Current videos

Roads unfit for People (7.33) and Roads FiT for People (5.07). Thinking of changing campaign name to Equality Streets.

Note

Links to my stuff elsewhere: FiT Roads with a blog at Free to Choose. I proposed a lights v no-lights trial to Ealing a year ago. Currently trying to get other councils to run with the idea. It's a long haul.

Note to readers

I'm spending more time at a rather more versatile site - http://amberlight.ning.com - so see you there perhaps. This was todays' post: With all due disrespect for one-dimensional regulation, and for “campaigns” such as 'Driving for Better Business', which fail in their duty to question authority and pursue liberating change - if the ban on in-car phone use is justified because it distracts us from concentrating on the road, should traffic lights, speed cameras and speed limits be banned for the same reason?

Coercion v context and commonsense

Depressing announcement from the Association of Chief Police Officers. They propose average speed cameras instead of traffic calming measures in built-up areas to deter "speeding". You can understand the rationale, but isn't it misguided to extend state control at the expense of personal responsibility? Speeding is a fabricated crime, like jaywalking. It's not speed that kills, but inappropriate speed, or speed in the wrong hands. Don't policymakers realise that people behave worse when herded and hounded, and better when free to act on commonsense and context? Is it time to start installing traffic lights at cashpoints, and speed cameras on pavements, or time to start treating road-users as grown-ups?

Organic v processed traffic

Consider the phrase "organic traffic". It suggests a living entity, capable of intelligent self-organisation. Like organic food, organic traffic is natural, sustainable. Traffic processed through a system of control is a less benign beast. Through an increasingly complex web of enforcement, traffic management seeks to control our thoughts and movements. It blocks our impulse to co-operate and go with the flow. Like commercial food production and control, processed traffic has untold dire consequences.

Cameras can lie

A red light camera story with a happy ending. http://www.theprogressnews.com/default.asp?read=14735

Naked streets

Ilfracombe is going naked:
http://www.thisisnorthdevon.co.uk/news/Naked-streets-plan-make-Ilfracombe-town-centre-safer/article-401092-detail/article.html