Martin Cassini's Blog Posts Tagged 'traffic-control' (11)

In devising methods of repressing hypothetical (minority) misbehaviour on our roads, the traffic control net is spread wide. Like the wrong fish caught in a trawler’s net, good people are ensnared and brought to their knees (you, me and Chris Huhne come to mind). Apart from being based on the fatal flaw of priority, the twin-headed monster of traffic control and enforcement is out of hand, run by unelected public “servants” whose mafia tactics amount to a gross public disservice.

In the summer, you expect jams on the A303 because of man-made bottlenecks, i.e. dual-carriageways funneling into single. But nearing the end of a mega jam the other day, I saw it was due to something else: traffic lights at a roundabout. The principal A303 was getting just 12 secs of green time, while the A345 (with much lighter traffic) was getting 35 secs! They pap you and zap you for straying over the limit when the road is clear, but when you're bumper to bumper for forty minutes…

In his Mansion House speech last night, the Foreign Secretary called for funding to help emerging democracies in North Africa avoid a reversion to autocracy. It’s not too far-fetched to see a parallel with roads. Britain is known for its democratic freedoms, yet roads are subject to autocratic control. If you arrive at a junction and can see it’s clear, are you free to go? Not if…

High on Google's list of management advice is "empower your team and don’t micromanage." If the TCD (traffic control dictatorship) had a list, its core directive would no doubt be the polar opposite, along the lines of "give road-users no power of choice or discretion, micromanage them, dictate their every move, and book them if they stray an inch."

"Civilisations need strong functioning governments if they are to prosper," writes Will Hutton. Hmm. Belgium is without government and doing fine by all accounts. Given fair laws, maybe the "need" for government wanes – in the same way that if equality (instead of priority) provided the framework for interaction on the roads, the "need" for traffic regulation would…

"Mubarak’s resignation is the greatest day of my life!" said El Baradei, "It marks release from 30 years of oppression." Maybe, but don’t succeeding governments find different ways to oppress us? I don’t want to downplay the news from Egypt or overplay my campaign for traffic system reform, but when you consider that the annual casualty toll on UK roads alone is 28,000 (and I argue…

Traffic regulation takes legal precedence over equality and social custom. Instead of being able to respond to social and spatial prompts in the world about us, we must obey a context of regulation and reprisal. Instead of a sociable, "After you," we are wound up into thinking, "Get out of my way!" How much longer are we going to put up with manipulation by overpaid, unaccountable regulators lording it over us and making us dance to their…

Online exchange re Road to Nowhere videos (at my mjcassini YouTube channel): 'janhanjanhan' wrote, "Removing lights can only work for intersections with little traffic where lights make us stop when it's safe to go (as said in Part 1). Removing lights from major intersections would result in chaos - everyone would block each other in the intersection, or just one direction would…

Ignorance is no excuse, as They tell us when justifying a tow-away for the heinous crime of forgetting to display a valid parking permit. Actually I think ignorance can be an excuse, but They are used to having it their way. It follows that They (as opposed to Us) have no excuse for inflicting high-cost, interventionist traffic control measures that disrupt civilised human interaction and cause more harm than good. But they…

The other day I was crossing the road at a junction with a traffic light but no pedestrian signal. A woman driver in a Golf turning left into my path hooted at me in anger. I stood my ground and tried to say that the Highway Code tells drivers to give way to pedestrians at junctions. "But I've got a…

This 1941 Mervyn Leroy film stars the impeccable Greer Garson as Edna Gladney, an early campaigner for children's rights. Gladney successfully lobbied the Texas legislature to remove the stigma of illegitimacy from birth…