Carlton Reid
Cyclists who drive are better behind the steering wheel than motorists, a new analysis has found. The link between cycling and safer motoring was revealed by a UK insurance firm which offers specialist motor insurance policies for cyclists. This analysis correlates with an earlier study which found that cyclist-drivers tend to have faster reaction times than non-cyclists.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the cyclist-drivers were significantly faster at detecting the appearance of fellow cyclists.
Cyclists (and motorcyclists) have a wry acronym for the inattention of motorists. “Sorry, mate I didn’t see you” – or SMIDSY – is said to be a typical excuse from motorists who have crashed into two-wheelers. For the same phenomenon, UK government incident reporting uses the phrase “looked but failed to see.”
Beanland’s study concludes that “cycling experience is associated with more efficient attentional processing for road scenes” and she suggests that road safety would be improved for all if more motorists also cycled.
South Gloucestershire want you to believe that building roads is the solution to climate change – At War With The Motorist
South Gloucestershire are consulting on expanding road capacity, and to justify it they cite their Climate Emergency declaration and tell us that building roads will solve climate change.
As a local issue, I’ve written about it elsewhere. But it covers lots of themes that are really At War With The Motorist material: zombie road schemes, highways departments who have never yet seen a problem for which they won’t suggest building roads is the solution, no matter how absurd, and councils who sell you road building with the empty promise that it will be accompanied with investment in public transport, active travel or liveable neighbourhoods.
How Old Are You, Really? Your ‘Performance Age’ Can Tell You – Pocket
Danielle Zickl
Your performance age—or how fit you are—is a better predictor of how long you’ll live than your chronological age is, according to research from the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.
Those who exercised regularly lived about 10 years longer than those who didn’t exercise.This is the largest study of its kind, with over 126,000 patients examined over a period of 24 years.You know how good getting out on your bike makes you feel. But it also may be doing your body more good than you thought, too: Getting out for a ride on the regular may help you live about 10 years longer than your more sedentary peers, a study published the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology suggests.
COVID deaths in England’s first wave were 70% higher in areas with worst air pollution, study finds | Sky News
Victoria Seabrook Friday 18 June 2021
Deaths from COVID-19 in England during the first wave of the pandemic were 70% higher in areas with worse air pollution than the national average, new research has revealed.
Report author Peter Congdon, geography professor at Queen Mary University of London, said he hoped the study would help avoid a high number of deaths in future similar epidemics – and also serve to highlight “the long standing issues of poor air quality in cities”.
The report, published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal J, found the prevalence of nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide and particulate matter 10 were “significant influences” on deaths from COVID-19.
Comparatively, 40% fewer people died in areas of England with the cleanest air.
Petition update · 3 days in court to start Wednesday. You can watch on line. Here’s how: · Change.org / Stonehenge Alliance
On Wednesday (23rd June) the legal challenge to Transport Secretary’s decision to approve the highly damaging road scheme through the World Heritage Site will be heard at the High Court. The hearing, which is likely to last for 3 days may be our last chance to stop this government’s wanton destruction.
The hearing is taking place in person at the Royal Courts of Justice, but only the legal team will be allowed to attend. The public, however, can watch proceedings online, but need to register with the court, the day before (on the Tuesday) as follows:
• To observe proceedings remotely, people need to email listoffice@administrativecourtoffice.justice.gov.uk no earlier than Tuesday 22nd June, with case ref. no. CO/4844/2020.• A link will be sent to them up to 15 minutes before the hearing.Please note it is illegal to record or take any screenshots of proceedings.
Thanks to your support the target has nearly been reached, but not quite.
So, please continue to encourage people to sign the petition and contribute to the crowdjustice appeal.
How cargo bikes are winning hearts and minds in Lisbon | ECF
Nolwan Graver 15 Jun, 2021
For the past years, the Lisbon municipality has been fostering the uptake of cargo bikes among families and individuals with notable success. And the electrically-assisted cargo bike has deeply changed Lisbon Deputy Mayor Miguel Gaspar’s “personal perspective and experience on bikes and their application in cities.” As he noted on social media, “you get the flexibility of a car (…) and the pleasure of using a bike“.
March 2020) Let’s tackle CarOwnerVirus – ETA
4th March 2020
The Coronavirus global death toll has just topped 3,000. When it reaches 3,561 it will equal the number of people killed on the roads in a single day.
Clearly Coronavirus is a serious threat that is entirely deserving of all efforts to bring it under control, but why do we show such apathy towards another source of danger that kills 1.3 million people every year? People might grumble into their pints about speeding, parking on pavements or mobile phone use behind the wheel, but most tolerate it in a way that would be unthinkable if 3,561 lives were being lost every day to conventional acts of terrorism.
When people here in Britain talk about the roads, many mistake equality for equity. The trope “we all just need to share the roads” overlooks the fact that on the roads – as in so many other areas of life – equity requires that some people get more.
The more time one spends walking or cycling, the more one is exposed to careless, anti-social and downright dangerous behaviour. The photo below shows drivers outside a school in Surrey taking to the pavements because the road ahead is blocked. Children walking to school were forced to take refuge to avoid being run over. No action was taken by police against the drivers.
Energy And Equity: Ivan Illich: Toward a History of Needs (New York: Pantheon, 1978)
Extract
Man, unaided by any tool, gets around quite efficiently. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer in ten minutes by expending 0.75 calories. Man on his feet is thermodynamically more efficient than any motorized vehicle and most animals. For his weight, he performs more work in locomotion than rats or oxen, less than horses or sturgeon. At this rate of efficiency man settled the world and made its history.
Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man’s metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well.
Bicycles are not only thermodynamically efficient, they are also cheap. With his much lower salary, the Chinese acquires his durable bicycle in a fraction of the working hours an American devotes to the purchase of his obsolescent car. The cost of public utilities needed to facilitate bicycle traffic versus the price of an infrastructure tailored to high speeds is proportionately even less than the price differential of the vehicles used in the two systems. In the bicycle system, engineered roads are necessary only at certain points of dense traffic, and people who live far from the surfaced path are not thereby automatically isolated as they would be if they depended on cars or trains. The bicycle has extended man’s radius without shunting him onto roads he cannot walk. Where he cannot ride his bike, he can usually push it.
Transport for London wins appeal over Streetspace active travel programme | road.cc
Court of Appeal reverses decision from earlier this year that City Hall initiatives to promote cycling and walking were unlawful
TfL has today won a Court of Appeal decision against a ruling from the High Court earlier this year that initiatives aimed at promoting active travel and making roads safer for cyclists and pedestrians were unlawful.
In January, High Court judge Mrs Justice Lang ruled that TfL’s Streetspace programme, designed to promote active travel after the coronavirus pandemic hit and aimed at given more space to cyclists and pedestrians, was unlawful.
The action was originally brought by two organisations linked to members of the licensed cab trade, the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association and the United Trade Action Group, which argued that the Streetspace programme, TfL guidance to boroughs on low traffic neighbourhoods, and the closure of Bishopsgate in the City of London were all unlawful.
Do you have an example of UK car-led town planning you want to change? | The Guardian
Guardian community team
Share your photos and stories of examples of car-led redevelopment where you live
Wed 9 Jun 2021
We’d like to find out how your UK town or city was redesigned for road vehicles.
From the 1950s onwards many towns and cities across the UK adopted car led planning in line with rising car ownership. Today, many residents in urban areas hope to have more environmentally friendly spaces and cleaner air which is at odds with past car led redevelopment.
We’d like to find out from readers about the worst examples of past car-led planning, that should be rethought now.
Share your photos and stories