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It's all about speed this month as…
++ …the latest press release from 20's Plenty for Us (coinciding with the release of DfT 2024 road casualty stats) informs us that:
Failing to adopt a national approach to 20mph as an urban/village norm in England, increased
- casualties by 15,000 each year
- insurance costs by £2 billion.
++ While research from Australia found that lowering speed limits from 50km/ph to 30km/ph would protect people cycling while barely affecting commutes,
++ ..and it's always worth being reminded that:
If you are hit by a car driven at 50km/ph, you only have a 1.5-in-10 chance of surviving.
whereas, if it’s driven at 30km/ph you have a nine-in-ten chance.
You would think the message would be clear by now!
++ But @Bikery1966 on Twitter, asks that ever-pertinent question:
“Should we be informing drivers where mobile speed cameras are?”.
++ Another overlooked speed (and hostility) issue for people cycling also, it has now been found, bothers car-users!
“Tail-gating seen as most irritating driver behaviour, AA survey shows!”
More than half (55%) of drivers surveyed said that tailgating has been getting worse in recent years.
++ Providing a regular update of cycling trips along London's C3 (with more weight to the call for reallocating more roadspace to more users of the most efficient mobility options), @BobFromAccounts points out that:
“At 9am this week (19th Oct.) another 80,000+ bike journeys along the Embankment [were made].”
“To put this in perspective, there are more bike journeys per hour in this one lane than there are in the four motor vehicle lanes on the same route. If you want to get cities moving, build more cycle lanes.”
++ Touching briefly on US matters where debate on 'car-lite' cities is heating up, we have a very brief post and accompanying image of a highly desirable looking area (think quiet car-free side streets of Amsterdam).
@glenpmatthews is not (AFAIK) a notable campaigner or influencer; just a regular social media user. His post stated simply that: “Philly would be a top five city if the whole place looked like this“.
At the last count, the post had had 7.4 Million views; comments were not all favourable – Twitter has of course been largely wrecked by funded troll-bots and lack of moderation, but nevertheless, few other platforms would struggle to reach such large numbers of the public (despite the skewed algorithms denying most people of the chance).
Notable responses incuded such philosophical musings (and food for thought) as:
“car drivers drive cars to places to get away from places where here are too many cars!” (to paraphrase).
++ We finish off with a post from @fietsprofessor once again, who draws our attention to a famous quote by one Steve Jobs:
“Just as the computer [does], the bicycle is a tool that amplifies our inherent abilities to spectacular magnitudes”. This quote was made in the context of a seminal graph by Scientific American, updated to compare locomotion efficiency of vehicles to that of animals.
∞ Humans on bikes still outperform all species!
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