Manufacturing Traffic Jams

As regular readers know I am a frequent car driver, topping 320 Km per week. Whilst this is nowhere close to the distances covered by truck drivers or even the travelling salesmen left in business, it does mean I spend quite a lot of time on the road. In the past it used to be the M25 and these days it is often the M4. Both are very busy motorways in South-East England (and if you think that no motorway is ever not busy, I suggest going along the M40 or the M69). The traffic along them is often congested. The western arc of the M25 seems particularly worse than it used to be, a factor I put down to so many people like myself commuting in on a daily or weekly basis from South-West and West England and the West Midlands to work in London. What exacerbates the congestion on the M25 and now increasingly on the eastern Berkshire (I know that part of the county has been fragmented into a number of consolidated authority ‘city-states’) stretch of the M4 is the variable speeds approach. This is explicitly warned about on the M25 but also now occurs on the M4.



Now, I am a person who adheres strictly to road speed limits and I have no issue about speed cameras. However, what I do not like is how the speed limit is jerked back and forth on the M4 and M25. The speed limit for a motorway is 70mph (112 kph) but the matrix signs daily alter this down to anything from 40-60mph (64-96 kph). Often you have ‘Queue caution’ appearing as well. This is ironic, because as I have discussed before: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2009/06/rubbernecking-far-less-common-than.html  putting up any sign on the motorway causes people to slow down automatically so creating the queue that they were seeking to warn people about. The other day I actually saw a sign that said ‘Strong winds forecast’, not that they were happening then, they might as well have said ‘Long-term recession forecast’ in terms of how much it may have modified the average driver’s behaviour. The signs appearing saying ‘Fog’ always strike me as a waste of electricity. Anyway, what you find is that you are slowed down, sometimes jumping from 70 mph to 40 mph and then back up to 50 mph or 60 mph, or any combination of these speeds. What this tends to do is not actually moderate the flow in the way that I assume the Highways Agency intends, it simply creates a jam wherever the signs start.


What is the expectation of the ‘Queue caution’ sign? One might expect people to slow up so that they do not crash into the unmoving cars. They would slow up even if you put a smiley face on the matrix boards. In addition, motorways are designed so that you can see far into the distance. Particularly at this time of the year you can see the cluster of red lights long before you come close to them. Is there an assumption that we see a queue warning sign and decide to leave the motorway and try an alternate route? There are a few places where not going down the motorway will get you to your destination faster than using the motorway. I know that most days it is easier to get into Dorset via the single carriageway roads through Newbury and Salisbury than going along the motorways and dual carriageway route through Winchester and Southampton: M3-M27-A31. However, most of the time, taking the motorway is the most direct route, especially going into a city like London. The whole reason why motorways were invented was to move vehicles between cities more effectively so it seems ironic that we are now being encouraged to leave them.


Of course, not all of the blame can be put on whichever human or computer decides to put these random speeds into the mix, some of it depends on the drivers too who simply exacerbate a difficult situation. Many drivers on the M4 simply ignore the signs and keep going as fast as they can until they actually come to the start of the jam. There will always be those, like myself, who obey the speed limit immediately and the bulk of drivers who will not seek to match the limit but will simply lift their foot off the accelerator as they process the information. There are also those who speed along the hard shoulder with their emergency lights flashing away pretending that they are having a break down right up to the next junction. The other major challenge is that so many drivers see the queues as a good opportunity to switch lanes believing that in doing so they will suddenly get clear of the jam. This is particularly troublesome when an articulated lorry decides it is time to switch lanes and so a space the length of five cars is forced to open up. All of this behaviour simply adds to the jam.


I am not saying that without variable speed limits jams on motorways would not come to an end. However, it is clear that without the signalling of queues and the constant slowing down and speeding up on the M25 and M4 and probably other motorways I do not frequent too, the queues would be shorter both in length and duration. This is apparent, when suddenly for no reason the queue breaks up and you find yourself travelling again at a decent speed. If you can see an accident by the roadside you know the course, but these days more often it is simply the exclamations about queues which is creating these things and you then find the road is perfectly clear and that there is, in fact, no reason why you could not have been driving at 60-70 mph for the past two miles. My father, among others, feels that variable speeds on motorways is a game being played by bored staff at some traffic monitoring centre. I agree with him on very few things, but for now, these seems as rational explanation for this irrational behaviour as any other.

Pay & Display Dismay

One section of the UK population which irritates me immensely, as anyone who reads this blog knows, are those people who believe in a 'freer' Britain in which they can speed around , use their mobile phones and park where they like with impunity.  This is primarily associated with driving, whether in a car or a commercial van or lorry, but in fact this is simply because they feel they can talk about outrageous things in that sphere whereas in others such as re-introducing the death penalty and castration as sentences for courts and expelling any immigrants, would be challenged more vigorously.  In the field of regulation of driving and parking they constantly portray the rules as having nothing to do with safety but simply as a form of taxation.  I constantly come back to the fact that if you do not break the law, then this is a tax you are exempt from.  However, it is clear these people think very individualist behaviour in vehicles, which puts others' health and lives at risk is not a crime so they should face no charges.

Another issue has come up in this regard, brought into view by the Breakfast programme run on BBC1.  This is the rule that even if someone has a valid ticket to park in a particular location, if there are numerous other ones on display, they can still be fined.  The response has been vigorous, that this is another tax.  I am marginally more sympathetic to this argument because if these people have actually got to a car park, rather than believing they have some exceptional God-given right to park on a double yellow line with their lights flashing while they do the shopping, as I see so often, then that is a good step.  However, if your car, van or lorry is full of different, similarly looking tickets, why should you compel a parking warden to read them all to find if one is correct or not.  They complain about traffic wardens anyway, so why are they happy to give them more work.  Perhaps councils and the government should adopt the same approach and never bother taking down road signs when the road layout is changed.  Perhaps they should simply stick up signs that they have lying around rather than ones that actually relate to the towns that can be reached from the location where the sign is.  Maybe we should put up a selection of speed limit signs and say that drivers have to comply with whichever one is correct for the particular road.  This would be a major challenge for many drivers given that many cannot adhere to the speed limit even when there is a single clear sign.

I think, that if you cannot be bothered to keep your vehicle sufficiently tidy so that anyone can see simply whether you have the correct ticket or not, then you deserve to be fined.  The UK is better than some countries anyway.  I remember in France in the 1980s seeing people with a string of road tax stickers down their windscreen, but no-one in the UK would complain that we have to show only the current one on our windscreens.  Potentially I could have thirteen different road tax discs on my windscreen making it a challenge for anyone to spot if I had a current one, but, of course, that is seen as a silly approach.  Simply chuck away old parking permits.  Or, if that is really too much trouble, at least shove them off the dashboard on to the floor!

What this whole complaint stems from is the unhealthy characteristic that seems to have taken root in the UK and is growing like mold throughout our society.  This believes that the individual's desires (not even just their needs) must be satisfied and not constrained, certainly not by the safety or interests of anyone else, and certainly not policed by any state authority (just by who can shout loudest).  This is already impinging on road safety but is likely to spread into other aspects of society effectively implementing 'mob rule' in many things.  Examples of this spread can be seen in Simon Cowell's desire to have a political show that makes decisions by people telephoning in.  Of course, tabloid newspapers have long done this, I remember an opinion poll in 'The Sun' newspaper of the 1980s which told you to ring one number if you wanted the minimum sentence for certain crimes set at 20 years and another if you wanted it at 25 years.  There was no option for no sentence or 10 years or 15 years.  What can be seen as a 'free' choice can easily be engineered to channel you into backing a policy which has already been established (just ask any of the dictators who have run 'free' elections) and so seemingly giving it popular support.  Of course, the people peddling this kind of approach see what they do as simply based on 'common sense' whereas in fact it is based on assumptions and prejudices and excludes so many options that fall outside the very individualist approach they advocate. 

If you want to see this in action just watch an episode of 'Live from Studio Five' which is made by SkyNews (owned by Rupert Murdoch) and shown on Channel 5, Monday to Friday evenings.  It features former model Melinda Messenger, former footballer Ian Wright and a runner-up on 'The Apprentice' television show.  It is a magazine programme which mixes coverage of celebrities with discussion of news items.  This is where it is most dangerous as it presents a very right-wing perspective especially on social and legal issues in a light manner with the presenters indicating that they see pretty extreme views as somehow 'common sense'.  Fortunately it only attracts 230,000 viewers.  However, it is a good example of how the 'me first above anyone else' attitude is being fed into the popular consciousness and it is on this basis of assumptions about 'common sense' that more extreme steps are made to seem unassailable by those of us who would like an inclusive society that does not value freedom to behave how you like over the right of people to live in safety.

Pavement/Road; Road/Pavement?

When I was a boy back in the 1970s it was clear that the only people allowed to ride a bicycle on the pavement was the postman and even he was not permitted to pedal the bicycle, he had to stand on one pedal and freewheel. Back then you were not allowed to cycle on the road until you had passed your cycling proficiency test which was usually taken around the age of 8-10 years old. So there was a period when you had outgrown the pull-along tricycle of a toddler and were on a 'proper' bicycle and yet could only ride in the park or ironically in car parks. I remember being 10 and having cycled along the canal path to the neighbouring town with some friends. We decided to cycle back through a housing estate, but not having passed my cycling proficiency test yet (I think I did it the following Autumn when I returned to school) I was apprehensive about cycling on the road and so while my more daredevil friends cycled down what were in fact very quiet roads leading simply to housing, I cycled on the pavement. We had barely entered the estate when a man probably in his 30s called us to him and questioned me at length about why I was cycling on the pavement and when I explained about the cycling proficiency test he told us we had to leave the estate and go back along the canal and that I should not think about coming to that town until I had passed my test. Highly embarrassed, we complied with what he said.

The criticism of cyclists daring to cycle on the pavement could even extend to crossing less than a metre of pavement. My parents' house like many in their street stands a metre or so above the level of the road, which for some historic reason is 'sunken' for quite a lot of its length. To access the house, you drive up a ramp about as long as single car, across the pavement and on to their driveway, which again, is about the length of a single car. Of course most people who park their cars in garages or porches or driveways next to their house have to cross the pavement when leaving and entering. Pedestrians can get upset about waiting for the car to get clear but generally make no complaint. For bicycles doing the same, certainly when I was a teenager, it was deemed to be sufficient to shout at the cyclist.

A few years after the above incident when I was a teenager with my cycling proficiency under my belt. I left the garage, got on my bicycle, cycled along the stretch of drive and crossed less than a metre of pavement on to the ramp intending to go on to the road. However, because I cycled across those centimetres of pavement a middle-aged couple a short distance away bellowed at me for cycling on the pavement. They expected me to get off and push my bicycle over that short stretch, in fact less than the length of the bicycle itself. I did not run them down or even cycle near them but they were indignant that I had dared cycle across that small piece of pavement. These days they would probably be terrified that a teenager would knife them, I suppose. My elderly next door neighbour was marginally more tolerant, but sitting in my bedroom (at the front of the house) my reading on summer days would be disrupted by him shouting that he was going to summon the police as pre-teenage children cycled past him on the pavement. While I feel young people should be challenged on their behaviour the target of the criticism seems poorly decided upon.

Even as recent as the mid-1990s I was staying in a town and read in a local newspaper that a man had been fined £25 for cycling across a market place in the evening when the market was closed. I went passed that market on a number of occasions and aside from a few official buildings in the centre there were very few structures there when the market was closed and it was empty of people, a cyclist could proceed without hitting anyone or anything, yet that was not the point, he had broken the law and was fined for it. Of course, the man could have wheeled his bicycle across the market place; going by the road meant going through a four-lane one way system that cars hared around. He must have crossed the market in a matter of seconds and there was no-one there, except I presume the police officer who arrested him (there were no on-the-spot fines in those days). Subsequently on a couple of occasions I rode around the market place at night time almost as a dare for someone to come and arrest me. I have cycled a great deal in my life and wherever I have gone I have taken safety of myself and other road users as the prime concern.

These days things are very different and it seems the dividing line between vehicles on the road and those on the pavements has become muddied. I was almost mowed down by a cyclist, a fully grown man, hurtling down the pavement outside a row of shops this morning, seemingly challenging people to get out the way. Conversely on two occasions I have been driving in a queue of cars tailing elderly people on four-wheeled electric vehicles as they make their way slowly along the road. On the other hand in Milton Keynes in the early 2000s I remember there was uproar from the council (who had the oddest attitudes of any council I have lived under and that is saying something) about 'speeding' electric buggies in the shopping centre. These vehicles can reach a top speed of almost 13kph (8mph), twice the speed most people walk at and apparently the honest shoppers of Milton Keynes felt intimidated by them. These buggies are driven by elderly and disabled people, to me it only seems just that they should have a little power over these indignitaries who power around at dangerous speeds in their 4x4s (especially in Milton Keynes where most main roads have a speed limit of 70mph, the highest of any urban roads in Europe). Speed limits and fines were being introduced for electric buggies when car drivers were hurtling about.

I can understand the challenge for people on bicycles and on electric buggies. With the speeds many people are doing even on residential roads (my road is 30mph, but cars often do 50mph+ with impunity) you can understand why cyclists stay on the pavements. Most car drivers do not understand cyclists' signals and certainly do not understand that on a multi-laned road or at a roundabout, a cyclist should be in the right-hand lane to turn right. Cyclists are hooted and even pushed off by car drivers who resent their presence. Twice on my bicycle I have had people get out of cars and come to attack me because they felt I had got in their way. There is a whole liberal middle class vs. bigoted lower middle/working class thing going on here too. In the old days workers cycled to work but now they tend to drive or take public transport and cycling is seen as simply something that woolly-headed liberals who let in immigrants do. A lot of the abuse you get shouted from cars comes from this, that 'real' men do not cycle it is left to the 'poofs' (i.e. effeminate men) or the 'dykes' (lesbians, particularly butch ones). In these car drivers' views 'proper' people need the biggest car they can afford, to be obese and to drink and drive. Contrast this to neighbouring countries, for example in France where the average truck driver is out with the cycling club on a Sunday and cheers along cyclists he passes, giving them lots of space and warning them of his approach. In London, in contrast, lorry drivers are by far the single largest group of cyclist killers.

Some of the cyclists who have been killed over the past few years include Emma Foa, aged 56, crushed by a lorry, the driver Michael Thorn, aged 54, of Headley Down, Surrey was fined £300 and allowed to keep his licence. Just this month Chrystelle Brown, aged 26, a fitness instructor and cyclist was killed in Whitechapel right near where a motorist attacked me, she was dragged for 100 metres by the vehicle. This August, Harry Wilmers aged 25, was killed on his bicycle in South Manchester. In 2006 18 cyclists were killed in London by motor vehicles. You do not have to search far to find cases of cyclists pushed off and beaten up by people and of fatalities not just in London but smaller towns too. A drink driver, David Mark Chandler, aged 41, from Arthington Lane, Otley, who killed a cyclist in Pool, Yorkshire had 50% more alcohol in his blood stream at the time he killed Stephen Granger, aged 50, in December 2007. Chandler perverted the course of justice by concealing the evidence of his involvement. He was sentenced to 4.5 years for killing Granger, but in February 2009 this was cut to 3.5 years and his driving ban reduced from 10 years to 5 years! He had drunk at least 6 pints of beer before driving into Granger and did not stop and even look for the body. If he had shot or stabbed or punched Granger to death he would be in prison for at least 14 years if not longer. Cars, vans and lorries are the weapons that you can use with hardly any come back. The killing of cyclists ironically takes the healthiest people who are doing least damage to the environment and lets off those who are most dangerous and damaging. How can we promote healthy lifestyles and reduce the impact of carbon dioxide emissions if we allow cyclists to be killed in such numbers and barely punish the killers? Researching this I found that people get fined for cycling across Smithfield Market in London despite there being a clear thorougfare and the roads around being hazardous.

It is no surprise then that cyclists ride on the pavement. The reason why electric buggy riders go on the road. This is because the pavement is so cluttered. Navigating around the wheelie bins, the cars parked up on the kerb, the bumps left by the cable television and other installations and mothers pushing vast pushchairs, it is very difficult to proceed in a buggy as unlike on a bicycle you cannot get off and wheel it along. In addition, with cyclists not on the road you have them on the pavement to rival with the buggies. I admire elderly and disabled people who take their buggies on the road, they take their lives into their hands and I salute them for their courage. As yet I have not heard of electric buggy riders being mown down by lorries or cars, I suppose because unlike with the cyclists, the drivers can envisage their granny in a buggy and so hang back. I like the fact they slow up the traffic in residential areas, as too many people drive too fast through them (another wall has been demolished close to my house by a car tearing into it at speed). It reminds me of 'The Straight Story' (1999), a movie based on a true story about an elderly man driving a garden tractor from Iowa to Wisconsin in the USA to visit his brother. The tractor cannot exceed more than a few miles per hour and naturally he builds up a trail of cars behind him as many buggy riders do around my way.

So, we have bicycles you would have once only found on the road now being forced to be ridden on the paverment and electric buggies you would expect on the pavement out in the road. I will set aside the occasions when I have had people driving up the pavement as a short cut as happened to me when walking along the Mile End Road in East London one day and right by a primary school at that. I simply stood in front of the car, but the driver dodged round me on the pavement and continued where he insisted on going, road or no road. More common is pedestrians walking in the road. I do not mean in rural areas, I mean in urban areas where there is a perfectly good (if cluttered) pavement. No-one seems to be able to tell me whether this is a cultural thing as the people who I see walking down the road are either Korean or Afro-Caribbean and are generally women. Are there some countries where it is hazardous to walk on the pavement? Is it that women are not supposed to? I do not know and would be grateful if someone would tell me. In my neighbourhood, despite the fast driving cars, many women would rather walk along the side of the road down street after street than ever go on the pavement. I am surprised not more of them are hit by these dangerous drivers who seem incapable of avoiding inanimate objects such as lamp posts, walls and railings.

I suppose overall the rules for new vehicles such as the ever larger and more sophisticated electric buggies are ill-defined and in general most people whether drivers, cyclists or pedestrians are ignorant of the Highway Code. Signalling seems to be something that has died out no matter what vehicle you are on or in (the 7-year old from my house, today commented that a woman cyclist was making signals in the 'old fashioned way' that I do). The other thing is the constant bane of any activity on the roads and that is the bulk of road users think they are the only thing that is important and everyone else should get out their way or suffer the consequences; they believe signs and speed limits do not apply to them because they are particularly 'experienced' or 'skilled'. Using roads is not a solitary activity. The moment you go on a road or even just step on to a pavement you become part of a complex machine in which real people are involved, people who can easily be injured or killed. If more road users saw their journeys in that way and reacted accordingly, with tolerance, patience and attention to detail (or as on a road safety award my brother once received 'Care, Courtesy and Consideration') then the news of tragic deaths we read about and witness would not be on hundreds of websites and impacting on scores of people across the UK.

P.P. Having written this posting, I turned to read 'The Guardian'. As regular readers know, that arse of a columnist, Simon Hoggart infuriates me constantly with his stupidity and gives me fuel for this blog. As I have commented before Hoggart seems determined to do all he can to increase pollution and damage the environment, particularly though his idiotic opposition to wind turbines. This week he has turned again on cyclists who seem to be perceived as a legitimate target for liberal (though I would hardly categorise Hoggart as this) and right-wing writers. He spends two paragraph attacking cyclists using a cycle path. He complains one cyclist in Brighton shouted 'cycle path!' at him which he equates with 'psychopath' and he lumps all cyclists together with those who he argues are always 'aiming for - then just missing - old people, mothers with pushchairs, toddlers ...' as if cyclists actually drive around trying to hit people. He observes these who are a minority do not actually hit any pedestrians, unlike car drivers who killed 13 child pedestrians in London alone in 2008; 8 in 2007.

In total in the UK 572 pedestrians (down 11% on 2007) were killed in 2008, the only good news is that the figure is declining, with a decline of 19,000 deaths on the road over what would have been expected 15 years ago. Cyclist injuries rose 1% 2007-8, though deaths were down at 115; child deaths on the road (this includes children who are passengers in cars) rose from 121 in 2007 to 124 in 2008. Effectively fewer car and lorry drivers are killing each other, they are still killing other more vulnerable people. I suppose I should be grateful because the UK has the lowest number of accidents in the EU, alongside Sweden. However, having cycled in continental Europe this surprises me as I have had far fewer 'incidents' in which I have been hit on a bicycle and certainly none of the physical violence I have faced in the UK.

Hoggart should get off the cyclists' case. There are far more dangerous people out there than people cycling legally in Brighton. However, he is constantly indignant at anyone who wants to move away from dirty fuel consumption to a cleaner, more sustainable approach. Maybe he is financially backed by an oil company because I can see no rational explanation for his attitude, particularly when writing in 'The Guardian' which has vehemently supported the 10:10 campaign on climate change recent weeks.

P.P. 09/10/2009: I guess that it is because I am not driving so much now I have become unemployed, clearly there is a new trend in driving cars that I had underestimated. While I had witnessed someone driving a car on the pavement once in the 6.5 years I lived in London, today both on foot and while in a car myself I have seen three motorists driving for between 10-50 metres down a pavement. Generally they have one pair of wheels still on the road, but in all three cases more than three-quarters of the width of the car was on the pavement. The slowest was doing 20mph, the fastest something over 40mph (actually violating the speed limit for the 'road' they were driving down, anyway). When did such behaviour become acceptable? Is this the impact of motor-racing console games or car-based criminal games like 'Grand Theft Auto'? It is hazardous enough being a pedestrian in the UK but now it seems that car drivers are not even going to let you keep to the pavement. I suppose this is the ultimate manifestation of the common expectation among drivers that everyone else should simply disappear.

'Rubbernecking': Far Less Common than People Think

As regular readers of this blog will know I drive anything between 280 Km and 630 Km per week, so spend quite a lot of time on the road. I imagine that this means I see a lot more bad driving than most people. Of course 'bad' is a subjective description, lorry drivers view anyone else being in their vicinity as being bad even if we are obeying the law precisely. Daily I see congestion and accidents, the kind of things that fill the traffic reports of radio stations from national right down to small local level stations. Often when there is an accident on one side of, say the M25 or M3 or even the A31 (a dual carriageway which has a wide, overgrown central reservation) then you find traffic on the other side, i.e. the side without the actual accident, slows down as well.

On some radio stations there are sneery comments condemning the 'rubberneckers', people supposedly in some morbid fascination, to stare at the accident. This misapprehension is heard on many radio stations, though ones like Wave 105 which covers Hampshire and Dorset, counties I often drive through, are the worst. Wave 105 is a bad radio station anyway with incredibly self-righteous DJs clearly aware of their populist, rather bigoted audience who seem to just love complaining about immigrant and generally being smug about the'right' way to do things, so perhaps it is unsurprising that they sneer at those drivers they believe are behaving in an improper way.

Today, from my extensive experience, I am going to outline why I believe this reports are based on a misapprehension about most drivers. I am not pretending that there are not people who do not slow down to stare at accidents, possibly with genuine concern if on a small road, that it might be a friend or neighbour who has crashed. However, in any situation these people are in a small minority. People slow down on the opposite carriage for one simple reason, it is a natural reaction. When you are next a passenger in a car, taxi or coach, notice what the driver does when they see a flashing light, even from the corner of their eye. Their foot lifts from the accelerator automatically. If you asked them they probably could not even tell you that they had done it.

Another thing is that many roads curve in the UK, even motorways, so as you approach an incident, it is not always clear whether the flashing lights are on your side of the carriageway or on the other side until you are up close, especially as usually there are lots of slow-moving cars and lorries in between you and the incident when you first become aware of it. In addition, there are in fact, quite often, accidents that go across both carriageways. You do not know until you are right up to it, what is happening, so naturally you slow up long before you could even catch a glimpse of the accident site. It is good that drivers slow when they see flashing lights, this is something we want to encourage, not sneer at.

It does not even have to be a flashing light. I drive a lot on the M3 and M25 and often on the so-called matrix boards information flashes up about congestion or accidents on other roads, often far distant from where you are at the moment. On the M3 you get information about the M4 which is reached from the M3 down the A34 or the M25, but you are still warned about incidents on it. Around the M25 which connects all the major roads and motorways you get information about roads which are often on the other side of London from where you are currently driving. However, again you will notice, that no matter what information is being displayed, naturally people slow up so that they can read it. Sometimes the instruction is immediate such as a speed limit or something like the currently very popular message 'Queue Caution 40'. It takes some seconds to process the data even if it is not urgent. You now get information like 'A34 38 miles 34 minutes', which is useful if you are going up the A34, but even if you are not, the bulk of drivers read, process and probably start analysing what it means in terms of speed. Again, this leads them to slow up. Anyone who drives on Britain's motorways will know that the moment a indication like this comes into sight traffic automatically slows. It could say 'God save the Queen' or 'Qwertyuiop' and it would still have the same effect.

Slowing up when you come up to an accident whatever side of the road it is on, is not the bad thing that radio stations lazily assume it to be. Of course there are people who do not slow up and that is why you get accidents opposite existing accidents and through complex road works (which seem to be all over the motorways of South-East England at present). However, it is they who should be condemned. Slowing traffic in the opposite carriageway to an accident is a natural response: blue lights/matrix signs = slowing up. The equation is no more complex than that, and for anything else to happen is both unnatural and in fact hazardous. So, let us stop complaining about the supposed morbid 'rubberneckers' and actually take account of what really happens on our roads, which in my view, is actually the more sensible reaction from drivers.

The Cycle Helmet Issue

Helmets for cyclists have been around since at least the 1960s when they used to consisted of padded metal bars across the cyclist's skull and tended to be worn only by racing cyclists. Even then it was well into the 1990s before they became common in long races like the Tour de France and there was resistance to making them compulsory when the rules were changed in 2003. In fact what led to widespread adoption was that teams found it was easier to fit two-way radios into them and keep in contact with their teams to advise them on tactics.

For the general public helmets became increasingly familiar in bicycle shops in the late 1980s particularly focused at children. Also with the increase of mountain biking they seemed to be part of the fashion that went with that sport. There has been much discussion about their effectiveness. The main thing is that people who have never worn one, do not seem to understand the difference between bicycle helmets and those for motorcyclists. Bicycle helmets are made of plastic and foam design to compact like a 'crumple zone' on a car. They tend to sit on the top of the head and give no protection to the back of the neck. They do not contain the head in the way that motorcycle helmets do. Motorcycle helmets are metal or carbon fibre and are far tougher. In an accident they can actually keep a damaged skull in place which is why you should never remove a helmet from an injured motorcyclist and leave it on until they reach hospital. A cyclist wearing a bicycle helmet that had sustained such an injury would be dead. Of course motorcycle helmets were not made compulsory in the UK until 1973 and there were many who protested against this compulsion, I remember one man who was constantly being imprisoned when I was a boy for refusing to wear his and I always wished he would have expended his energy on a better campaign.

Until this week court cases which have implied cyclists are negligent in not wearing cycle helmets have failed. There was an attempt to introduce legislation to make it compulsory in 1998-9 and 2004. One challenge is policing the issue, I suppose we would see police pursuing cyclists not wearing one or more likely neighbours would inform on people not having one. Unlike with cars and motorcycles, the UK has no bicycle licensing system so you cannot take the number of the bicycle and say that a certain person is responsible as you can with motor vehicles. This court case Smith v. Finch 2009 has suggested that a cyclist injured while not wearing a cycle helmet would not be entitled to full compensation and cyclists not wearing one can be seen by the law as negligent even though there is no legal compulsion to wear one. The cyclist Robert Smith brought a claim against Michael Finch who had hit him with his 600cc motorbike. Finch counter-claimed saying that Smith had been responsible for the head injuries he had sustained because he was not wearing a helmet even though he had one.

Medical evidence showed that the helmet would have done nothing to reduce Smith's injuries as the back of his head was hit and he hit the ground at 12mph which was more severe than the helmet could take. The motorcyclist had come very close to the cyclist while speeding and the court put the bulk of liability on Finch. Cycling journals have noted that whilst the judgement does not compel people to wear cycle helmets they can be seen as negligent if claiming compensation and court cases usually see a 25% reduction in compensation if the cyclist is not wearing a helmet. The government claimed that 1,200 children under 16 received a head injury in a year from cycling and crash helmets would reduce this by 85% but they have now withdrawn this claim. Negligence against children is difficult legally anyway. In the UK you are not criminally responsible until you are 10 years old and for children up to the age of 14, in cars, it is the driver who is responsible for whether they are wearing their seatbelt, which is compulsory in the UK. It is hard to get children to wear helmets, in 2004, 29% of adult males; 30% of adult females; 11% of child males and 26% of child female cyclists wore one. Boys are loathe to wear them. Also people in general are less likely to wear them when travelling on minor roads, which is similar to how people used to behave to wearing seatbelts before it became compulsory.

Current cycle helmets are fine for stopping you injuring your head when you fall off, they do not protect you if hit by a motor vehicle. In these cases the helmets generally shatter anyway. A friend of a friend had hers smashed open by something sticking out from a lorry as it drove past.

New Zealand, Canada, the Czech Republic, Iceland and parts of Australia have made cycle helmets compulsory. I would argue that if this is going to be the case then the helmets need to be far more encompassing and far tougher. I am not suggesting that cyclists wear motorcycle helmets but perhaps something more like what mountaineers wear which protects the back of the head as well as the top. In many accidents cyclists are thrown to the side or backwards, and are unlikely to come down on the very top of their head which is the part that bicycle helmets most protect.

Of course the key problem is that drivers in the UK drive so hazardously around cyclists. British drivers drive very dangerously anyway and it seems to be deteriorating. No-one uses indicators any more and a trend I have noticed in recent weeks (I drive over 300 miles per week) is people from side roads forcing their way into the main road without waiting, causing sudden braking on the main road. Fortunately I always leave generous space between me and the next car, but tailgating is so prevalent in the UK that I am sure 'shunts' must be increasing due to this behaviour. In 2006 research found that motorists drove 8.5 cm closer to a cyclist wearing a helmet than a bare-headed one:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/somerset/5334208.stm

For women, wearing a wig is more effective than wearing a helmet because this research showed that it meant drivers gave them an additional 14cm compared to a bare-headed cyclist, which shows how sexist many drivers are that they want to ogle a beautiful blonde whereas they will mow down other cyclists. However, women cyclists are actually more likely to be injured by lorries than male ones, partly, ironically because women cyclists obey traffic signals and signs more than men. Evidence about this was suppressed by the government:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1695668.ece

There has been evidence in the past that cyclists with a helmet on also get complacent as they feel protected, though in fact given the kind of injuries they are likely to sustain, they are little better off than if wearing nothing. Cyclist are generally hit first on their limbs, then their body and finally their head as it smashes into the ground. If motorists are going to drive so dangerously, we need to start introducing armour for cyclists.

A lot of this furore has stemmed from motorists and motorcyclists trying to shift blame on to cyclists. This is a very British attitude. In the UK we have this sense that 'an Englishman's car is his (mobile) castle' which leads to very hostile driving towards all other road users as if any delay in a journey is a personal affront to the driver. If you cycle in continental Europe you find drivers give you so much more space, to the extent that you can tell if you are being overtaken by a British car compared to a French/Belgian/Dutch one. In my experience the difference in the space you are left can be up to 45cm more from a non-British driver, depending on the road. I was often hooted by lorries in France and initially assumed they were being as hostile as British lorry drivers who seem to think that cyclists should be banned from the roads. Many car and lorry drivers think this too and shout it out at you; there was a case I heard of while driving through Dorset of a middle-aged man pushed off last year by people driving by in a car. The rage of British motorists at cyclists who are obeying the law, is incredible. Some cyclists do drive dangerously and jump lights, but it is rarely these ones who are abused verbally and physically by drivers. Simply cycling opens you up to a lot of abuse. This helmet controversy will just add more fuel to their anger at cyclists. Ironically in local newspapers you see numerous complaints about cyclists cycling on pavements but given how hazardous the roads are, is this any surprise?

I wear my cycle helmet religiously these days, though perhaps I should put a long wig on instead. The key issue remains, as on a poster that I saw in the 1980s, that cyclists remain a 'soft vehicle'. In 2007, 136 cyclists were killed and 2,428 seriously injured. Even if we armour cyclists and bicycles, this will always be the case. Even with their far tougher crash helmets and leather clothing, 2,493 motorcyclists were killed in the UK last year and there were a total of 6,737 who suffered an accident, making up a quarter of all road casualties. Given these statistics even stronger helmets and protection for cyclists may not reduce the casualties. Cycle helmets will protect you if fall off your bicycle but not if you are hit by a car or lorry. I suggest we begin moving towards the whole head covering design worn by BMX cyclists which protect the neck and face as well as the top of the head. Yet, even this will not keep you alive if rammed by a car.

What needs to change is the attitude to driving in the UK. Drivers of motor vehicles must learn that the road is not just for them and that there are all sorts of other vehicles out there. People must stop taking it as a personal insult that there is a slower or two-wheeled vehicle in front of them (let alone a horse, I could do a whole posting on how badly drivers behave towards equestrians and their mounts). British drivers need to learn from their continental counterparts that roads are not their for their personal use, but that driving a car or lorry means you become part of a complex system which needs everyone to obey the laws that are clear and well established. Speed limits are there for a reason, however much you whine that they are simply to constrain you asserting your machismo/a. Speed cameras are necessary because so many people think they are somehow exempt from the law and need to be reminded that they are not. If you are not speeding then speed cameras are no worry. Cyclists and motorcyclists have as much right to the road as you do. They should not be persecuted just because they select (or can only afford) a different form of transport to you; certainly you should not try to kill them or cause an accident, that is criminal behaviour even if the law is poor at catching up with you. Stop being so juvenile as to always try to shift the blame on to others, blaming pedestrians for trying to cross a road, especially in a residential area or a cyclist just because they have not got their helmet on. You will encourage responsible use of roads if you behave responsibly yourself. Too many drivers break rules so that they make it seem like some arbitrary thing and that I take a great risk in complying with the laws of the road.

Excuses, such as people not wearing helmets which are always going to be no protection against dangerous drivers, will always be found. In fact arrogance is what kills and it is the key issue that needs to be tackled if we are going to reduce road casualties.