The rules of the road

[Martin Cassini]

What is it that makes roads inhospitable, particularly in towns and cities? Domination of public space by vehicles. Why do vehicles dominate? They are licensed to dominate - by the rules of the road. If you are driving on a main road, the rules licence you to plough on. If a child or blind person or another car is waiting to cross, you are required to ignore them. If you want to do the decent thing - let them go because they were there first - you'd be disobeying the rules. The authorities spend billions on road safety measures - but these are nothing but doomed attempts to cure problems of their own making. By imposing unequal rights on different road-users, the system flouts basic safety principles. It negates age-old social custom and civilised interaction (taking it in turns). It's the system of priority, which puts us at odds with our fellow man, that Free to Choose seeks to dismantle. We aim to change the culture of hostility to one of empathy, to enable egalitarian space-sharing. No expensive infrastructure changes are needed. Just a perception shift and the removal of misguided regulation which ignores our greatest resource - the human brain.