Forget cycle promotion, try driver education

I am reading all over the net the debate about how to make cycling safer and that cyclists are being killed and injured on roads all over the developed world. The elephant in the room is the perpetrator is the motorist and  yet none of the responsibility is being given to them. Often the report starts with the fact that the person killed  was a cyclist that wasn't wearing a helmet, as if that makes it his fault. 
There are a few simple rules and facts that I think motorists are just not aware of and the facts and the fictions are mixed up.
Fiction: Road tax - drivers pay to use the roads, all other users that don't are cheap scum.
Fact: The roads are paid for by the tax we all pay and Vehicle Excise Duty is a tax on fuel emissions only - electric cars don't pay "road tax" either. This has been the case since the 1930's deliberately so that drivers don't get to own the roads that roads have been there in some cases since the Romans - the road outside my house has been there well before Henry VIII - it's called Lynn Road - before Henry VIII made Lynn into Kings Lynn. The roads were not built for cars but for transportation in general.
Fiction: I need to do be doing at least the speed limit and if something gets in my way, I need to overtake it.
Fact: The highway code says: The speed limit is the absolute maximum and does not mean it is safe to drive at that speed irrespective of conditions. Driving at speeds too fast for the road and traffic conditions is dangerous. You should always reduce your speed when

• the road layout or condition presents hazards, such as bends

• sharing the road with pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders, particularly children, and motorcyclists

• weather conditions make it safer to do so

• driving at night as it is more difficult to see other road users.

Fiction: I live, therefore I drive, and you are in my way.

Fact: this is the bit that I know to be fact but I can't find it anywhere - if you want to drive a motorised vehicle, you do so under licence and that implies by law that you have to have this licence, that you have insurance and that you abide by the highway code. Everywhere I search on the law that allows you to drive on the road, it tells you about how to get a licence. Nowhere does it say anything about what that licence is actually for - so that you and your vehicle can use the road. 

The road is never automatically yours, you are there under agreement to abide by the highway code and consider all users. 

Fiction: Driving is a human right, that without a car, you are not really a useful citizen.

Fact: Our bodies are designed to move us around and we are capable of travelling quite large distances under our own steam. Using our bodies as a means of transportation is what keeps our bodies in tune, like a motor. Use it or loose it. There are also many amazing inventions designed to transport lots of people around needing only one driver - a driver who as undergone special training and undertakes the responsibility for the safety of it's passengers....Public Transport! It's much safer too, you can read a book, listen to music, go for a wee, eat! it's amazing!

I read the section on Cycling and it's definitely not written by someone who rides a bike on a regular basis, and certainly not designed by someone who uses a bike for daily transportation.

I read the Higway Code section on cyclists and it says:

Clothing. You should wear

• a cycle helmet which conforms to current regulations, is the correct size and securely fastened
• appropriate clothes for cycling. Avoid clothes which may get tangled in the chain, or in a wheel or may obscure your lights
• light-coloured or fluorescent clothing which helps other road users to see you in daylight and poor light
• reflective clothing and/or accessories (belt, arm or ankle bands) in the dark.

For a start they use the word "should" bearing mind that they said drivers should reduce their speeds when...bla bla. So me not wearing a helmet to cycle to the shops is the same flouting the highway code as the driver who doesn't slow down to over take a cyclist in a built up area?

Back to bloody helmets! Statistically drivers should wear helmets to drive too, based on head injuries caused by accidents. People don't just fall off bikes in town and a helmet isn't a bullet proof vest, if drivers are going too fast and not paying attention, a helmet can't protect the rest of your body, it's not a bubble. It's not going to help if you are car doored under a bus.

I insist my kids wear a helmet at all times on a bike, it's very likely that if we stay in the UK it will become a habit that they will always have. Children are more likely to bang their heads when they fall off bikes, the studies show and brain injuries are by far the hardest to deal with. However,  when we move to Holland this will undoubtedly change and the helmet will become redundant, the rule is generally, cycling to school and round town, no helmet, riding on a road bike or mountain bike and going as fast as you can, wear a helmet.

My chain is completely enclosed and I have a dress guard, if I want to cycle in a dress or palazzo pants, I can (and do). Bikes, unlike 40 tonne lorries and cement mixers, don't have to be classified as industrial equipment.

I wear bright colours mostly anyway and I make sure there are reflective bits and lights on my bike and my kid's bikes. This again is not some recipe for safety - I know of plenty of cyclists who have been wearing hi-viz, lit up like a Christmas tree who have been hit by drivers who just weren't paying attention - they weren't working on the basis that they need to look out for vulnerable users on the road that's in a town and therefore there are people around not encased in metal. I grew up learning that you assume you haven't been seen and most canny road users will say, treat other users like they are a bit dim, give them plenty of space and the benefit of the doubt. 

Drivers need to be reminded and reminded that the roads are not theirs and theirs alone. That driving is a privilege, not a right and it comes with as much responsibility as a firearm.

The licence should be earned and if abused, should be revoked. In doing so, you also in turn need to make sure that there are always other means of getting to work - it should be unacceptable to expect people to work somewhere where they have to be able to drive to get there. Shops should be in walking distance, have bus stops and the ability to deliver where relevant (most of them already do). 

When the driving licence became viewed as a right, probably some time in the 70s or 80s when the government saw pound signs flashing in their eyes with North Sea Oil, the right to public transport became optional and so the years of neglect for all other means of transportation continued. 

All our money goes on air ambulances, trauma units for car crashes and all the illness associated with inactivity and stress. 

Don't put all the focus on the 2% who use a bike, try the other 98%, that might be much more effective no?

Angry Bird alert

Right now my optimism at being able to talk to the people who matter where I live has been replaced by utter disappointment and disbelief. Maybe I will get through this phase, but right now all I can think is that I want better for my kids and this country is a D- when I know that I can give them at least a C+ by moving to Holland. It's not the answer to everything but at least they will learn some languages, see some culture and have friends who ride bikes too.
I really wanted to make a go of living in England but after 7 years back here I feel exactly the same way I did when I was 18 and decided to leave the country.

Waiting for a bus?

At the last council meeting when discussing the bus shelters for outside Sainsburys the discussion went, we need shelters, followed by, but the bus is only paid for for another year, no one's using it, so it might stop then the bus shelters wont be used. Followed by but if you don't build the shelters, people wont use the buses! You can see where this is going. The shelters of course haven't and wont get built before the money runs out, the bus will stop, and they will shrug there shoulders and say well, nobody used it.
I didn't use it because it doesn't stop anywhere near my house, it costs the same as getting a taxi, especially if we go as a family and it takes nearly an hour by the time we walk to the bus stop, the bus does a tour of all of Ely before dropping us off. It takes 25 minutes to walk there. The bus stops have no information and it's not even clear if you are at the right stop,  so why exactly does noone use the bus again?
Take a plane or a boat about 240miles east to where my mum lives in Holland and there's a bus that stops pretty much 5 miniutes walk from where ever you live, you have a Public Transport pin card that you load up like an oyster card and you can use it on all public transport, country wide. This card can be charged and what you pay is different if you are a student, a pensioner where you pay less or none at all. When you find the bus stop, it tells you what times the buses are and there's a map showing you the route so if you aren't familiar with road names, you can see that you are roughly in the right area. This service has existed since the 80's when the chip card was originally a strip card you bought and the driver stamped each time you travelled.
Here unless you live in a city like Cambridge, London, Bristol etc buses are like unicorns and like Central America, they stop at 4pm. The government blamed the rise in car use on the booming economy rather than the fact that none of the money got invested in public transport. Buses became rare things that only those who are forced to use them use and without things like the Ely and Soham Dial a Ride, which is virtually a charity, those people who relied on services that stopped would literally be trapped in their homes.
Buses in the UK are smelly rotten things full of old people. They could be like dutch buses, full of a full cross section of people, clean, well designed and part of every day life.
Instead as a mother with a baby, I waited for a bus that when it came, I couldn't even get my pram on the bus which looked like it was out of a 70's film. Old ladies shouted "You have to fold it!" at me. I am standing there with a pram and a 2 month old baby, not a 2 year old in a buggy!!! My friend has a similar experience and unlike me who just shook my head and said "I'll have to walk", she gave baby Harriet to the driver to hold, while she folded her Silvercross Sleepover and put it in the luggage area, then held her baby on her lap. Can you imagine? Can you imagine repeating this with the shopping you went into down for as well?
So, what is the future of buses in the UK? Guided busways?
Providing public transport here is a pipe dream. I honestly can't see it ever improving, not now that the car has taken over. There is no going back, mass transportation outside the cities is for old ladies and the odd fly that gets in on a warm day.

Voting with my feet?

I've been a City Councillor for just over 6 months and involved in the Ely Cycle Campaign for 18 months.
When it started up, I thought at last! lets get the local authorities to acknowledge the importance of cycling as a mode of transport! Lets help them, feed back our experiences and facilitate the next step towards using the research, evidence and new techniques in road design so that we can make roads fit for all users. Having cycled for a decade in Holland, no lights, no hi-viz, no worries I know what a difference road design makes.
I see my kids getting around Ely and the cars that pass us, cars we wait for and wait for and wait for so we can cross, like angry rhinos. Always be grateful that they slow down or stop and not kill us. When you ask a driver politely to give you a bit of space at the lights, they shout back, " your a bloody bike, get out of my way!" and that's the women drivers.
In the light of the Emma Way twitter post, cyclists temporarily thought that we might be able to publicise the fact that cars don't pay road tax. That we all pay for the roads and in fact, a driver is allowed to use the roads under licence only with the agreement that they abide by the highway code. Temporary being the word at best, as not even the BBC properly explained that the "cyclists don't pay road tax" mindset is behind why our roads claim so many lives.
Some drivers believe in their heart of hearts that their car is born to be on the road, it will protect them from evil and that the speed limit must be upheld or exceeded when there's nobody to tell them off or fine them. So when you prevent them from reaching 30mph in towns, heaven forbid, they are million miles from the fact that on our roads, especially in towns, they are guests who should be considerately tiptoeing in their 4x4's past old ladies and children, apologising for the toxic fumes, not making us run out the way in fear and thank drivers for not killing us.
After 18 months, looking at the evidence and the symptoms. I declare this country terminal. I am deeply unhappy with the way the car is overriding common sense, medical and scientific evidence and above all, quality of life. The economic benefits are short term and questionable, it's just a way to make us pay more while our tax money doesn't pay for quality roads or user friendly public transport, both are neglected to the point where you are only really comfortable in a 4x4.
So what next? Even the act of getting the £60k sainsburys S106 money divided so that we might get some more cycle parking and some hard standing and bus shelters for the bus stops is taking years.
My kids are 5 and 7, they will be adults before there is a cycle provision in Ely like we are asking, if we get it at all. Do I stay here? do I move to a City in the UK with better cycling? Where in the UK would you say it would be safe to let 8 year olds cycle to school? No me neither, can't think of anywhere in the UK. There are isolated pockets of provision but nowhere where you could go about your daily life from the school run to the supermarket to visiting the grandparents.
I feel like having spent so much time in Holland where, no, it's not perfect but it is so much better than here, I can't understand why it's so badly organised here. I'm not making it up. In the league tables for happiness and raising kids the UK is nowhere in the ranking and the Netherlands is usually in the top 5 or 10. I have friends there, family and I speak Dutch. I share their appreciation of bikes, beer, chips, flowers and chocolate. The telly there is a bit pants, but you can at least get BBC 1-4 and there's always the internet for live streaming 6music. Here all there is is telly, I can't afford to buy tickets to gigs, the theatre or stuff like that. There it's much more affordable and yes accessible without a car.
I just can't see it getting any better here, I thought I'd grown out of my hatred of the system the first time I left England in 1989 but it's back now and it's stronger than ever, the more I read the more I am ashamed of what should be a fantastic country, it's neglected and still incredibly feudal.