Are some motoring fines so low they actually encourage law-breaking?

If you manage to get caught travelling at anything up to 50 mph in a 30 mph area by a speed camera, you will, most typically, receive a fixed penalty of £60.

However, if you decide to make your number plate unreadable, thus ensuring that you will never receive any fines from these cameras, you will (if you happen to be caught with an unreadable number plate by the police) receive a fixed penalty notice of… £60.

Is that a deterrent against obscuring your number plate, if you also have a propensity for speeding?

Another example. An MoT now costs £50.35. If you decide that’s too expensive, and drive around without one, you will – again, if you happen to be caught – receive a fixed penalty notice of… £60.

Ludicrously, the fine for both these offences was, as recently as 2009, only £30, leading the Home Office to note that

The current fixed penalty does not appear to be an adequate deterrent

You think?

But the ministers responsible evidently didn’t seem to stop and consider why the fine was inadequate, because they merely proposed raising the fine to the current £60 –

Without prejudice to possible other changes in future, such as making the offence endorsable, Ministers have therefore decided to raise the fixed penalty to £60.

That is, the same order of cost as a speed camera fine, or an MoT test. In other words, the fine level was raised from very ineffective to merely ineffective.

Do the words ‘cost-benefit analysis’ mean nothing to the Home Office?

Doing the Metropolitan Police’s job for them

I write this post in the interests of tracking down the clearly violent individual shown in the video above.

Although the police were easily able to locate the registered keeper of the car involved, it seems that – by an astonishing coincidence – the car was taken without consent on the day of the incident (the keys apparently being left in the ignition – how careless), before being returned to the owner at a later date.

All the details are at road.cc, including the account of the victim.

The attacker is still at large, and the police are not taking any further action – despite having several witnesses, including a bus driver, and video footage of the entire incident. And even the attacker’s first name, which appears to be ‘John’.

This yields a number of intriguing possibilities.

• A) the registered keeper of the car is the attacker, and the Metropolitan Police are incompetent.
• B) the registered keeper knows the attacker, but is refusing to name him, hiding behind the story that his car was taken by persons unknown, and then miraculously returned to him.
• C) the registered keeper does not know the attacker, who is in the peculiar habit of stealing a car with his mates, driving around and assaulting a stranger, before returning the car – undamaged – to its rightful owner.

I think that covers it.

I’d like to believe that A) and C) are not remotely likely (although I’m not ruling out A) just yet), so that leaves B).

As the Police don’t seem remotely willing to press the registered keeper to name the individual in this video, we’ll have to do their job for them.

UPDATE – Martin Porter points out that criminals can now escape justice by employing this ‘taken without consent’ excuse. Are number plates effectively pointless?

There is far too much of this going on and it should be taken seriously by the authorities. It seems in London the trail runs cold when the registered keeper says the car was taken without his consent and subsequently returned.

Cyclists – Don’t be here, and don’t be there. Just don’t be.*

Only 1-2% of trips in London are made by bicycle. In a perverse way, I can find a great deal of hope in those numbers, because it tells me that a large number of people want to cycle, despite the very best efforts of the authorities to stop them.

Here is a sign you can find beside a road in Wandsworth.

NO CYCLING ON THE PAVEMENT. IT IS AN OFFENCE TO CYCLE ON THE PAVEMENT. MAXIMUM PENALTY £500. 

Fair enough. £500 is a little steep, you might think – more than five times as much as you might get for killing a cyclist, and leaving the scene of the accident, for instance – but why would you cycle on the pavement when there’s probably a fantastic road to cycle on, right beside the sign?

Oh.

Welcome to the urban motorway that is the A214, as it passes through Wandsworth. This three-lane road is where you are expected to cycle. Not on the pavement.

In the interests of authenticity (and legality), I did cycle northbound from this sign, on this road, for a little distance – in fact, as far as here, where my testicles retracted into my body cavity –

Whereupon I opted out of this madness, and took the sliproad.

Here are some videos of what happens if you attempt to cycle through this underpass, from youtube user SkrzypczykBass, who I notice has an enviable turn of speed, and is rather braver than me –

I am sure you will agree that I missed out on a fantastic and life-affirming experience.

Above is the only other cyclist I saw during the ten minutes I spent on this road, who chose to risk a £500 fine (notice he is cycling past an identical warning sign) rather than use the road. I don’t blame him.

I am not sure whether the authority that erected the sign telling cyclists to keep off the pavement here really thinks that they ought to be on this three-lane road, with its sliproads, underpasses, and speeding drivers. Probably not. I expect the thought crossed their mind that very few cyclists would actually be brave enough to use it, and that was probably why enough of them were using the pavement to warrant the sign in the first place. They might have been dimly aware that they were leaving cyclists with nowhere to go. Or they were only concerned with stopping cycling on the pavement. Either way, it is obvious they just didn’t care.

And so cycling has been, and is being, killed as a mode of practical urban transport because of environments like this. I must stress that the location I took these photographs is not in the back of beyond – it’s only about 500 yards from one of Boris’ much trumpeted Cycling Superhighways, CS8, which passes an equally hostile roundabout just to the north of here (which I plan to write about shortly). Equally, it’s only about 3 miles from the Westfield shopping centre, a perfectly possible distance for people to cycle from south London, to have some lunch, and do some shopping. But this is the environment that stands in their way.

If London is ever going to become a “Cycling City” – in reality, rather than just in aspirational hype – then it is going to have to be possible for people to negotiate roads like this on a bicycle. And I mean ordinary people – not people like SkrzypczykBass and me, who will always be a minority.

There is an absurd amount of space here. Can we please let people have the option of using some of it on bicycles?

*My apologies to Amos Oz. I am, of course, in no way drawing any equivalence between the fate of Jews in the 20th century, and cyclists in London – but the phrase, taken in isolation, was too apposite to resist

A friendly warning from Thames Materials

“Cyclists – Beware of passing this vehicle on the inside”

Presumably because the driver could be drunk, using his mobile phone, and have 20 previous convictions for driving while disqualified?

Putz, of Barnet, North London, was previously jailed for six months in 1995  for reckless driving and again in 2003 for 16 instances of driving an HGV while disqualified.

Or because the driver could be under the influence of a ‘controlled substance’?

Needless to say, I was not passing this vehicle on the inside. I had little choice but to find myself on the inside of it, as it passed me on the outside.

I am not quite sure why this vehicle was driving through Sloane Square today. It certainly gave me the willies.

Michael Isherwood – another cyclist death, another scandalous sentence

Let us imagine the case of a train driver who fell asleep at the controls of his train. Let us further imagine, as a result of being asleep, he fails to stop at a red signal, causing an accident which results in the death of one of his passengers.

This driver would almost certainly be facing charges of manslaughter.

Now let us consider the case of Michael Isherwood, a cyclist who was struck and killed by a driver in November last year. According to Martin Cleaver, Michael’s employer, who attended the trial of that driver,

it was “probable” that the driver as a result of extreme home pressures had momentarily fallen asleep when the accident occurred. He stopped a few hundred yards up the road to sort out the damage and did not realise he had struck and killed a cyclist. It was stated that Michael was projected in the region of 50 meters away from the accident.

“Probable.”

Instead of being charged with manslaughter, the driver, Andrew Edwards, was charged with causing death “by driving without due care and attention”, and also with failing to stop at the scene of an accident.

Instead of receiving a sentence commensurate with taking someone else’s life as a result of his own negligence (to say nothing of failing to investigate the consequences of a collision he was fully aware of) he received, yesterday, a suspended 12-month prison sentence, a 12-month driving ban, and 200 hours community service.

UPDATE – road.cc now have more details of the trial. It is far, far worse than I thought. The driver revealed himself – to the police! – to be callous in the extreme, and fully aware of the fact that he had struck and seriously injured a cyclist.

Yesterday the hearing at Burnley Crown Court was told that the driver claimed to have suffered a blackout before the impact and had not seen the cyclist. The prosecution, however, stated that when accounting for the damage to the van he had given different accounts to different people.

When arrested the day after the collision Edwards asked police: “Was it that bump yesterday? I didn’t know he was dead.”

That rather contradicts his claim of suffering a ‘blackout’, does it not? Still, I suppose any old excuse will pass muster, even when the police have evidence that he knowingly left a dying man beside the road.

Fantasy cycling targets

Both David Arditti, and Freewheeler of Crap Waltham Forest, have recently blogged about the National Cycling Strategy, published in 1996 by the Department for Transport. This document set a target of quadrupling national cycling levels by 2012, based on a 1996 baseline. If met, this would mean that 10% of all journeys in the UK, in 2012, would be made by bicycle.

This bold target was signed up to in London, in 2001’s ‘London Cycle Network‘ document-

 For London the main target proposed is to achieve a 10% modal share for cycling by 2012, bringing levels of cycling in London towards those found in many European countries.

It was also signed up to my in my home county of West Sussex. The County Council even claimed, in their year 2000 Cycling Strategy document, entitled ‘Pedalling Ahead‘, that they could beat the National Cycling Strategy targets.

We believe that increases in West Sussex can, overall, be in excess of the National Cycling Strategy target but that this is unlikely to be achieved by 2002.  At current levels of expenditure, it is anticipated that this target could be reached in parts of the county by around the mid part of the second LTP

So although the 2002 target for cycling levels would not be met, West Sussex County Council believed they could be back on track to meeting the targets by around 2008-9, and presumably beating that target at a later date. Ambitious! And indeed optimistic, given that, at the time, in the 10 largest towns of West Sussex –

there has been a small decrease of 2% [in cycling levels] in recent years.

I have no doubt this ‘10% by 2012’ fantasy figure appeared, in a similar way, in countless other local authority documents.

But how has it subsequently been assessed?

While David Arditti notes that the original National Cycling Strategy document no longer appears to be available online, I have managed to find a document entitled ‘Delivery of the National Cycling Strategy: A Review’, which seems to date from 2005. This document only appears to be available in ‘cached’ form, as in the link provided – the original, again, has disappeared from the Department of Transport website.

Here is what this Review has to say –

The National Cycling Strategy (NCS) was launched in 1996. It was developed collaboratively by the public, private and NGO sectors, and was supported and endorsed by a wide range of stakeholders. It set a headline target to quadruple cycle trips by 2012 and a number of subsidiary targets concerning related issues such as land-use planning, safety and security.

… Today most stakeholders accept that the original NCS target of quadrupling the number of cycle journeys by 2012 will not be achieved, although some of those consulted in this review have recommended that it be retained as a longer-term objective. In fact, over the last decade, the number of cycling stages in England has fallen by a fifth, from 20 stages per person per year in 1992/1994 to 16 in 2002/2003. Cycling currently makes up 1% of all trip stages.

So, even by 2005 (with seven years to go until 2012) the official consensus seemed to be that the ‘10%’ target was unrealistic, and should be abandoned – yet for some reason, some cycling campaigners thought it should be ‘retained’ , even though, with cycling levels decreasing to only 1% of all trips being made by bicycle in 2005, it was obviously never going to be met (although there is still a year to go – who knows!). Why those consulted felt the need to cling to this fantasy figure is something I will go on to speculate about, below.

They didn’t get their wish, in any case, as the ‘10%’ target had already been axed –

In The Future of Transport, the White Paper published by DfT in July 2004, the Department dropped the national target for cycling, as part of a wider rationalisation of its suite of targets. This reflected our assessment that the existence of an aspirational national target had not been effective in supporting better performance management of cycling by local authorities. While some local authorities have found the target useful – “it’s something to aim for” – many more considered it counter-productive at local level, since it is difficult to encourage political or officer commitment to take action to meet a target which is considered unattainable in the first place.

This begs the question of why targets that are considered ‘unattainable’ are even being set in the first place, especially when, according to the DfT, they seem to be discouraging commitment to action by being so unrealistic.

What happened to the target in West Sussex? Perhaps unsurprisingly, I can’t find specific reference to it in subsequent Transport Plans, either that for 2006 (LTP2) or this year (LTP3).

The best I could find was this graph, included without apparent embarrassment,  in the LTP2.

The dashed line shows the ‘projected’ target for cycling levels, as outlined in West Sussex’s year 2000 Local Transport Plan. It appears to show that the target, in the year 2000, was to increase cycling levels by 50%, based on a 1998 baseline figure, by 2005/6 (according to measured counts of cyclists on a small number of roads in major towns.) If that same rate of ‘projected’ increase continued to 2012, then cycling levels would, if my maths is right, have doubled from 1998.

A doubling is of course not quite the same thing as the ‘quadrupling’ proposed by the National Cycling Strategy – the same targets the Council thought they could ‘exceed.’

But even the council’s severely revised target was not met – and quite obviously so. The solid orange line shows clearly that cycling levels in West Sussex were completely stagnant over this period. The number of cyclists counted in 2004/5 was exactly the same as in 2001/2. There was never a hope of meeting the more modest 50% target, with the total lack of commitment exhibited towards cycling as a means of transport by West Sussex County Council.

And as we roll around into 2011, and the arrival of West Sussex’s LTP3, any talk of targets has completely disappeared off the radar.

The number of cycling trips are indeed being ‘monitored’, but without reference to any previous figures, and indeed without reference to any future target. We have a brand new 2010 ‘baseline’ (which is being measured at different locations from the LTP2 monitoring) which of course conveniently erases the history of a decade of a failure to increase cycling. This document, and the monitoring, tells us nothing. No doubt in the next LTP we will see flatlining figures for cycling over the previous five years. But this time, it won’t matter, because no targets have been set.

I suppose I should be thankful that my Council has abandoned all pretence of subscribing to targets, of any kind – perhaps they have been shamed into an embarrassed silence by the enormous disjuncture between the projected targets and the reality, and have learned their lesson.

But in other places, targets still seem to be quite popular. Boris has recently proposed a (pathetically modest) target of a 5% modal share by 2026. And despite signing up to the ‘10%’ target (by 2010, no less!) Edinburgh has conveniently forgotten this failure and moved on to a new target of 15% cycling share by 2020).

Constantly moving the goalposts like this is, of course, rather convenient. As Freewheeler, cynically, if accurately, puts it –

A Cycling Action Plan…

Firstly, decide on your favourite modal share target (10 per cent is a very popular figure, for example). Be sure to set the target at least ten years in the future.

Secondly, tell all your friends how the target will be achieved with the aid of poster campaigns, winning respect for cycling, and cycle training.  A free extra-loud ‘Be Careful What You Wish For’ whistle is included to blow at at those who would lose us ‘the right to ride’ by their unrealistic demands for Dutch-style segregated cycle paths.

And I think this gets to the nub of why the cycling campaigners consulted by the Department for Transport were so keen to keep the ‘10%’ target, despite the reality that it stood no chance of ever being met, and that the DfT had already lost interest, and scrapped it.

The target is a comfort blanket. It’s these individuals’ way of convincing themselves that cycling really, really is on the up, without apparently having to persuade any council or authority to do anything about actually improving the conditions for cycling – the ‘hard’ measures that the CTC and other groups seem to take such a profound and irrational dislike to. Even when they are quite aware the target is not going to be met, they still cling to the belief that it could be, and that there is not enough ‘marketing’ going on, or enough emphasis on how safe cycling actually is –

 We’re two-thirds of the way through the period over which, according to the National Cycling Strategy (NCS), cycle use is supposed to double – and cycling is still unremittingly on the way down!

… Cycling should be repositioned by imagery that emphasises its practical advantages. Safety issues of any kind must be avoided, as should direct criticism of car use. Cycle facilities that attract criticism from existing cyclists can also be counter-productive. Market segmentation should choose the best targets, of which the journey to work by people in their 30s and 40s has much the best potential.

Despite the obvious failure of these kinds of strategies, they were, and are, being clung to.

The target, meanwhile, however distant and unrealistic, is there in black and white in fancy official documents, and that seems to be enough to keep them happy. It’s a way of avoiding facing up to the reality that the methods so dear to these groups are not working, and will never work, as a way of creating a mass cycling culture.

If you needed an indication of how far behind the Netherlands we are…

… this is it.

Wolvenstraat, Utrecht – a bicycle-only street.

I wonder how long it will be before we see a street like this in Great Britain?

We can only dream…

The chutzpah of Richard Tracey

In a letter written to Danny of the Cyclists in the City blog, Richard Tracey, the Conservative group transport spokesman on the London Assembly writes that

it is important to be clear that many Londoners do not have unlimited choice over which mode they use to travel. Whilst we strongly support those who have the choice choosing to cycle, there are those for whom cycling is not feasible. The introduction of a road user hierarchy penalises those, such as parents with young children, whose personal circumstances might be less suited to cycling. 

This post is not the place to go in to much detail about the nature of the ‘road user hierarchy’ debate (for background, see here, here, or here) but, in essence, the Conservatives believe that measures to prioritize cycling, walking and public transport in London, over the use of the private motor vehicle, are wrong. Their view implies that the current state of London’s roads is perfectly fine, thanks, and that all road users – whatever their mode – currently have an equal bite of the transport cherry. To ‘penalise’ or ‘hobble’ drivers (Tracey’s own words) is wrong, because they are just going from A to B, like everyone else.

But Richard Tracey has now, apparently, brought out another argument against the introduction of a road user hierarchy. It’s that, for many Londoners, ‘cycling is not feasible’ – so some people will be unfairly penalized if cycling is prioritized as a transport mode.

But why is cycling ‘not feasible’ for many Londoners? Why do some Londoners not have the choice, as Mr Tracey’s letter puts it?

According to Mr Tracey, it’s because of  ‘personal circumstances’ – which he chooses not to define.

But I can think of a better reason why cycling is ‘not feasible’ for many Londoners.

Four lanes of vehicles queuing at the lights. A ludicrously tiny cycle lane that is nothing more than an invitation to a serious injury should you get caught in the wrong place as traffic starts moving. Fortunately, in this case, it is being blocked by a massive articulated lorry.

This is part of “Cycle Superhighway 8” – the network that is apparently bringing about a “cycling revolution.” (The junction in question – where Millbank meets Vauxhall Bridge Road – can be seen at about the 0:25 mark in this video).

Elsewhere in Mr Tracey’s letter, he trumpets the success of these very same ‘Superhighways’ as one of the ways to get people cycling –

By measures such as the introduction of Boris Bikes, Cycle Superhighways and an increase in the provision of cycle parking, more Londoners are cycling than ever before. There is certainly more that can be done. However none of these improvements has come about via a policy of deliberately hobbling other road users. Rather, they have been successful by making it easier and more convenient for people to choose to cycle.

I’m not quite sure how the blue paint that disappears before this junction, and reappears after it, in any way makes it ‘easier and more convenient’ for people to cycle along this stretch of the Thames – provision for cyclists obviously falls far behind ‘stacking‘ in TfL’s priorities. But that’s all that is on offer, as far as Mr Tracey is concerned.

we believe that the best approach is largely to allow the facts and the many advantages of cycling to speak for themselves.

Those advantages being –

Cycling to work is cheaper than any other option bar walking, it will often be quicker than the alternatives and it has the benefit of being fantastic exercise. Our view is that the more people consider the various alternatives in those terms, the more people will conclude that cycling is the best way to travel in London .

‘Cheap’ and ‘fantastic exercise’, indeed. But not ‘pleasant’ or ‘safe’.

‘Parents with young children’ are forced to use cars on London’s roads not because of Mr Tracey’s ill-defined ‘personal circumstances’, but because they would be completely insane to let their children cycle on them. They have to drive their children to school because they don’t want to see them getting run over on a bicycle (this is something the Conservative member for Transport for West Sussex is quite happy to admit).

That is why cycling is not feasible for many Londoners.

Richard Tracey knows this, of course. He knows that no parent is going to let their child cycle through junctions like the one in the picture above. Yet he has the bare-faced cheek to employ the car-dependence of Londoners – a car-dependence that is created by the hostility of this kind of street environment to vulnerable road users, particularly young children – as a reason to maintain the status quo.

But it is your party that wants to maintain that car dependence, Mr Tracey. Cycling is ‘not feasible’ because of your policies.

If people are given the choice between cycling and driving a great many people will choose the former.

How about giving those people a genuine choice, Mr Tracey?

A recent scene from a country not very far away, where parents feel happy to let young children ride bikes on busy city streets

Another HGV death

Freewheeler has written a post today reporting the sad news that the cyclist Peter McGreal has died, a week after he was struck by a hit-and-run lorry driver in Bethnal Green. The driver was subsequently arrested on a charge of causing death by careless driving, and bailed until September.

This is, of course, just the latest in a long line of fatalities in London at the hands of HGVs. There are ongoing safety and awareness campaigns – such as Exchanging Places – which are a good thing in their own right. However, I don’t think they are addressing the root problem, which is a hard core of obviously reckless lorry drivers. There are plenty of well-driven lorries on London’s roads, but it’s the minority of lunatics that pose the danger, and I can’t really see safety campaigns affecting the way they drive.

I follow a limited number of helmet camera cyclists on youtube, but in only the last two days, these three dangerous HGV drivers have been captured in London –

The problem is these drivers thinking they can get away with driving like this. They’re not stupid – they probably can.

Car sick (2)

Bristol, yesterday.

I hope there wasn’t someone seriously ill in that ambulance.