining respect, and as a way of ‘re-categorising’ ourselves as being law-abiding. To stop giving ourselves ‘a bad name’.

The basic, essential problem here is that there is no ‘us’. It might seem like that, because being a persecuted minority tends to push people together, but there really isn’t. We are all individuals. It is completely futile to expect ‘cyclists’ as a group to somehow behave perfectly, or even behave slightly better.

Human beings are miscreants. We get away with what we can get away with. The fact that some people pedal through red lights isn’t a function of them being a cyclists, it’s a function of them being a human being. All the rules, laws and guidance in the Highway Code are consistently broken by just about everybody, all the time, whether they are driving, walking, cycling or catching a bus. We break speed limits, we park in the wrong places, we pedal on pavements, we don’t look before we step into the road – in short, we do things badly, whatever mode of transport we are employing. Statistics consistently show that people cycling are no worse when it comes to law-breaking than anyone else.

Yet for some reason it is only the misdemeanours that people commit while they are cycling that contribute to a wider hatred of everyone who rides a bike.

So not only is it futile to expect ‘cyclists’ as a group to behave better than anyone else, we’re misdiagnosing the problem in the first place. You – an individual who happens to be cycling – are not hated and despised by a particular driver because they saw someone else on a bike doing something bad the other day, or last week, or last year. You are hated because they don’t understand you, because you are in their way, and because you are easy to stereotype. These issues of lack of understanding, conflict, annoyance and stereotyping will persist even if – by some holy miracle – we manage to ensure that no person on a bike ever jumps a ride light, anywhere.

When you exhort ‘us’ to stop jumping red lights, or to stop cycling antisocially, all you are really succeeding in doing is reinforcing the impression you are attempting to eradicate. You are engaging in precisely the same kind of stereotyping.

The natural impulse to protect, and what it means for the school run

A couple of days ago I was sent this email circular from PTRC, a company that runs training courses for transport and planning. It’s by David Jilks, the PR manager for CILT (the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport).

Running away from the school run

Happy New Year! My son’s back at school this week. Forgive me for sounding like something from a Hovis ad, but when I were a lad we walked to school. At the grand age of seven I was dragging my duffel bag in one hand and five year old sister in t’other.

But now my lad’s ten and I still do that thing I know really mucks up traffic flows and – far from being smarter travel, is significantly dumber – I drive my kid to school.

Yes, it encourages bottlenecks, peak-period car travel and all those other things that make transport planners weep; of course I see that from a professional point of view. But there’s no bus, it’s over a mile away and he’s not cycling on those roads – not with all those frustrated drivers taking risks to get past the school traffic…

School runs are a tricky thing. They are complete folly, and kids ought to be getting the exercise. But you want, above all, to keep them safe.

The school run is the most pointless waste of resources ever to cause congestion. If transport planners can’t persuade someone who works in the industry, like me, to give it up, then that’s a problem, I confess. The main reason for owning a car, though, is to hopefully get your loved one safely to their destination. So is the school run just a natural impulse we should acknowledge and design into our schemes, rather than discouraging, or do we need to re-educate parents like me?

David Jinks

It’s a refreshingly honest piece and, consequently, a revealing one. It demonstrates that appeals to people’s better nature won’t really work when it comes to tackling school run problems, and the issue of getting people to shift to cycling from driving. Even a transport planning professional, who knows the ‘folly’ of the school run, about how it is a grotesque and ‘pointless waste of resources’, keeps doing it anyway.

And it is grotesque. Some facts and figures from the National Travel Survey –

• 63% of all trips to primary school of 1-2 miles are driven (just 2% are cycled)
• For primary school trips of 2-5 miles, 75% are driven
• 43% of all primary school children are driven to school
• 16% of all motor traffic on the road in urban areas in Britain between 8-9am on a weekday is formed of the school run
• At 8:40am, 24% of all motor traffic in urban areas is formed of the school run

Considered in terms of the congestion and delay alone, that’s shocking, to say nothing of the effects on child health and wellbeing, air quality, and the dangers posed to other people from the presence of so many vehicles on the road. It doesn’t need to be like this.

But while David Jinks acknowledges the severity of the problem, and how silly it is that we all keep contributing to it, his response is slightly curious. He suggests that there is a choice between ‘designing in’ the school run (as currently configured) into new schemes, acknowledging that huge numbers of children will be driven to school, and designing accordingly, or ‘re-education’.

‘Re-education’ clearly isn’t going to make a jot of difference, if David himself continues to drive his child to his school, while knowing how bad it is for everyone to do this. Parents who drive the school run already know there are far better ways for their children to get there, and even if they don’t, telling them that they are awful people for driving is hardly likely to work, in and of itself. They are driving their children to school for a reason.

David Jinks has partly arrived at the answer when he refers to a ‘natural impulse’. The impulse of parents is to keep their children safe, and that explains why so many drive their children to school. It’s the best way to protect their children when so many other parents are also driving.

However, in acknowledging this natural impulse, he suggests that we accommodate it only in a certain set form – through driving. By implication, the only way to make the school run look and feel safe for parents is to continue facilitating driving, apparently the only way to ‘get your loved one safely to their destination’.

But we know that it is entirely possible for children to get safely to school, without being driven, if the physical environment is designed appropriately. This is the reason why parents in the UK are often so reluctant to let their children walk or cycle to school – because of genuine physical danger.

The ‘natural impulse’ to protect children should be designed into our roads and streets, rather than leaving them so unattractive that the ‘natural impulse’ manifests itself in cocooning those children in vehicles, with deleterious consequences for those other children who aren’t so protected.

The natural impulse to protect, accommodated through the physical environment. A route to a primary school in Assen.

Another primary school in Assen, where the school run by bike is made attractive and easy. Children are protected, and safe.

Framing the problem of the school run as a hard choice between ‘a natural impulse to protect’ and ‘educating’ parents and children to expect, and deal, with risk is wrongheaded. That risk should be removed at source. We cannot expect parents to give up driving all by themselves when so many other parents will continue to do so, and consequently continuing to make the roads and streets around schools unattractive.

This piece from Sustrans is indicative of this mistaken approach, in which the onus is placed on the parents to push their children into cycling to school, even though it is desperately unattractive, as you can see in the video.

The Sustrans officer is quoted –

I made this video of Ethan riding to school as part instructional and part inspirational, so parents may gain courage and comfort in the fact that such things are possible.

Well, it is right to say that young children cycling to school in Britain is possible, but unfortunately that doesn’t get us very far when that option is far less feasible, safe and pleasant than simply pushing children into a car.

The school run in Stevenage. ‘Possible’ for a child to cycle on this road, but how many parents would let their their children do so, when the road is so hostile?

The video might be ‘inspirational’, but I can’t really seeing it inspiring many parents to let their young children out onto the roads on a bike. The impulse is to protect.

The school run is a Tragedy of the Commons, in that the problem is created by individuals acting rationally in their own self-interest, while simultaneously creating a disastrous overall outcome for the population as a whole. But these kinds of problems cannot be addressed by expecting individual people to act against their own self-interest. Without changing the physical environment, we are forced to rely upon people choosing to abandon cars spontaneously, but very few will be willing to do so when, in making that choice, they are put a disadvantage by the majority who do not.

Even if we manage to create an attractive school run by persuading a majority of people to abandon driving, that would be an inherently fragile solution, in that people are entirely free to start driving their children to school again in the future, posing risk and danger to those who don’t. Safe routes to school for walking and cycling need to designed and engineered, and made physically permanent. They won’t be achieved by stigmatising people, or appealing to their better nature, or expecting them to change their minds all by themselves.

One activity can have different forms

We use words to describe things. They are useful.

A small problem, however, is that there aren’t enough of them. Human beings can only remember a finite number of words, and that means, inevitably, that there aren’t enough words to describe all the things in the world. They are ambiguous.

One pertinent example for this blog is the simple word ‘cycling’, which is used to describe an extraordinarily diverse range of activities that happen to involve two wheels, or more, and pedalling. (The Dutch have a slight advantage over us in that they have two words for cycling. Fietsen for ordinary day-to-day cycling, and wielrennen for riding a bike for speed.)

The same is true for other words. ‘Driving’ could involve trundling around a car park, or it could involve piloting a racing car at tremendous speeds around a track. ‘Sailing’ could mean a leisurely day out, or it could mean the frenetic action of the America’s Cup. ‘Skiing’ could mean sliding at low speed on gentle slopes, or hammering down a mountain at close to a hundred miles an hour. And so on.

This nuance seems to be lost on people who argue for mandatory helmet laws. They forget that the same apparent activity can carry different levels of risk, depending on circumstances.

‘Driving’ can be very dangerous, or very safe. It can be dangerous if you are driving in a race at over a hundred miles an hour, safe if you are just driving around a car park. Likewise ‘sailing’ can be very dangerous. People die. But it can also be a safe and pleasant day out. ‘Skiing’, as we have seen in recent days, can be dangerous, if you are travelling fast through an off-piste rock field. But it can also be safe, if you are on marked pistes, and aren’t taking risks.

And precisely the same is true for ‘cycling’. This

Picture courtesy of AP

is not the same as this –

Cycling on the Oudegracht in Utrecht

These enormous differences in danger and risk are effectively ignored by mandatory helmet law campaigners, who would force helmets onto the heads of three of the people in the above picture, but not on the other two.

For comedy value, try to imagine James Cracknell intoning into the ear of the woman travelling serenely the back of the bike, in his most serious, earnest voice,

My head was smashed into by a lorry travelling at seventy miles an hour. But I was lucky. I was wearing a helmet. If I hadn’t been, I’d be dead. Use your head. Wear a helmet.

It’s utterly absurd, but reflects only the absurdity of attempts to make wearing helmets compulsory, no matter what you are doing. (As an aside, there are many pedestrians who have had their heads smashed into by vehicles, but this would be a very poor basis for making pedestrian helmets compulsory).

I think there is perhaps a dim awareness of this absurdity, which manifests itself in the sort of crude emotional blackmail that quickly appears in the arguments of helmet law campaigners, typified by this passage in Beverley Turner’s piece –

if personal liberty matters to you, not being able to take yourself to the lavatory on waking will come as a real shock.

Again, picture her making this argument to the people in the picture in Utrecht for maximum comedy value. How dare you travel around like that! is about the level of sophistication of her argument.

‘You obviously care more about your hair than your ability to walk unaided!’ Beverley Turner hissed at them.

To be absolutely clear, I am not ‘against’ helmets. I wear one myself when I am on a racing bike, or when I am mountain biking, mainly because, when I’m exerting myself, I tend to take more risks, and also because the discomfort of a helmet doesn’t matter so much in these situations. But I am capable of understanding that there are different types of cycling, and I don’t wear a helmet every time I ride a bike, just as I wouldn’t wear a full face crash helmet when I drive a car into town, but probably would if I was on a racing track. 

What I am against is compulsion, precisely because it is a highly blunt instrument that utterly fails to take into account the diverse forms of an activity, and will have deleterious consequences at a population level. If you are genuinely concerned about head injuries, you should campaign for the kinds of conditions in the pictures that feature in this post, and here; conditions where the risk of a head injury is negligible. Prevention is better than cure, as this excellent piece argued yesterday. It can’t be stated more simply than that.