Equality Streets

On our way to Sunday lunch on 1 August, I was crossing Fore Street, Ilfracombe, by the acute-angled junction with the High Street. Suddenly, a Vauxhall Corsa appeared from around the blind corner, and stopped to let me go. My girlfriend had hesitated, but crossed with me. As the driver pulled away, he yelled out of the window, “KNOBHEAD!” adding two jabbing fingers. We were there first, and on foot, so what inspired such hostility? The rules of the road, that’s what. They grant drivers divine rights, and leave no room for empathy.

The current London taxi looks naff and is in dire need of a makeover but after all these years someone has finally got round to producing a fuel cell version. Story here. When we’re all driving green cars, will we still be subject to all the vexatious regulation currently in force?

We’re more tolerant and make better judgements if we’re in a frame of mind of relaxed alert rather than a state of stress. The Observer had a piece about Warwick Business School professor, Andrew Oswald, an expert on the relationship between economics and mental health. “Human happiness has positive causal effects on productivity … Positive emotions invigorate human beings; negative emotions have the opposite effect.” This is another psychological nail in the coffin for vexatious traffic regulation which defies commonsense, demands disproportionate attention, and makes us miserable.

There is too much fear on the road – a sort of generalised stranger danger. As fellow humans, drivers don’t want to bully pedestrians, but the rules of road tell them to ditch their manners in obedience to a system of control which takes absolute precedence. We are cowed into submission by rules which make us cow others into submission. The scenario I’m picturing: waiting to cross the road as a pedestrian and being ignored by streams of traffic (Grotesque); and as a driver, wanting to give way to side road traffic or peds, but being prevented from doing so by closely-following traffic.

Priority based on status of road is discriminatory. It supports inequality. By contrast, filter in turn (FiT) – based on time of arrival – expresses equal status, equal rights, equal responsibility, equal opportunity. The dysfunctional rules of the road defy civilised values. They have an unseen hand in countless “accidents”, yet they are supported by the law of the land.

Roads unfit for People (updated Case against Traffic Lights 7min 33)

Roads FiT for People (traffic lights-off trial in Portishead 5min 07)

My existing blog is at Free to Choose. The subject is traffic system reform based on equality rather than priority – the sociable way to make Roads FiT for People.