However at least motorists have to pas a test of competence even if they then sometimes ignore the rules. A cyclist can go down a rural A road with the ability to do nothing more than ride without stabilisers!

Here is just one of the reasons why motorists have to pass a test, and cyclists don’t.

(or without realising they’re making other people late)

I was just trying to point out that I expect most drivers feel the same way.

Well the answer is usually staring them in the face.

not bad for a thread about kids playing out, hijacked by the anti-car taliban

Erm. The two things are surely completely intertwined?

I was thinking yesterday about what a really good opportunity your play-out day must have been to show people the “here’s what you could have won”.

But it’s damn difficult to make that the reality on anything but a “special event” basis while the car is absolute king, isn’t it?

Anecdotally my experience is that a greater proportion of cyclists are idiots than car drivers.

That’s because the wrongdoings of car drivers are completely internalised by society.

The significant majority of drivers break laws almost constantly. But it’s ignored because creeping over the speed limit or edging past that light as it turns red isn’t considered anything wrong.

Yup, except cars are big, and visible, and shiny, and covered in reflective bits and lights

Dark cars have more crashes than light coloured cars.

They also have some MP patrons! wow heavy hitters, we should all be awestruck at their prestige and influence.

Unfortunately they do have influence, with stupid local authorities who consult them, stupidly, on stuff (while ignoring other groups like the London Cycling Campaign)

https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/streets/coleparkroad/results/cole-park-road-consultation-report-.pdf

Side issue, what stops most people from cycling most of the time when the journey is viable:
[strike]1 it rains a lot in this country. yuk, especially yuk if wearing a suit or smart clothing.
2 it’s damned dangerous and they don’t want to finish the day as a parapelgic
3 can’t be bothered getting hot and sweaty, don’t like cycling or exercise
4 it’s a load of faff locking it up, and any reasonable bike will get nicked anyway
5 can’t carry any reasonable amount of shopping[/strike]

1 They can’t be arsed.

(particularly in the context of a certain government minister responsible for such things, who looks substantially the wrong side of a BMI of 40, and vocally advocates being able to drive to the pie shop, park outside the pie shop, and buy all of the pies)
FTFY

Wellington Country Park? http://www.wellington-country-park.co.uk/

Inwood Camping: http://www.ukcampsite.co.uk/sites/details.asp?revid=11006

The bike, on the other hand, is inherently unsafe because even the safest (most skilled and road aware) rider is vulnerable at all times.

But we’re not. We’re only vulnerable when people are driving cars near us. It’s non-logic.

I’d be pretty safe driving a JCB around a classroom

I was very disappointed they didn’t print the whole clarification on the back of the bus.

Some journalists win Pulitzer prizes, garner worldwide respect, and push forward human culture.

Others are this bloke.

Decent car-sharing schemes would be cheaper in many cases. Seems a double problem – too much cachet and status attached to cars, and few decent sharing options.

I used to know a chap who’d wait in traffic queues on his bike.

Doesn’t really help anyone, that. You just push the back of the traffic queue further back and contribute to junctions behind being more clogged.

Credit to him for yanking the F1 media’s chain
http://www1.skysports.com/formula-1/news/12474/8902488/fernando-alonso-fires-up-silly-season-by-revealing-important-news-is-imminent

(it’s breaking all over the place. http://www.elperiodico.com/es/noticias/deportes/fernando-alonso-compra-euskaltel-2619778 ) 🙂

THE INTERNET.

In the sticks, that is still the case.

If only… http://www.thisissurreytoday.co.uk/Children-banned-walking-cycling-North-Downs/story-18210883-detail/story.html#axzz2b6ykysJN

It doesn’t need everyone to do it. It’d be good if a lot more people did it.

As both a cyclist and a driver, it still royally riles me when a motorist squeezes past, then stops in a queue of traffic twenty yards ahead, ensuring that all the the cyclists he’s just squeezed past are stuck behind him or have to filter up the inside.

This! 😀

Anyway, if the driver is there to be filtered past, they’re causing congestion and they’re in the bloody way.

Plus you need to nag your council about bus prices. A family busabout here is a fiver 🙂

My car has 120,000 miles on the clock and depreciation is very small. But the majority of cars out there are newer and are depreciating much more.

Maybe a bit high on average, yep, fair enough

My local newspaper’s comments pages are full of people complaining that they have to pay 1 pound an hour to park in the town centre; we’re happy to pay that, because the alternative is to spend £9 on the bus to get us, as a family, into town.

One challenging thing is the way car ownership’s sunk costs are internalised, so people only see the price of £1 parking and a dribble of fuel, rather than the actual daily cost of owning their car (a tenner in depreciation, say).

One family bus trip at the weekend: £9
versus
Fuel into town: £1
Car parking in town £1

When really the other side includes…

A week’s car tax: £3
A week’s depreciation: £70
A week’s insurance: £10
A week’s service cost: £10

agreed, perhaps from some people, or kids who’ve not had the experience before, it’s a taste of what’s possible

That’s a strong argument for it, for sure.

Y’know, the “why are these kids in the street, they had their afternoon back in August” effect?

Terrahawk: I came across a bit strong, and I think what you did was great. You’re clearly thinking longer term than just this event. I tend to feel ranty when media coverage and other commentary portrays it as a great thing while not talking about the future. BUT: I really think there’s a risk that it becomes normalised to both kids and adults that this time is the kids’ time to use the streets, thus reinforcing the sense that it’s off limits at other times. Hence it’s important for all of us not to let this kind of thing let people off the hook at all other times.

What really saddens me is the lack of freedom of movement that kids have in this country. It’s not just about playing outside, it’s also about being able to get on a bike and go places.

That’s what’s so depressing about the SkyRide. I saw a lovely blog about the Southampton one, a few months ago, which showed pictures afterwards of parents and kids cycling on pavements back towards car parks, because the roads had been handed back to thundering traffic.

In the Netherlands, by contrast, a young kid can get on a bike and ride anywhere they want in safety. Even when there’s not a bike lane on a quiet street, signs and laws make it perfectly clear to drivers that they don’t take priority. It’s no coincidence that obesity levels are much lower there, but it’s just the principle of the damn thing: Kids should be able to move.,

(e.g. https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/streets/coleparkroad/results/cole-park-road-consultation-report-.pdf )

And yet TFL consult them all the bloody time, while ignoring the London Cycling Campaign.

But PT isn’t always profitable, so it needs subsidising.

We already subsidise the bejeezus out of private motoring, so why not?

I think a sensible judgement can be made sometimes, that filtering in a particular circumstance is not the best thing to do, but that’s a safety decision primarily.

But staying in queues of traffic rather than filtering, just in case you annoy drivers, would be daft. Those queues and even those traffic lights are there because of motor traffic. You wouldn’t have to stop at so many reds if cars weren’t there because there’d be a tiny fraction of the amount of traffic signals needed. And if their vehicle is too wide to filter as well (i.e. if it *is* the queue), then that’s their problem.

Okay, one constructive idea: Car sharing schemes could be one really good way to improve things. Many people only have a car for the odd drive at the weekend. It’d be good to show people in those circumstances that it’d actually be cheaper to rent a car 30 weekends a year than to own one for the whole year, clogging up a bit of road space.

It would mess up many people’s lives. Given people’s current jobs and living arrangements, they’d have no choice but to pay the fees. Chances are they would struggle to move because the value of houses without off-street parking would plummet. It’d really hurt people in their pockets, and that’s no way to get people on your side.

Given that on-street parking is, in its current form…

a) A major detriment to children playing outside, thus having a health cost impact
b) A cause of congestion
c) A big giveaway of land to motorists that could be used for other facilities like bus lanes, cycle lanes, additional traffic flow space, etc

…then there’s a big economic case for something to change. Like i say, it’s not an easy choice, and it’s certainly not the only aspect of car dependency that is detrimental and ought to be tackled.

That said, it doesn’t really stop the kids playing in our street. The most important thing to do IMHO is to bring speeds down with properly enforced slower limits in residential streets, something with sends groups like the Association of British Drivers (who reject the existence of “rat running”) into spasms.

How about some actual solutions? That are actual real ideas that will work not fantasty statements?

Proper pricing of on-street parking is something I think should be strongly considered. With money ringfenced and channeled directly into public transport improvement. Getting there would need some serious positioning and messaging, though.

If anyone thinks we can just restrict car ownership and everything will be fine, they are in la la land.

We have unrestricted car ownership and things are far from fine. The balance is miles the other way right now. TfL, for instance, have drivers’ organisations listed as statutory consultees, but not cycling or pedestrian groups.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/what_statutory_consultation_list

It’s all about the bloody car, right now. Yet even people who NEED to drive would benefit from less driving by those who don’t need to.

Our street isn’t a cul-de-sac, but because it’s a 20mph zone with speed bumps, the rat-runners are deterred, and hence it’s pretty kid friendly.

This appeared all along the pavement this weekend, for instance.

But the economy gets that back because people can get to work. If the guy with the truck for instance is denied parking for it, there goes the income he uses to support his family.

But many of the other examples you mentioned were people who drive ordinary private cars to work. Do all of them have no other choice? Could they walk, cycle, take a bus? A huge number of car journeys are less than a couple of miles. For the majority of drivers the car is, ultimately, a well subsidised convenience most of the time. The opportunity cost burden of a line of parked cars down the side of a road is very big.

It’s a tricky one. The land value of the UK handed over to on-street parking must be huge. It’s a VAST subsidy to private motoring.