While our streets look like something from the 1950s in the midst of coronavirus lockdown, we need to rethink what ‘normal’ looks like. Stop Killing our Children is a documentary crowdfunded and produced by our friends at ETA Trust (ethical insurance with strong cycle offering). It is a review of where the Dutch are fifty years after their transformative campaign…
At the July Cycle Forum Bristol, Damien Devanny, from Avon and Somerset’s Road Safety Department, talked about their work on reports of motorists close passing cyclists and how the police deal with camera submissions. The close passes, reported using Avon and Somerset Police’s online form, are added to their database of problem locations but this does not lead to…
Of course, cycling is overall a safe and very healthy activity, with cyclists being much healthier overall than non-cyclists. But there are risks which we need to be reducing, and they’re not always the ones that attract the most attention. Research in Bristol and published by The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents makes this point ROSPA non-collision-case-study. In…
Does your blood boil when the driver of a vehicle overtakes you with inches to spare, only for you to meet them seconds later at the lights? London Cycling Campaign have launched a new campaign to tackle the problem of the “close pass”. That is, drivers overtaking people on bikes with little room to spare, which at best is…
UPDATE: The programme is available on BBC iPlayer until mid March 2018.
BBC’s “Inside Out West” programme on Monday evening will be addressing the question of why so few motorists who injure cyclists are ever prosecuted.
Bristol Road Justice has been in contact with Avon and Somerset Police as to the action they are taking with regard to enforcement action against dangerous drivers. Headline facts In 2016 police recorded that 285 cyclists were injured in road traffic collisions (ten year average 262). In 26 cases the injuries were recorded as “serious”. (Warning: many incidents go…
Bristol Cycling regularly requests data from local hospitals on the number of admissions by transport mode. Below is an infographic breaking down the collisions that resulted in cyclists being admitted to hospital in 2016. Take away messages might be: Take care to avoid leaves, curbs, potholes and, especially, ice Avoid cars (Space for Cycling anyone?)
The ridiculously lenient sentence handed down to a driver for killing cyclist Peter Brown, at the Aust roundabout, again raises questions about how the law deals with such cases. Given that the cyclist was clearly visible to the driver’s passenger and the driver of the car behind, why was Philip Bridges, the killer driver, not charged with dangerous driving,…
The recent debate on the proposed Callington “Relief” Road has brought the concept of “induced traffic” back into the limelight. And also the the related and much neglected evidence for “reduced traffic“, or the delightful concept of “traffic evaporation”. So what do these terms mean? Induced Traffic As car ownership and use have increased over the past 30 years…
The Bristol Road Justice Group met senior Avon and Somerset Police officers at the beginning of June to discuss ongoing concerns as to police road traffic law enforcement and other work to reduce the dangers posed to cyclists by dangerous driving. The meeting was timely following the publication last month of the detailed report ‘Our Lawless Roads‘ from the national…
