Helmets in cars, helmets on bicycles

An inquest has recently been held at Worthing Magistrates’ Court into the death of Toby Woolford, a young man from Horsham, who died when his car collided with an HGV on the A27 near Arundel station.

Drivers speak of fatal crash horror

A man who saw a fatal road crash carried on driving because he did not realise how serious it was.

Toby Woolford, 19, of Andrews Road, Southwater, was killed when his Vauxhall Corsa was involved in a collision with a lorry on the A27 near Arundel station.

Christopher Howard, of Potters Mead, Littlehampton, told the inquest yesterday (Thursday): “I saw this car coming westbound down the hill. He had lost control and was in a skid, basically coming towards me. I still can’t remember if I took avoiding action, but he missed me. I looked in the mirror and saw the car go sideways into the lorry that was behind me. It did a little hop in the air and stopped.

“The collision itself didn’t appear to be that great. I realised that I didn’t have a mobile phone. I saw a couple of people. I knew there were plenty of people behind the lorry so I carried on. My initial thought was ‘Wow – he’s lucky’ because the passenger side hit the lorry. I didn’t perceive it was a life-threatening accident.

“It’s a 40 mph limit there. He was certainly doing all of that. Whether he was exceeding it I wouldn’t like to say, but it was certainly too fast for the conditions. It wasn’t raining at the time, but there had been a downpour.”

HGV driver Ben Nesbitt, of Middle Mead, Fareham, Hampshire, said he had been driving eastwards at about 30mph shortly after 7am on Thursday, August 25, last year.

He told the inquest at Worthing Magistrates’ Court: “I headed up the hill and a car came round the corner. I applied the brakes and it hit straight after. I saw there was just one person in the car, pulled the lorry back (reversed) and tried to help. I phoned the police straight away. I had to give my phone to someone else because I couldn’t say where I was.”

Angela Standing, of Norfolk Cottages, Warningcamp, Arundel, said: “I don’t know what made me look in my rear view mirror, but as I did a car behind me looked as though he clipped the kerb. I could see he was struggling to rectify himself (wrestling with the steering wheel), but he didn’t. The lorry driver didn’t have anywhere to go.

“I ran back up the hill because I was first-aid trained and I thought perhaps I could help. I went round to the driver’s side and the young gentleman. I held his head up so he could breathe. I asked him ‘What’s your name?’, but there was no response. I called him ‘Sunshine’ because I wanted to call him something. I gave him a running commentary and kept telling him the cavalry was coming, don’t worry, everything’s going to be okay.”

Firefighters, ambulancemen and police soon arrived, but Mr Woolford had sustained severe head injuries and he died at the scene. Tests for drugs and alcohol proved negative.

Quite obviously, a tragic incident – a young man dead, with his entire life ahead of him. A moment’s inattention, or carelessness, from Toby led to a unrecoverable swerve that resulted in his death.

I don’t have a lot to say about this accident. What did strike me, however, is that although Toby died of severe head injuries – thankfully very quickly – the inquest did not discuss how Toby’s life might have been saved by something he could have been wearing, but was not, at the time of the collision.

This is quite proper, of course; it would be unseemly to suggest or imply that Toby was somehow responsible for his own death by failing to use protective equipment while inside his car – a crash helmet, for instance. Such a helmet, similar to those worn by motorcyclists or racing drivers, could possibly have saved Toby’s life. On the other hand, it might not have. We simply don’t know. And it would be wrong to speculate about it. Especially because no driver, or any occupant of a car, would ever see fit to wear crash helmets while using their car for ordinary, day to day activities. It would be quite improper to talk about how Toby wasn’t wearing a crash helmet, even if there was a remote possibility it could have saved his life, because drivers are not expected to wear them.

Bicycle users, on the other hand, are increasingly expected to wear helmets, with the attendant consequence that their failure to do so at a time when they are killed in road collisions is mentioned, quite often irrespective of any evidence that the helmet may or may not have been of any use whatsoever.

When the Evening Standard reported the death of the cyclists Min Joo Lee at King’s Cross last year, their initial article contained the information that she was not wearing a helmet. This was hardly relevant, given that she was crushed to death by the lorry behind her (the story was quickly amended).

The media are not alone in presuming the effectiveness of helmets for cyclists; the medical profession frequently sing from the same hymnsheet. Midlands Air Ambulance are, it seems, quite keen for cyclists to wear helmets, presenting us with a list of injuries suffered by cyclists who were not wearing helmets in their region, along with a list of injuries to helmeted cyclists that, it is alleged, could have been a lot worse had their helmets been absent.

There are some people who have their helmet to thank for their reduced level of injury.  For example the ambulance service was called to a man who had fallen from his bicycle in Ellesmere in Shropshire.  Although he was wearing a helmet, it was badly damaged and the man was initially knocked unconscious.  The responder who was first on scene said that without the helmet he could have been significantly worse. She added that his friend wasn`t wearing one and got a real shock and vowed to wear one in future.  The man was released from hospital later in the day.  Other examples include:

• A man in his 40s who was airlifted to hospital from Evesham in Worcestershire who had a head injury that could have been a lot worse had he not been for wearing a helmet.
• A 50 year old man who had his helmet to thank for not suffering more serious injuries when he was in collision with a car in Cannock

Sadly some people who don’t wear helmets are not as fortunate:

• A 60 year old man who was airlifted from Rugby who had suffered a severe head injury after an incident with a car.
• A 17 year old from Coventry ended up in hospital after suffering a serious head injury after a collision with a car – he wasn’t wearing a helmet.
• A cyclist was taken on blue lights to the Regional Trauma Centre at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham after a collision with a car in Stirchley – he had suffered a broken jaw and other head injuries – no helmet was worn
• A cyclist in Wolverhampton suffered multiple injuries after a collision with a van.  No helmet was worn.

This latter group of people listed are quite obviously not very fortunate, but why their lack of fortune should be connected in any way to their lack of helmet when suffering ‘multiple injuries’, or indeed a ‘broken jaw’, is something of a mystery to me, given that a helmet does not protect the jaw, nor obviously the entire body. Nor, indeed, are the applicable standards for cycle helmets any indication of effectiveness in the event of a collision with a motor vehicle – and yet all these individuals listed by Midlands Air Ambulance were struck by motor vehicles.

This baffling absence of logic is sadly par for the course for the medical profession, who have an unfortunate tendency to formulate policy by anecdote when it comes to helmet advocacy. Here’s another anecdote, with the BBC helpfully reinforcing the message the paramedic self-evidently wanted to convey –

0730 Debabani and James have already been called out to the scene of a collision between a car and a cyclist. The cyclist, who wasn’t wearing a helmet, has a swollen and bruised ankle. James, the paramedic, says the cyclist was lucky to escape without suffering any head injuries.

James, I know you’re eager to get the message out, but you’re only making yourself look foolish by attempting to crowbar it in to a case in which someone has suffered an injured foot. The same goes for you, BBC.

All this silliness – and it’s very easy to find – is, as I said above, a consequence of helmet use for cyclists becoming increasingly expected and ‘natural.’ ‘The cyclist’ is rapidly becoming the person at fault for failing to take a measure that is naturally required of them; the judiciary are now apparently willing to adjust the sentences of people responsible for causing the deaths of cyclists on the grounds that the killed individual was not wearing a helmet, a ‘mitigating factor’ suggesting leniency. This is in the absence of any evidence of whether a helmet might have had any effect whatsoever on the outcome of the collision. Coroners are also willing to indulge in idle speculation about whether a helmet could have saved the life of a cyclist who was struck and then run over by cars.

Needless to say, there is never any such speculation, however well- or ill-founded, about whether crash helmets could have saved the lives of car drivers in collisions, either by judges, magistrates, coroners, or the media.

Nor, as far as I can tell, are the British Medical Association, or paramedic organisations, advocating the adoption of crash helmets for car occupants, despite the fact that severe head and chest injuries are the prime causes of death for car occupants in collisions. It would seem absurd for them to do so, of course; using a crash helmet for something so mundane and everyday as using a car for everyday transport would mark you out as an eccentric.

This despite the fact that the wearing of a crash helmet could – and I stress could – save the lives of car users like Toby Woolford.

My great great grandfather, genetics and environment

My great great grandfather, posing on his tricycle. And with his dog.

I think this photograph dates from the 1920s.

If you look closely, you can see that he has no right leg, below the knee. He lost this part of his limb in a railway accident as a teenager; an unsecured hay bale on a passing train caught him while he was standing on a platform, and pulled him under the train. The railway company offered him compensation, or a job for life on the railways. He took the job.

At the time this picture was taken, he would have been working at Ringwood station in Hampshire (a station that no longer exists, along with the line it stood on). His daughter – my great grandmother – lived in the village of Bashley, just over ten miles away; he would frequently come to visit her, cycling the twenty mile round trip on this fantastic contraption.

This can quite easily seem eccentric, or extraordinary, to us now; the fact that someone in the early part of the 20th century regularly cycled seemingly large distances on just one leg. But at the time it would have been deeply ordinary. The bicycle was still a commonplace, everyday, mode of transport, and would have been the way most people would have made a journey between Ringwood and Bashley.

My mum joked – upon seeing my interest in the photograph – that ‘cycling was in the blood’ of the family; that somehow ‘cycling’ had been passed, genetically, down four generations. You could make a case. My grandmother was still cycling around Bashley well into her eighties. (She has now, unfortunately, been frightened off her bicycle, and indeed from walking along the road beside it, and is effectively housebound as a result – about which more in a later post). My mum also cycled regularly from Bashley to Brockenhurst college as a teenager – six miles there, six miles back.

But this is of course where the ‘genetic’ explanation falters, because cycling slipped out of my family with my parents’ generation, as indeed it did with most babyboomers. I don’t remember seeing my parents cycling, beyond some very occasional ‘mountain biking’ with my dad. My own interest in cycling, as a mode of transport and as a leisure pursuit, into adulthood, is fortuitous, a combination of some chance decisions taken, and being in the right place at the right time. Statistically, I am a bit of an oddity. The great majority of my generation are like my parents – non-cyclists.

The laboured point I am making – and the one which I made to my mum – is that decisions to cycle, or not to cycle, are almost entirely a product of environment, not of personal character. When my great great grandfather was cycling to and from Bashley, the roads would have been blissfully quiet. As the twentieth century progressed, however, those very same roads have changed. Thunderous lorries roar past my grandmother’s house; the short trips she used to make up to the post office or to the farm shop – barely half a mile – have become impossible. She wasn’t especially terrified, having cycled for so long, and until so recently. But, pragmatically, she realised she was becoming more and more wobbly, and the margin for error had become paper-thin.

She wants to spend a few more years yet tinkering in her garden and kitchen, and so her bicycle has been abandoned. It now sits, forlornly, in her shed.

East Street, Horsham – A ‘shared space’ becomes closed to motor vehicles

I have written, on a number of previous occasions, about East Street in Horsham. This busy, narrow street in the centre of the town was converted into a ‘shared space’ scheme over the course of 2010. Much of the background is contained within this earlier post.

In principle, the conversion was a very good idea; the narrow pavements were replaced with a space in which pedestrians could mingle across the entire road width, in a relaxed fashion. Plenty of street furniture was incorporated into the redesign to ensure that the new layout, while still permitting motor vehicles to move through, did not look like ‘a road’ (this is a serious problem with Exhibition Road in London, which despite the new paving is straight and direct, without any obstacles or interruptions).

In addition, to ensure that pedestrians – who are by far the majority users of this thriving commercial centre – were genuinely able to ‘dominate’ East Street, the number and types of motor vehicles permitted to use the street was strictly limited; only to those vehicles loading on the street itself, and to the owners of disabled blue badges, who wish to park in the handful of marked bays.

This should have worked. Having been initially sceptical about how the scheme would play out, I was genuinely enthusiastic about it in the early days of its implementation. People were sitting on benches, chatting in the middle of the street, their children were playing, and there were only a handful of motor vehicles using the street, being driven carefully in the great majority of cases. Bicycles, which were able to use this one-way street in both directions, without restriction, were also interacting with pedestrians in an entirely friendly and peaceable way.

But there were several problems brewing. The first, and most serious, is that it has proved very difficult to stop the illegal use of the street by motor vehicles. Above, I was quite careful to specify that the movement of motor vehicles on the street, either for loading, or by disabled drivers, should be constrained to those loading or parking on the street itself.

Unfortunately – and this is a problem that has grown and grown – a lot of drivers have proved unwilling or unable to comprehend these signs and the rules, and quite merrily drive down the street to gain access to the Carfax or Market Square. Delivery drivers, especially, should not be doing this, as they should know better – but the one-way system to get into the Carfax is circuitous (rightly so – this shouldn’t be easy for motor vehicles) and East Street proves too tempting a shortcut. The same is true of those drivers, disabled or otherwise (usually otherwise) who like to drive down East Street to get to the cashpoints in the Carfax, or to pick up friends, or to access bars, pubs and restaurants, or to do a ‘quick’ bit of shopping while illegally parked.

Sit in a restaurant on East Street of an evening, and you will rapidly lose count of the number of vehicles passing down the street to park up in Market Square, or in the Carfax, or, seemingly, just to cruise through for the hell of it. Many of these drivers will also choose to park illegally on the street itself, outside of the marked bays, without blue badges, simply so they only have to walk a couple of paces to their restaurant of choice, instead of using the (free!) car parks a hundred yards away.

Some drivers even try to get into the ‘anarchic’ mingling spirit of shared space by driving the wrong way up this one-way street, like L502 SFG, getting into entertaining pickles with vehicles coming the other way. Driving on the right, or on the left? Who cares!

Note also – in addition to the hopeless driving – the number of parked vehicles and vans, with their engines running. This really isn’t good enough for a street redesign that was supposed to be all about pedestrians, and which set out to exclude the maximum number of motor vehicles.

To be fair to Horsham District Council, they have been making some attempt at enforcement, ticketing illegally parked cars and informing people of the rules, which aren’t all that hard to comprehend. Unfortunately, with wardens on the street for only a tiny portion of the day, the problem is proving insurmountable.

A related problem is the destruction and/or removal of the street furniture put in place to slow drivers, and to change the appearance of the street from a ‘road’ into a space dominated by people. Only two benches remain on East Street out of the six that were initially put in place. At least two of these were crashed into by motor vehicles, then removed, and not replaced.

The bench that the two ladies are sitting on in the photograph below has also been removed, I’m not sure when or for what reason.

The heavy box planters are also continually being shifted sideways (I am guessing by delivery drivers who are too incompetent or impatient to drive around them) onto the ‘pavement’ at the sides of the street.

These features were crucial to the way the street presented itself; and so, unfortunately, what looked like a space through which it would be inappropriate to drive a car increasingly looks like a road with the occasional box at the side of it. Add in the parked vehicles that are almost continuously on the street, and it has become more and more natural to drive down this street, in defiance or ignorance of the rules, because it looks more and more like a place for cars.

Another problem is that most people shopping and mingling on the street really weren’t all that keen about ‘sharing’ the street with lorries, vans and cars. They wanted a relaxed space in which they could stop and chat, and in which their children could play; that could be achieved far more simply in the absence of motor vehicles.

The photograph below was taken at 1pm.

And the final problem – what appears to be the decisive one – is that the increasingly large number of restaurants on the street wanted to use the street space itself for open air dining. This has happened already on a few weekends last year; the street was closed to vehicles, to allow tables and chairs to spill out onto the street.

Naturally enough, on such a narrow street, tables and chairs are incompatible with the movement of lorries and vans, and something had to give.

As summer approaches, it appears the council have yielded to this pressure, and to the wishes of the majority of the shops on the street, and the people using it, and will from the start of next month implement a total closure to motor traffic between the hours of 10:30am and 4pm.

Ironically, it was just such a closure that was applied to the street while it still had a ‘conventional’ layout, a closure that was such a success with shoppers and pedestrians that it provided the impetus for the subsequent changes. Indeed, without wishing to brag too much, my earlier post has proved rather prophetic, for in it, I wrote

The simple solution would be to ban vehicles, at the very least between 10am and 4pm. This was, in fact, the solution applied during a trial period in 2008-9 – deliveries were made outside of these hours, and the street was closed to traffic at peaking shopping hours. However it seems that just two shops are insistent upon having deliveries to their front door at all hours of the day – so ruining the street environment for all the pedestrians that use the street, and also for the vast majority of retailers that would like to see the street fully closed to traffic, for at least the majority of the shopping day.

I did get something wrong – it turns out that there are three, instead of two, shops out of the 32 on East Street who still insist on having deliveries made at all hours of the day.

The owner of one of these shops, Gareth Jones of Beer Essentials, has this to say –

Eventually it will lead to my business failing. It’s going to have a negative impact on my sales as deliveries will be difficult. Times are hard enough as they are. I’m self employed, run a business and have enough to worry about.

I don’t think Mr Jones needs to be quite so pessimistic. For a start, there are two large windows for delivery, before 10:30 am in the morning, and after 4pm in the afternoon. It should be possible to reschedule deliveries into these periods, when the street is not closed to motor traffic.

In addition, even when the street is closed to delivery vehicles, it should not be impossible to make deliveries to his shop – nor indeed to the other two shops objecting to the closure. All three lie a matter of yards from Denne Road, where delivery vehicles are frequently parked while servicing the handful of shops and restaurants on that road, right next to East Street. The cul-de-sac of Park Place is also just around the corner from these objecting retailers; loading vehicles could park in there during the hours that East Street is closed and transport their goods on foot.

This is entirely possible; it’s just a slightly longer walk than would be involved when vehicles parked in front of the shops.

Much the same is true of the drivers of cars with disabled blue badges, who will, naturally enough, not be able to park on the street during the hours of the street closure. Extraordinarily, when the street was closed for a trial period of the same hours in 2009, there were formal objections on the grounds that it violated the Disability Discrimination Act, as the Council notes in the Traffic Regulation Order (pdf) –

On 2 March 2009 the Committee was informed there were twenty-three formal objections to that scheme [the temporary closure], many of which related to the restrictions imposed on loading and unloading.  One of those unresolved objections related to a legal challenge under the Disability Discrimination Act that the scheme was too restrictive for disabled persons.

This is a quite preposterous legal challenge, because it starts from the assumption that a car is the only way in which disabled people can access shops and services on East Street, with the attendant consequence that they should be able to park on the street, at all times.

This is not true, of course. Disabled people can, and do, use other means of getting about. Indeed, they have to, especially as most of the town centre of Horsham is pedestrianised. You cannot drive a car down West Street, the main shopping street. This has been permanently pedestrianised for decades. Nor can you drive a car through the Swan Walk shopping centre. Because it’s a shopping centre. No legal challenge has been mounted to Horsham District Council about the inability to park up outside BHS inside the shopping centre. At least as far as I am aware.

Disabled people quite obviously have to use different modes of transport to arrive at their final destination, and to move around within it, other than their car, because a car cannot go everywhere.

This is the case even on East Street under the current, open, arrangement – disabled drivers can park on the street, but only in the handful of marked bays, which quite obviously do not lie in front of every shop. They only lie in front of a few of them. Disabled drivers who park in these bays will be using their legs, supported by sticks, or they will be using wheelchairs, or frames, or mobility scooters, or the help of friends and relatives, to get to the shops and restaurants they might wish to use. Naturally enough, they cannot park within the shops and restaurants, or even right outside them.

This is where the legal challenge starts to unravel, because in principle nothing will change when the street is closed. Disabled drivers will still be able to park, for free, in marked bays, a short distance from the shops on East Street. It is just that those bays, a short distance from the shops they wish to visit, will be in car parks right beside the street, rather than on the street itself. The amount of extra distance involved is marginal, as you can see in the map below.

East Street is the street running roughly horizontally across the image, with the two red cars parked on it (this satellite image predates the conversion of the street into shared space). The two red circles mark the locations of the disabled parking bays in the two closest car parks, Denne Road to the south, and the Piries Place car park to the north. From both locations, there is direct pedestrian access to East Street.

The distance involved is actually shorter than the length of East Street itself; indeed it is precisely the same sort of distance disabled people would have to cover moving from the marked bays on the street to their chosen shop or restaurant. The ‘need’ to continue to park in disabled bays on East Street itself is therefore utterly bogus. (I have even ignored the viable option of parking for three hours, for free with a blue badge, on the double yellow lines on Denne Road, or in Park Place – the two streets that abut East Street at its eastern end, and which are again visible on the right of the satellite image above.)

Quite why this absurd legal challenge still presents a threat to the closure of East Street, then, is beyond me, and the sooner it is dismissed the better. Because, needless to say, I think the closure is a great idea, and Horsham District Council should be applauded for going through with it. The gains for the people who are actually doing the shopping achieved by the street redesign and traffic restrictions – the people on foot and bicycle – will be locked in by this closure. The street will be a more civilized and humane space without motor vehicles running though it. Paradoxically it will be better for disabled people using it, those who are not in their cars. I’m thinking especially, although not solely, of the blind, who have some difficulty negotiating shared spaces with motor vehicles. This difficulty will be eliminated during the hours of closure.

It should also be noted that outside of the hours of closure the restrictions on traffic movements will remain; the closure has not been ‘purchased’ by opening the street to all motor vehicles at other periods. Naturally enough I hope that Horsham District Council continue to attempt to enforce the rules, because I think the vitality of the street depends upon a limited number of vehicle movements, at all times, especially in the evening when the physical restrictions on entering the street will disappear. The proposed closure of the street to motor traffic during the day is the simplest way of cementing that vitality, and is a wonderful step forward.

Going Dutch in Strasbourg

I have recently spent a short amount of time in two French cities, Strasbourg and Paris. Although only about two hours apart by train, the two places are of a very different character. A large part of this is due, of course, to geography and history; Strasbourg lies very close to the German border and has a particularly distinctive culture. The city has been part of the Holy Roman Empire, been a free republic, then annexed as part of France, then part of Prussia/Germany, then (briefly) free again, before finally ending up as part of France.

The result is a melange of architectural and cultural styles that is uniquely Alsatian. Just like the food. If it wasn’t for the French being spoken, and the French street signs, you could quite easily assume that you were in Germany.

The most noticeable difference, however – at least to a person interested in walking and cycling as modes of transport – is that Strasbourg is very much more civilized than Paris. In fact, far more so. I say this not to denigrate Paris, which I think is a wonderful city, but only to emphasise just how much more pleasant it is to walk and cycle in Strasbourg. Paris, on the other hand, seemed to me to be fairly hostile for cycling – maybe not quite as bad as London, but pretty bad nonetheless. My thoughts on that city will come in a later post; for now I will focus on Strasbourg.

I should stress that I was only in the city for 48 hours, and also that my experience of Strasbourg was largely confined to the central Grande Île, a world heritage site. But with that caveat out of the way, I can certainly say that I have not seen such a quantity of cycling in any place outside of the Netherlands. Nor have I seen such a diverse range of people cycling in any place outside of the Netherlands. (Indeed, the parts of the city I saw were strongly reminiscent of the centres of cities in the Randstad, particularly in the layouts of the streets, and how they were used.)

Plenty of the barometers of a naturalised and civilised cycling culture – what you might term ‘indicator species’ – were present.

Young children cycling in a city.

Very young children cycling in a city.

Cargo bikes.

(A bit blurry due to the long exposure, but this is a Bullitt Cargo Bike).

We also had casual mobile phone use.

‘The backie’ – spotted on several occasions.

Another indicator – people were, almost without exception, cycling in their ordinary, everyday clothes. The only helmets I saw were on children – something that is also true of the Netherlands.

The city has a hire bike scheme, the bikes of which have an interesting driveshaft system, instead of a chain.

However, I didn’t see many of these bikes in evidence. Generally everyone was using their own bicycle; the classic Strasbourg bike resembles the traditional Dutch Opafiets, but with a rather bendier down tube.

Plenty of pretty bikes on display too –

In short, cycling in Strasbourg looked like an obvious way to get around, and this was reflected in the large numbers of people, of every age, and of both genders, using bicycles as an everyday mode of transport.

The reasons for this were not hard to discern. While not perhaps quite as subjectively safe as a Dutch city centre, it didn’t appear to be particularly dangerous, hazardous or threatening to cycle around this part of Strasbourg. Parents felt comfortable taking their children around with them, principally, I suspect, because interactions with motor traffic would be minimal. Plenty of streets in central Strasbourg are either fully pedestrianised, and allow cycling, or they only allow access, for a limited number of vehicles, for a limited period of the day. You can see a number of these streets – which are cobbled or paved – in the photographs above.

The street below is typical – only allowing authorised vehicles between 6am and 11:30am.

More restrictions –

Other streets which allow motor vehicles are almost entirely one-way; without too much investigation, I would guess that the alignment of these streets prevents them being used as through-routes, and allows access only. Again, as you can see in the photographs above, there are few motor vehicles using the narrow tarmac ‘roads’. Naturally cyclists are exempted from these one-way restrictions.

There are also bridges onto and off the central island of Strasbourg that are for pedestrians and bicycles only.

The police!

So the central streets of Strasbourg are generally quiet, with low volumes of motor traffic. They consequently feel subjectively safe to cycle on.

This isn’t the only part of the story, of course. I’m not too sure how extensive cycle paths and tracks are outside of the centre of the city, but I certainly saw them alongside some of the ‘busier’ streets with higher volumes of motor traffic, and they were greatly used.

On my last morning, a crisp, sunny Friday, I sat down for an espresso and filmed the above path in action for about 15 minutes. Below is the resulting video – admittedly selectively edited, but only to take out the periods in which nothing much was happening, due to the traffic light phases at the end of the bridge. The video is about half the length of time I was sat at the cafe.

You can see a lady cycling with her dog, along with plenty of people cycling side by side. And children. Everyday cycling, in other words.

Strasbourg hasn’t got it absolutely right, of course – far from it. The infrastructure I saw, while much better than anything in the UK, was not up to Dutch standards. Likewise, a number of busy streets didn’t feel particularly safe for cycling, with quite heavy traffic flows, and no mitigating measures whatsoever for cyclists. But the city does provide a good example of what can be achieved, and what can happen, when you implement Dutch-style solutions in a city, outside of the Netherlands.

Create safe conditions, make cycling feel pleasant and convenient, and the bicycle becomes a natural choice, for everyone. By contrast, if you pretend that the best way to increase cycling is simply to ‘encourage’ it, and implore any cyclists brave enough to venture onto your roads to ‘keep their wits about them’ in the absence of any other positive measures, any cycling revolution you engender will be stillborn.

Friday Facility no.11 – Furneaux Walk, Horsham

As Joe Dunckley has noted in a recent post, The Department for Transport’s Local Transport Note 2/08, Cycle Infrastructure Design, is a curiously muddled-headed document when it comes to off-carriageway provision. While ostensibly a prescriptive document, one that should tell us how things should be done, LTN 2/08 essentially shrugs it shoulders and gives up when it comes to the matter of cycling on paths and tracks away from motor vehicles.

The tone is set very early on in LTN 2/08 –

1.3.2 The road network is the most basic (and important) cycling facility available, and the preferred way of providing for cyclists is to create conditions on the carriageway where cyclists are content to use it, particularly in urban areas.

A passage which gives us a clue that the authors of the document simply will not, or cannot, consider Dutch-style infrastructure running alongside busy roads; they continue

There is seldom the opportunity to provide an off­-carriageway route within the highway boundary that does not compromise pedestrian facilities or create potential hazards for cyclists, particularly at side roads.

The reason the authors feels there is ‘seldom the opportunity’ to provide ‘off-carriageway routes’ within the highway boundary, without conflict with pedestrians, is that the only routes of this kind they can envisage are, woefully, shared use pavements. Extraordinarily, they cannot conceive of the space that currently exists on the roadway itself being rellocated for dedicated off-carriageway provision; nor can they see any meaning for ‘off-carriageway provision’ other than pavements. This much is clear from the very first sentence of the section on off-carriageway provision –

8.1.1  Off-road cycle routes almost invariably accommodate pedestrians too.

This is because they are pavements, and the authors can’t, or won’t, think of any other way of accommodating bicycles away from motor traffic beyond putting them on these shared-use pavements.

As Joe has written, shared-use paths are sometimes appropriate, in locations where bicycle and foot traffic is low. This example is from a village outside of Assen –

Bicycles and pedestrians share this space; there is no separate pavement for pedestrians. The very low volume of foot and bicycle traffic in this semi-rural location means that conflict is minimal. Note also that this is explicitly a cycle path that has proceeds directly, with priority, across junctions, rather than a pavement with kerbing that yields at junctions.

If our pavements are to be converted into shared use in similar locations, then our junctions must be treated in a similar way, rather than simply putting dismount signs up, or painting yield signs on the pavement, as seems to be current practice at side roads. This example of ‘shared-use’ in Horsham is simply a pavement that yields in the conventional fashion of a standard pavement –

Not at all appropriate. (This is, incidentally, a location which is not analogous to the Dutch example; it has reasonably high footfall, and is also a busy (sub)urban street on which dedicated segregated provision for bicycle should be the preferred solution).

This brings me, in a roundabout way, to today’s cycling facility, which is an off-carriageway shared-use path in Horsham – Furneaux Walk.

Note, Furneaux Walk.

As the local paper reported at the time this path was named –

‘It is only in special cases that a walkway is named like this and anyone who remembers the late Laurie Furneaux will know why this mark of recognition has been made.’

It looks like a walkway, and feels like a walkway, but of course it isn’t – it’s a shared-use path, one that runs alongside a recent shopping/residential development to the south of Horsham town centre. The post at the left used to have a blue sign indicating that this was a shared path; it has disappeared, making Furneaux Walk look even more like a Walk than before.

It could have been done properly; instead it is rather inadequate.

The first, and most serious problem, is that this is not a path on which there are very few pedestrian movements, a necessary condition for appropriate shared-use. It is, instead, rather popular, being a shortcut to a Sainsbury’s supermarket, and to the town library, and to the handful of shops in the new development.

I do use this path occasionally, and I do so very carefully, because you are almost certain to encounter pedestrians on it. Despite being the stipulated 3 metres in width, conflict between pedestrians and cyclists is liable to happen, partly because pedestrians don’t expect cyclists to be on this ‘Walk’, and partly because cyclists who are less careful than me might cycle inappropriately fast. These are problems that could have been addressed at the design stage, with a separate track for cyclists, and pavement for pedestrians, but they haven’t been, probably because the guidance is, as Joe has written, totally inadequate. The net result is a compromise that isn’t particularly good for either party.

In the background, we see the supermarket towards which these two ladies are walking, side by side, blissfully unaware of my approach. In any case I am already ‘dismounting’ as I prepare to cross a footpath, before remounting a metre later as the shared-use path continues. 

Here we can see the western end of this same path. Do not let the markings fool you into thinking this is a bi-directional cycle path; cyclists are expected to travel, in both directions, to the left of the white line, while pedestrians are expected to keep to the right of it.

This is not possible.

The paint is a token gesture, a tacit recognition, perhaps, that this section of the path has a high number of pedestrians and cyclists on it, and that some attempt should be made to keep them separate. Of course it cannot really do this, because the path is too narrow for the volume of movements along it and across it. Flawed from the outset.

Returning to the eastern end, we see more bodging.

As the path emerges onto the Causeway road, we of course have to have some railings to interrupt bicycles, because the path was not designed in the first place to accommodate cyclists travelling at more than walking speed. We are crossing a pavement here, and there is a visibility issue caused by the brick walls on either side; that is why the railings were thought necessary, to stop cyclists whizzing out into pedestrians walking from left to right.

But this is really hopeless on several levels. For a start, the brick wall on the left was built at the same time as the path; they form part of the same development. (Ironically, the brick wall is a cycle shed, which contains… no bicycles.) The visibility issue could have been partly addressed during construction.

Looking from the other direction, we have a direct, side-by-side comparison of how poorly bicycles are planned for, compared to motor vehicles.

The shared-use path emerges at right; a road from a car park emerges at left. Both appear  from behind brick walls.

Drivers are trusted to stop at the markings by the pavement, and to look for pedestrians before they continue (in practice they quite often do not). Cyclists cannot be similarly trusted, and so are forced to zig-zag their way through railings.

Drivers have direct access from the entrance to the road. Cyclists do not; they have a footpath which they are not allowed to cycle on. The best option is to wiggle right again, having zig-zagged through the railings, onto the tarmac road – cycling for a short while on the pavement.

These might seem like minor quibbles, but remember this was a new development – an opportunity to get things right. Instead it’s more than a bit half-arsed, and worse, it’s allowed to be, because the guidance is so anaemic.

The net result is a route that ‘competent’ cyclists will not use, because it takes more time to use than the road network, even though the road network is a longer route. Referring to Cyclestreets –

Starting from the Causeway, where the photographs immediately above are taken, we find that the quickest way of arriving at the end of this path (marked out as the green line) is not to use the path itself, but to cycle north to the adjacent Blackhorse Way, and to cycle on that road instead, which is not ideal, being fairly heavily trafficked with motor vehicles, especially lorries delivering to the shops in the town centre (indeed Cyclestreets describes the quiteness of this road as ‘very hostile’, which is something of an exaggeration, but it can be a particularly intimidating canyon).

So we have a ‘dual network’, a substandard cycle path appropriate for novices and the nervous, and a road network that competent cyclists will use, in preference, because it is quicker. Indeed, quicker cyclists have been ‘designed out’ of Furneaux Walk, even though it forms the most direct route.

This is actually facilitated and encouraged by LTN 2/08. It is no way to privilege bicycle use in our towns and cities.

The story of Roderick Chaffin-Laird

Roderick Chaffin-Laird is a man who has just had his ten-year driving ban reduced to seven years, because he has apparently been offered a ‘prospective’ new job, once he is released from prison; a job for which he apparently has to drive.

To start at the end of the story, as it were –

Death crash driver’s ban is cut

A ‘self-righteous’ motorist, who caused a motorcyclist’s death when his car strayed onto the wrong side of the road, has had his driving ban cut on appeal. Roderick Chaffin-Laird crashed into 60-year-old former motocross champion, Malcolm Dearn, as he turned a bend on a country lane near Billingshurst, killing him almost instantly.

The 67-year-old was jailed for seven years, and banned from the road for ten, at Lewes Crown Court in February 2009 after being convicted of causing death by careless driving and failing to allow a blood sample to be tested for alcohol.

But top judges, sitting at London’s Criminal Appeal Court, on Friday agreed to reduce his driving ban to seven years – after hearing he needs to drive for a prospective new job. The court heard Chaffin-Laird, of Brighton Road, Monks Gate, near Horsham, caused Mr Dearn’s death after crashing head-on into him in October 2007.

Mr Dearn, of Ifield Road, Charlwood, Crawley, was out with four other biker friends on one of their regular rides in the Sussex countryside. The experienced rider, who was once a stunt-double for actor Sidney Poitier in a film about motocross, was at the head of the group as they made their way along the A272. As he was about to turn a sharp bend, he saw Chaffin-Laird’s Mercedes coming towards him on the wrong side of the road, or straddling the centre line.

Mr Justice Singh told the court Mr Dearn tried to avoid a collision but was hit and thrown into the air and died at the scene, despite his friends’ efforts to save him. The judge said one of Mr Dearn’s friends spoke to Chaffin-Laird and gave evidence at the trial that he smelled of alcohol. When police arrived, Chaffin-Laird was asked to give a breath test, but didn’t blow hard enough into the bag and collapsed soon after.

He was taken to hospital, where a blood sample was taken from him, but he refused to give his permission for it to be tested for alcohol. The court heard Chaffin-Laird maintained he was not to blame for the crash, but he was found guilty by the jury and described as a ‘self-righteous’ man who had told a series of lies by the trial judge.

Challenging his driving ban, his lawyers argued it was ‘too long’ and told the Appeal Court a prospective employer was willing to offer him a job, but only if he could drive to meet customers. They also said he has a 32-year-old disabled daughter, who will be affected if he remains unable to drive for such a long period. Allowing his appeal, Mr Justice Singh said sentencing guidelines for motoring offences indicate a ban should not be longer than the jail term imposed, of which the offender will serve half. The judge, sitting with Lord Justice Toulson and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones, added: “In this case, the disqualification should have been seven years and not ten.”

(From the West Sussex County Times, of Thursday March 1st – story not online)

And now some background. A report from the original trial –

“Never in 35 years have I heard such lies,” a judge told a driver who had denied he was to blame for a fatal crash. Roderick Chaffin-Laird, 64, of Brighton Road, Monks Gate, had denied causing death by careless driving and failing to give a sample for alcohol testing….

Judge Anthony Niblett told him: “You are an intelligent, well-educated man. You are also, to the observation of this court throughout this trial, a self-righteous man. You are a thoroughly dishonest man, who’s lied to courts in the past.” Chaffin-Laird had been jailed in 2003 after he was convicted of perjury and forgery. Judge Niblett called him ‘a practised and calculated liar’ who had lied to the jury when he claimed to have only drunk two glasses of wine that day.

This piece from the Brighton Argus gives a clue to why Judge Niblett might have branded  Mr Chaffin-Laird as ‘thoroughly dishonest’ –

Dog blamed for fatal Sussex crash

A motorist who crashed into a motorbike killing a former stuntman told a jury he had no time to stop when a dog ran out in front of his car. Roderick Chaffin-Laird, 64, said he instinctively swerved his Mercedes to avoid hitting the animal moments before the crash on country road on a dark night in October 2007.

He claimed he had no time to react when seconds later the headlights of victim Malcolm Dearn’s BMW bike appeared around a bend on the A272 near Billingshurst. Former motocross champion Mr Dearn, 60, of Ifield Road, Charlwood, Crawley, died at the scene of the crash at Coneyhurst.

Chaffin-Laird, of Monks Gate, near Horsham, denies causing death by careless driving and failing to give police permission to test a blood sample for alcohol. Giving evidence at Lewes Crown Court yesterday he said he suffered flashbacks and nightmares about the crash but blamed a dog for causing the fatal accident.

He added: “A dog suddenly jumped from the hedgerow. It stopped in the road, turned and looked at me and froze. There was really no time to do anything. I felt a bump and the next thing I know my car had stopped. It was the most horrific, tragic accident.” Chaffin-Laird said he had only had two glasses of wine all day and denied swallowing mints to mask the smell of alcohol. He told the court he was staggering at the scene of the crash due to a back injury caused by an earlier accident.

And still more detail, which might explain why the Judge also branded Mr Chaffin-Laird ‘self-righteous’ –

After the accident Mr Dearn’s friend, John Davey, who had been riding behind and saw the accident, spoke to Chaffin-Laird, who was seen staggering as he got out of his car… Mr Davey could smell alcohol on the motorist’s breath but when asked if he had been drinking Chaffin-Laird denied it. Mr Adebayo [prosecuting] said: “The defendant was popping mints into his mouth, no doubt trying to mask the smell of alcohol.”

When police arrived Chaffin-Laird failed to give an adequate sample for a roadside breath test and was arrested. He then fell against the police car and was taken to hospital where he was discharged hours later. He refused to allow police to test a blood sample taken at the hospital.

He later issued a written statement to the police in which he claimed as he approached the bend a dog ran into the road and he had swerved to try to avoid it. He said in the statement, if the motorcyclist had been driving at a sensible speed he could have stopped or taken evasive action and not hit his car.

No apology, excuses, and victim-blaming. Charming.

Mr Chaffin-Laird is no doubt well-practised in the art of dishonesty, given that he is a convicted fraudster, previously jailed in 2003 for… oh… lots of things.

Millionaire benefit fraudster jailed

A crooked businessman claimed the dole and posed as a bankrupt while living the high life in his country mansion. Shipbroker Roderick Chaffin-Laird lived a double life, cheating creditors out of thousands of pounds pretending to be broke. His lies caught up with him on Friday when the millionaire was jailed for 18 months on forgery and perjury charges.

Chaffin-Laird, 58, banked at Harrods, owned a huge house near Horsham and paid for his daughters to attend private school. But he claimed voluntary bankruptcy as a sham to keep his lucrative assets secure and accepted unemployment benefit to give the impression he had no money. He took out a £20,000 loan with Jersey-based firm Difex and committed fraud to keep them at bay.

He claimed he needed the cash to pay his two daughters’ school fees at Roedean School, Brighton. Investigators from the Department of Trade and Industry believe the money was needed as a bridging loan when he moved from Tongdean Avenue, Hove, to his mansion at Monk’s Gate near Horsham.

Chaffin-Laird was found guilty of three charges of perjury and four offences of forgery at a trial last year. He has now pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice that involved the obtaining of his bankruptcy agreement. Jailing him, Judge Christopher Hordern told Chaffin-Laird: “These were matters that involved extremely deliberate and devious dishonesty. It is apparent that for whatever reason, you have been living a lie for a number of years.”

Mr Chaffin-Laird will be released from prison later this year, having served half of his three-and-a-half year sentence. It is important to note that his driving ban will still last for another three-and-a-half years, despite being cut.

You would like to think that this fine, upstanding citizen can keep himself out of a motor car for that period, despite the pressing matter of his ‘job’ that requires the use of his car; a car he can’t legally use until he is seventy.

I wonder.

I’ll be watching out for him on Horsham’s roads – in every sense.

How to foster healthier lifestyles in Horsham

I draw your attention to a letter published in the West Sussex County Times of the 2nd February, 2012, which makes reference to the proposed increase in parking charges in Horsham, specifically at the Hurst Road car park, which lies adjacent to Horsham’s leisure centre.

WITH regard to councillor Roger Paterson’s response to our petition and concern over the ever changing Hurst Road, Horsham, car parking fee hike (County Times Horsham edition January 19), I took exception to the fact he thinks a 50 per cent increase is ‘small’.

I also wonder how anyone simply parking their car to go to the gym or the park at Hurst Road could agree with Mr Paterson that paying an increase five times more than inflation will give a ‘huge improvement to the experience of car parking’. Common sense being shown by the council in relation to the fee increase at this particular location seems to be playing second fiddle to the money grab from those trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle by going to the gym or the park.

One slight problem with the council’s short sighted approach is that the very likely decrease in membership at the recreation facility will hurt the council directly as it owns the building! Can’t say they haven’t been told. In addition, I have now written to Claire Vickers, chairman of HDC, pointing out that a 50 per cent fee hike may be a small increase for Mr Paterson, however I am very confident he is misreading the community mood on what is considered a ‘small’ increase. This shows complete indifference towards the community. My letter to Mrs Vickers concludes:

‘The council still has not answered the gross incompetence shown in the almost daily fee changes that were being listed at the Hurst Road car park last week and as far back as November, nor the fact that the huge fee increase is contrary to one of HDC’s key goals: healthier lifestyle. I would suggest that you have a word with councillor Paterson, as it is not acceptable to grab money inappropriately from Hurst Road users, when they will not share in the ‘more enjoyable’ experience when parking at the Pavilions (Hurst Road) in Horsham. He is certainly out of touch with the community mood.’

Dr SUSAN MICHAELIS

Hurst Road, Horsham

It used to cost £1 to park for three hours at the Hurst Road car park. The Council has increased this to £1.50 for three hours, from yesterday, the 5th March.

This increase, according to Dr Michaelis, stands in conflict with one of Horsham District Council’s ‘key goals’ – fostering healthier lifestyles – on the grounds that a good number of people will cease to visit the leisure centre now that three hours’ worth of parking there has gone up by 50 pence. What they might be doing instead – presumably going somewhere else in their cars, or sitting at home – is a matter of guesswork.

To set this in context, the leisure centre and car park in question lie pretty much at the centre of Horsham. On the map below, I have illustrated the longest possible journey you would have to make, from within Horsham, to the leisure centre. It is just over 2 miles, and would take you 40 minutes, on foot – or much less if you jog (but of course that’s the last thing people going to a leisure centre to keep fit would do).

Bear in mind that this is the longest journey, from within Horsham. Most other trips would be of the order of a mile. This is an eminently walkable distance, especially for those people who are allegedly interested in ‘trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle’, as Dr. Michaelis puts it.

Some of the roads you might have to cycle on are not brilliant for the more nervous, but you can now cycle across the large park that lies to the west of the leisure centre, and there is also plenty of cycle parking at it. These are things that Horsham District Council has most definitely got right. A bicycle could certainly make your trip much easier, even if you are not confident enough to use it all the way.

So there are ways of circumventing the increase in the cost of parking entirely – ways that would actually serve to increase public health in Horsham District, in addition to the benefits accruing from the use of the leisure centre itself.

Dr Michaelis, however, apparently cannot envisage people getting to the leisure centre by any means other than the private motor vehicle. She also appears to believe that people who are interested in keeping fit will just give up ‘trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle’ as a result of a 50 pence increase in parking for three hours, and also that these allegedly health-conscious people would not consider walking, running or cycling to the leisure centre instead.

To foster healthy lifestyles, it seems we should continue to encourage and facilitate car use.

How curious.

‘There is not the width available’

Like the villain in a bad horror film, the myth that ‘our roads are just too narrow’ for Dutch-style cycling infrastructure refuses to die, despite repeated attempts to kill it off.

Here it is, spawning again.

Having his [Hembrow’s] way is fine but his way is to install Dutch style segregated infrastructure in the UK where there is not the width available to install Dutch style segregated infrastructure. So we get people here like CEGB nailing their colours to his mast and when the planners respond with the inevitable logic of what will actually fit in the width available they accept it rather than have to accept they were wrong to ask for it in the first place. Which is how we end up with http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pete.meg/wcc/facility-of-the-month/

We have several related claims contained here –

• There is not the width available on our roads for Dutch-style segregated infrastructure.
• Our planners, nevertheless, try to squeeze in Dutch-style infrastructure on these constricted roads, with terrible, poorly-designed results, like those found on the Facility of the Month site.
• The planners have put in these inevitably-compromised facilities in response to the demands of the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain (it’s news to me we had planners acting so readily on our wishes)
• The Cycling Embassy accepts this crap, rather than accepting they were wrong to ask for it in the first place.

Every single one of these claims is bollocks, of course, and I won’t waste my time our yours responding to them in much detail, beyond firstly drawing your attention to the current Facility of the Month – the type of facility it is claimed we ‘end up with’ if we attempt to follow the heathen path of the Dutch, here in the UK, and the one you will see if you click the link in the quoted passage.

Quite obviously a desperately narrow road, with no width available for Dutch-style segregated infrastructure, on which a poor, tormented planner has, against his better judgement, been forced to paint some ‘Dutch-style’ infrastructure on the pavement, apparently at the behest of the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain. I blame that David Hembrow.

And secondly, showing you some pictures of some distributor roads from the UK town of Horsham.

It is frankly laughable to pretend that ‘there isn’t the width’ on our roads for Dutch-style infrastructure, setting aside the strange idea that the narrow cycle lanes seen in some of these pictures are the direct result of attempts to ‘squeeze in’ Dutch-style infrastructure on our ‘narrow’ roads.

A good number of our roads and streets are genuinely narrow, of course – too narrow for segregated infrastructure. But just as many streets in Dutch towns and cities are just as narrow, if not narrower. This hasn’t stopped them building infrastructure on the roads that are wide enough, and nor has it stopped them coming up with solutions on their streets that are too narrow.

Measures such as one-way streets for cars, with two-way cycle lanes –

Restricted access for motor vehicles –

Filtered permeability –

Or indeed roads that are have become cycle paths, in entirety –

Whose streets are ‘too narrow’?

Dutch streets, of all widths, are carefully engineered to ensure a high level of subjective safety for cyclists. The notion that our streets are universally ‘lacking the width’ to do the same is a myth, one which its adherents should, by now, really start to be embarrassed about presenting. I doubt they even believe it themselves.

Cycling safety is paramount

The Times has picked up the story of Transport for London potentially facing corporate manslaughter charges over the death of Min Joo Lee at King’s Cross on October 3rd last year, reporting that

The stretch of road where Ms Lee was killed appears to breach TfL’s published standards for minimum safe width for roads used by both cyclists and motor vehicles…

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London who chairs TfL, was asked by the London Assembly last month whether the junction complied with the design standards. He replied that the template was a “best practice document intended to ensure that consistently high standards are applied to new schemes in order to reduce barriers to cycling”. He added that the junction’s layout had been implemented before the guidance was published.

The print edition of the article concludes with the sentence

The Mayor’s office said cycling safety was paramount.

‘Paramount’, of course, means ‘of the greatest importance’ – more important than anything else.

Time to revisit what Transport for London’s Nigel Hardy said to Min Joo Lee’s boyfriend at a public meeting at Camden Town Hall, shortly after her death –

On Monday night, Kenji listened patiently in the Town Hall chamber – a perfect picture of dignity in his blue suit with top shirt button done up – as council officials argued they were mostly meeting cycle safety targets in a presentation of endless graphs and pie charts. A TfL representative insisted that introducing a cycle lane at the junction would “cause considerable queues”, stressing that there was “limited time” to conduct a review of the proposed changes for the junction because of a “commitment” to make them in time for the Olympic Games. “We have taken the comments on board from day one – it is more about whether it is workable,” said Nigel Hardy, TfL’s head of capital development.

I wonder how this statement – which suggests that measures to improve the safety of cyclists are not ‘workable’ because they would ’cause considerable queues’ – squares with the assertion, made by the Mayor’s office, that cycling safety is ‘paramount’.

Do they know what the word means?

The Evening Standard ties itself in double yellow knots

You may recall Westminster Council’s recent conversion of some single yellow lines in their borough to double yellow lines; principally, I suspect, for the storm of indignation that their decision provoked, rather than for the mundane reality of the changes involved.

That storm of indignation was, of course, given entirely uncritical voice by the Evening Standard, which joined in with this ‘campaign’ – a curious editorial decision for a ‘freesheet’ paper whose readership must be composed almost completely of public transport users who consequently have little or no interest in parking cars in front of dropped kerbs, or at junctions, in central London.

As I wrote at the time, the fever of protest whipped up by the Standard paid little attention to the facts of the matter, principally that over 90% of these new double yellow lines are at locations where it was already illegal to park, and where motorists would be liable to a parking ticket. With that context, the double yellow lines that have been painted are really nothing more than an explicit clarification of where parking is, and isn’t, allowed. This particular policy of Westminster Council amounts to doing motorists a favour.

The clear implication of the hostile pieces published almost continuously by the Standard both before and during the painting of the double yellows was that Westminster Council were out to ‘get’ the motorist by removing ‘free’ parking; that the policy was nothing more than a shameless way of raising revenue, by forcing motorists to use the marked bays – which of course have to be paid for. In one piece, the director of Addison Lee was allowed to state that the double yellow lines had been rushed out ‘just so they [Westminster Council] can grab some money.’

The Labour leader of Westminster Council, Paul Dimoldenberg, was also quoted in a later piece, stating that

Westminster is happy to cite safety issues when it is getting rid of single yellow lines but doesn’t seem so concerned about spaces where it can charge up to £4.80 an hour.

Mr Dimoldenberg implying here that the ‘free’ parking on single yellows (parking that would, of course, have been illegal and liable to a ticket – but never mind) is only being removed (or ‘removed’) in order to force motorists into marked bays where they would have to pay.

I have, of course, dismantled all this nonsense in that prior post. What is interesting, now, is that Westminster Council have issued the figures for tickets issued to drivers who obstructed dropped kerbs with their vehicles.

In the week starting February 13th last year – when, let us remember, these locations were marked with single yellows – 184 parking tickets were issued to drivers for this offence.

How many drivers were ticketed in the equivalent week this year, when they would have been parking on double yellows while obstructing dropped kerbs?

63.

Whether this drastic reduction is entirely due to the increased clarity about where it is illegal to park – clarity created by the new double yellow lines – is not certain, of course, but it seems highly likely. Assuming that Westminster’s traffic wardens are just as assiduous as they were in the equivalent period last year, the figures suggest that drivers appear to be far less inclined to park in these ticket-liable locations.

Drivers are therefore escaping fines that they might otherwise have got had they been tempted to park on single yellows. Lee Rowley – Westminster Council’s ‘parking supremo’ – estimates that the Council will be losing around £400,000 worth of revenue as a consequence of this clarification, a calculation that appears to be based, reasonably, on the 120 or so £60 fines that Westminster Council ‘lost out on’ over this week in February.

Naturally this makes the ‘revenue-grabbing’ line presented by the Evening Standard appear even more ludicrous than it did at the time (facts do, of course, tend to have that effect). What’s laughable is that the two journalists responsible for churning out that garbage – Michael Howie and Jonathan Prynn – are still at it, despite the fact that the rug has been pulled out from under their feet.

Having published a string of pieces which uncritically presented all the nonsensical arguments against the new double yellow lines, including those that claimed they were a ‘tax’ on the motorist, they have now written a piece which states that the Council’s policy on double yellow lines was a ‘mistake’.

This is all deeply confusing, because if one read the Evening Standard during January, one would have got the impression, formed from Howie and Prynn’s articles, that the new double yellow lines were a big mistake because they would result in more revenue being taken, unfairly, from motorists.

Howie and Prynn still think the policy is a mistake (without really saying why, beyond a bit of whining about the small cost of painting the double yellows) even though its actual consequence, as reported in their very own article, has been to take less revenue from motorists.

Make up your minds, chaps.

Just as peculiarly, the Editorial column of the Standard weighs in on the issue, writing that

WESTMINSTER council, trying to recover its credibility after the debacle of off-peak parking charges, is still sticking with another bad idea, the extension of double yellow lines. As the ruling Tory group in the council meets to choose a new leader, a report today suggests the lines cost more than £100,000.

Do the Standard really think the ‘extension’ of double yellows is still a ‘bad idea’, while they are simultaneously reporting that it is saving motorists money? I’m sure they don’t – or couldn’t maintain so, with a straight face, given their earlier rhetoric about the costs being imposed on motorists.

The only trick they have left, it seems, is to complain about the cost of implementation. But this is a deeply odd position to take when you are calling for the policy to be reversed, because restoring junctions to how they were previously  would, of course, cost almost exactly the same amount of money. It is, needless to say, a bit rich to complain about the Council spending £100,000 when you want them to spend another £100,000 for no apparent purpose, other than to increase the revenue accruing from motorists, which is what the Evening Standard are supposed to be against.

Embarrassing journalism.