All Blog Posts (375)

If, instead of rule by priority (a traffic engineering model), we lived by values of equality (a social model), then the cogs in the current machine that clash – above all safety and efficiency – would mesh. Like shuffling cards we'd merge in turn. Congestion would melt away and roads would be safe. The spanner in the current works – priority – stems from railway engineering. Clearly rail needs segregating from road – trains need greater…

There’s an article in today’s i about high fliers training to become psychotherapists in later life. For the first half of life, said Jung, the ego needs to be pushy and self-centred, while maturity is more about reflection and compassion. Parallels with traffic? (1) The traffic control dictatorship (TCD) clearly suffers from arrested development, never have got beyond the egotistic, insensitive phase. (2) One of the foundation…

Not content with running an article about higher-cost ‘speed awareness’ courses to fund retention of speed cameras, today’s Times runs a leader in support of this new form of indirect taxation. It refers to "academic research which concludes that speed cameras save 800 lives a year". That was the skewed Allsop report which I was invited to challenge on Nick Ferrari’s LBC show the other week. The just, sustainable way to achieve appropriate…

I missed the reference on the radio just now, but in a newspaper, a headteacher condemns as "madness" the decision by a local council (in pursuit of cuts) to make redundant 25% of lollipop men and women. No, the real madness is to impose a traffic system which puts the onus for road safety on children, and produces a 'need' for lollipop men and women.

£750,000 spent re-modelling the Shinfield Rd junction in Reading, which included new signals, has made matters worse (story here). To a degree, solutions are location-specific, but in most cases, equality will solve the conflicts contrived by priority. Isn't it time we changed the engineering model…

Equality + Empathy = Efficiency. In more detail: Equality (as distinct from priority) stimulates Empathy (among ALL road-users), which combine to produce Efficiency (and safety). Another way of putting it is that Liberty (to use our instincts and judgement) + Equality (of rights, responsibility and opportunity) combine to produce Fraternity.

Speed limits license speed at that limit, but sometimes even 20 is inappropriate. Would you want to be hit by a bus doing 20? But why should we do 20 when no-one is about? Far better to let the individual decide appropriate speed based on context and the needs of the moment. When the street is busy, or someone is about to cross, we can slow to crawling pace. When no-one is around, we can speed up. It's a fair trade-off. Life involves…

Report in the Winnipeg Sun: "Traffic lights were out at several intersections in central Winnipeg on Saturday because of a power outage. Motorists and pedestrians are advised to use extreme caution" – implying that when lights are "working", caution is unnecessary. That just about sums up the negative role of the traffic control system in road safety. Story…

Recently I submitted a proposal for a FiT solution at the Westleigh T-junction near Bideford. The junction has a bit of an accident record, and Devon Highways want to install traffic lights. Hans "shared space" Monderman used to say shared space was for urban rather than rural locations. But if you accept the advantages of equality over priority, FiT could work almost anywhere, especially at junctions where single…

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. If mobile phone use is banned because it takes our eyes off the road, should traffic lights, speed cameras and speed limits be banned for the same reason? On our way back from Folkestone the other day, on the outskirts of London, we hit congestion. Almost invariably, the snag was traffic lights blocking natural flow. At the junction of Sidcup Rd and Court Rd we had to endure…

On motorways, you never fail to see drivers who ignore empty inside lanes and treat the middle lane as the default lane. On the M2 the other day, hidden behind bushes, we saw a police car, no doubt waiting to pounce on a "speeder". As Chas Dornsife wrote, "drivers who drive faster than average have the lowest accident rates, yet they are the primary targets of speed enforcement". Have you ever seen a police officer apprehend…

Returning from Sainsbury’s in Vauxhall to Waterloo at 8 this morning, a driver managed to cut his journey time by over half, with matching savings in fuel use and emissions. How? By ignoring the barrage of red lights that sought to block his progress, even though there was no traffic, let alone conflicting traffic. The route took in the small signal-controlled roundabout on the south side of Lambeth Bridge, which conjures…

A myth (or example of official improperganda) is that traffic lights secure our safety. Two "accidents" I’ve been involved in, one when I was cycling along Gray’s Inn Rd and was hit by a car, the other when a friend was badly injured outside her flat by a car ricocheting off a taxi – both happened at lights. Lights and priority prompt inappropriate, conflicting speeds. Equal (or no) priority prompts slow approach…

Some councils are wising up to ideas of traffic deregulation, which until recently they resisted tooth and nail. Yes, a road revolution is in the air. But most councils still miss the wider context, so, for the time being, we are still required to conform to the technocrat’s idea of how we should act. Under the current system of PRIORITY, we must continue to live (and die) by rules that derive from railway engineering.…

Today's behavioural psychologists say a sense of fairness is hardwired into us. Yet we have to suffer an unfair traffic control system, one that confers unequal rights on different road-users, that forces us to act against our better nature and better judgement. In 2008, when I pitched lights-off trials to Boris/the GLA, he…

There is an excellent piece about traffic lights as symbols of state control here. It seems to have been prompted by my videos. Know what a minarchist is? Nor did I. But I must be one.…

The Observer reports that Humberside chief constable, Tim Hollis, has proposed decriminalising personal drug use to rationalise resources, in apparent support of the widespread (commonsense?) view that prohibition doesn't deter drug use, and decriminalisation would cut crime. There is a clear parallel with roads policy, e.g. one-size-fits-all speed limits. (Of course, one size can’t fit all, so the idea is nonsensical applied…

The Government’s legal adviser, Sir Peter North, wants the drink drive limit cut from 80 to 50mg alcohol/100ml blood. Malcolm Heymer of the ABD claims the "one pint and you’re banned rule" would devastate the rural economy. Transport minister, Philip Hammond, appears to agree. My view? I’m against most one-size-fits-all regulation. We’re all different, and by definition, one size can’t fit all. One man’s pint is another man’s…

Killer signals and railings on the rampage again: http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/4794

The idea of questioning traffic lights is a still surprise to some people. Yet traffic lights are only the most visible symptom of a dysfunctional system. The need for reform goes a lot deeper. Piece here.