The media and the road/car lobby have together created an entity the motorist. Apparently they all think that they should be able to park wherever they like and drive at whatever speed they consider to be appropriate, and that anybody who says otherwise is waging war on them. At At […]
I rode a bike before that. It was just a convenient way to make the short journeys I needed to make. Initially to the university in Bristol, where helmets didn’t really seem to be the style. Then around the sidestreets and sidewalks to the lab when I worked in Cincinnati. […]
At War With The Motorist‘s tongue-in-cheek name and sarcastic attitude is usually to make fun of people who misuse and overuse the private car. But at least as big a problem with our transport and built environment is the misuse and overuse of freight and delivery vehicles, especially in London […]
In last week’s the week before the week before last’s post, if you build it they will come, I described why we should expect that building proper cycle superhighways — fast, capacious, direct and sensible routes that are segregated from high volumes of fast moving motor vehicles — should unleash […]
The “I Pay Road Tax” campaign has done an excellent job of reaching out to cyclists. Every cyclist now knows that “road tax” was abolished in the 1930s, that what motorists pay is “vehicle excise duty”, and that VED goes to the treasury and not directly to the highways agencies. […]
On the London Cyclist thread “is there anything super about the Cycle Superhighways?,” we hear Chinese whispers on the reason why TfL decided against making real superhighways and instead came up with the overpriced and failed PR exercise that are the blue lines on the side of the road: “TfL […]
Over at At War With The Motorist, I look at another of the obvious ill-effects of Beijing’s burgeoning car dependency — the plague of badly parked cars filling the pavements and cycle paths. You can read it here. Also, try out our China traffic quiz: what’s wrong with this picture?
It’s ten years since the Road Haulage Industry blockaded oil refineries to complain about the price of diesel, and the whole country ran out of fuel. At At War With The Motorist I ask what has been since then to reduce our dependence on private motorised transport and road haulage […]
Melinda Liu in Newsweek, on sitting the written exam for a Chinese driving license: The most memorable question is the one about intestines. Specifically, it’s a multiple-choice question about what to do if you come across a traffic accident victim with an open abdominal wound from which the small intestine […]
Continuing the China strand on At War With The Motorist, exploring questions that aren’t easy to answer. The main conclusions are that an absolutely staggering number of people die on China’s roads each year, and they do so because on their anarchic roads, inexperienced Motorists drive like idiots. The more […]
This post probably doesn’t quite work, but at At War With The Motorist I continue the thread on shared space by considering the mechanism by which it works: risk compensation — the idea that when traffic management is ripped out, road users will perceive the road to be more risky […]
At At War With The Motorist, I continue the threads on the concept of shared space and on transport in Beijing, looking at how roads work and how road users behave in a city where traffic management is meaningless, and the road belongs to whoever can take it. Read it […]
Boing Boing brings us the story of a San Francisco bike messenger who takes acid at work. To do what I do, I have to be paying attention 100% of the time. My peripheral vision and reflexes are my best friends. Acid is not a drug that lends itself to […]
Vaughan of the ever fascinating Mind Hacks discusses a recent study that looks at the effects of having an attractive passenger in the car on driver errors. The researchers put forty people in driving simulators and made them drive through hazards while talking to passengers. The basic finding was that […]
Every journalist and cycling campaign group can cite one great example of a town where the simple switching off of every set of traffic lights has transformed it overnight into a transport utopia: Drachten, half way between Amsterdam and Groningen in the Netherlands. Here in the UK, Drachten’s experiment is […]
The latest trend in street engineering is shared space. It sounds great: the street belongs to everybody, Motorist, pedestrian and cyclist, and we all look out for one another and show some respect. It’s a reversal of the forced traffic management: the curbs and railings that segregate vehicles from people; […]
A petrol station on Clerkenwell Road has been turned into a cinema. This is a disaster; an act of war on the Motorist that must be condemned. The BBC’s Andrew Sully explains why this epidemic of sudden garage death should be such a worry to us. Continue reading at At […]
From At War With The Motorist today… From the World Health Organisation’s Multi-Sectoral Forum on Road Safety in China (March 2008), on driving in a country where over a quarter of a million die on the roads each year: Both lack of awareness to risks and inexperience means that people […]
From At War With The Motorist, on our co-blogger Dawn’s new creation: Somebody called Dawn Foster writes in The Grauniad Bike Blog today about her latest blog, A Hundred and One Wankers, a rigorous academic exercise mapping London’s wankers — specifically, the wankers who just can’t control themselves when confronted […]
TfL’s consultation on proposed changes to the Congestion Charge ends today. This is your final chance to send in your comments. Briefly, the notable proposed changes are these: Abolish the Western Extension Zone (WEZ) — the section in Kensington and Knightsbridge, west of Park Lane and east of Shepherd’s Bush. […]
Over at At War With The Motorist I consider what the effects of the London Bike Hire scheme will be — how the bikes will be used, and how they will change London. The conclusion is that they should make a small contribution to solving London’s problems, by helping the […]
Last week, a quick dig at crap websites trying to promote discounts for the Rube Goldberg railfares system. And a review of a crap cycle path through Southwark Park. And from the weekend, an exclusive exposure of the leftist conspiracy behind the War On The Motorist, at Tolpuddle Festival in […]
As the “democracy village” are turfed out of their camp in the scorched and smelly square outside the home of democracy, I take the opportunity to review one of central London’s least impressive locations, an isolated and inaccessible grass and concrete traffic island — Parliament Square. Read it here.
London’s authorities are to be fined £300 million for failing to prevent the serious air pollution that we’re experiencing. More importantly, an estimated 4-5,000 people will die prematurely this year because of the city’s polluted air. But nobody seems quite able to name the source of the problem. At At […]