Equality Streets

J’accuse the traffic system and its perpetrators – the DfT, Highways England, TfL, most traffic authorities, successive transport and roads ministers – of systematic abuse, historic and present. I’ve alerted them to life-enhancing, money-saving solutions to our man-made problems on the road, but they persist in committing social, psychological, health & safety, economic, aesthetic and environmental abuse. What brought this on? Yet another vain bid to lobby a minister, who I thought knew better. I told him it was pointless referring my reform proposals to the DfT, but he did so anyway. Find the email trail at Equality Streets > Improperganda.

The anti-shared space protest planned for tomorrow (5.9.17) outside Parliament is misguided and misinformed.

Too often, shared space is confused with shared (flat) surfaces. Shared space prefers kerbs that are lower than standard, or dropped kerbs – these enable blind people to orientate themselves, and allow wheelchair users easy access – but it does not require or insist on the removal of kerbs, far from it.

Ben Hamilton-Baillie, who coined the term “shared space”, has ditched it in favour of “low-speed environments”. The venerable aim of shared space, or my term, Equality Streets, is to eliminate the conflicting speeds, neglect and aggression which spring from the anti-social rule of priority, and to make roads intrinsically safe by stimulating empathy and cooperation.

By opposing shared space and the reforms that are grotesquely overdue, detractors are supporting the egregious current system, which presides over an annual casualty toll of 20,000+. Ben has tried to communicate with them but they refuse to meet.

Predictably, Charlie Alliston was found guilty of ‘wanton or furious driving’. Equally predictably, the rules of the road, and the anonymous perpetrators of an intrinsically dangerous system, escaped without a mention, as they do every day of every year.

In a sense, Alliston was only following the wanton and ferocious system of (main road) priority, which imposes unequal rights, and endangers the vulnerable. If the onus were on the driver, or in this case the cyclist, to beware the pedestrian, instead of the other way round, Kim Briggs would have continued her walk in safety. Her family and friends would not be mourning her loss. Alliston would be innocent. He would not be facing prison.

The event was tragic because under the current system it was inevitable. Given reform along the lines advocate here – a sociable set-up based on equality rather than a regulatory system based on priority – the event would not have happened in the first place.

Alliston and Briggs are unwitting victims of a system which makes roads dangerous in the first place. Blame should be directed at the system itself.

There are calls for more enforcement of “the rules”. Given a system based on equality – “After you” instead of “Get out of my way!” – and a reformed driving test, enforcement will be unnecessary. Equality will stimulate empathy for fellow road-users and, at last, bring peace to our roads.