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Category Archives: Uncategorized
The IAAF, FIFA, and traffic policy
The IAAF’s one-false-start-and-you’re-disqualified rule is the latest example of joy-killing by regulation-obsessed bureaucrats. The starting gun in athletics should fire at zero in a 5-second countdown. The current system is unpredictable, which prompts false starts. To solve the problem they … Continue reading
What goes around …
Is it far-fetched to suggest that social discontent is prompted by public policy which treats us like morons (most traffic control) or cash cows (fuel duty, parking controls, speed cameras, 0844 phone numbers, etc)? Such public policy failures widen the gap … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged parking controls, riots, social discontent, Them and Us, traffic control
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Naughtie but too nice?
In the news today: cuts in government subsidies to local bus services, i.e. a kick in the teeth for the people, against a backdrop of abysmal existing provision, punitive parking controls in towns, and government obsession with a £60bn hi-speed … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged James Naughtie, Martin Cassini, Today Programme, traffic control, traffic system reform
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Is street design enough?
Ben Hamilton-Baillie, street designer and proponent of shared space (he penned the phrase), thinks streetscape redesign is enough on its own, and that streets are designed to express a social context, road-users will instinctively start behaving sociably. I accept that to a degree, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Ben Hamilton-Baillie, Equality Streets, GDA, Guide Dogs, Martin Cassini, shared space, shared surfaces
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Good and bad cuts
It’s reported that NHS managers are delaying surgery in the hope that patients will die first or go private. The justification is that the NHS has to find £20bn in spending cuts by 2015. Meanwhile, there is scope in traffic … Continue reading
J’accuse (again)
Is collective grief worse than individual grief? The attacks in Norway are shocking, but the shock and grief are shared. Meanwhile, on UK roads, 30,000 are killed and injured every year, condemning families and friends to enduring loss and pain. The unremitting, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged priority system, road deaths, road safety, traffic policymakers
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Traffic control – a failure
If I know one thing, it’s that human nature is simiar the world over. Those who claim that live-and-let-live on the roads will only work in “courteous” countries know nothing. In France and Belgium where I spent time recently, the … Continue reading
International farce
In Belgium last week, a driver honked at me as I crossed on a zebra. Why? Because junctions there, in France too, often have traffic lights and zebras, delivering absurdly contradictory messages. I was already virtually across, having seen him stop … Continue reading
Is it OK to cross a red light?
In the US, the “crime” of crossing on red is called “red light running”; in the UK, it’s “red light jumping” (RLJ). But surely it’s only dangerous if you cross at speed, in neglect of other road-users. Instead of waiting and polluting pointlessly, shouldn’t … Continue reading
Bad air day
If 4000 premature deaths a year are due to air pollution from traffic, which is indeed the case, then traffic officials and governments should be accounable for measures that damage air quality. Sitting outside a cafe in Paris as I … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged air quality, Paris traffic, traffic officials, traffic policy
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