Monthly Archives: February 2015

Parallels (roads and books)

Last night I made this note: “Day in day out, year in year out, the state encourages endless deeds of anti-social behaviour”. Today I read an article by Sunili Govinnage who decided, over a period of a year, to read books … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Lollipop men and women

The reason we “need” lollipop men and women is the same reason we “need” traffic lights: to mitigate the fallout from the rule of priority. Given equality instead of priority as the basic rule, our roads would be safe, and lollipop men and women would be … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Reply to previous post

Reply from Dr Kumar, author of research from University of Surrey: “Martin, your numbers are still valid if we compare the average with the average – 29 is peak v/s average. I read your interesting piece and fully agree with your solution.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Traffic lights and air quality

In No Idle Matter (2007), I wrote that the stop-start motion caused by traffic lights multiplies emissions and fuel use by a factor of four. In this piece, Prashant Kumar (University of Surrey) says air quality at signal-controlled junctions is no … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Driverless cars

Driverless cars are presented as the answer to road safety. “Accidents” are blamed on human error. No. Roads are dangerous because of the unequal, intolerant priority system.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment