Lockdown - has it made driving slower and drivers more courteous?

[bludger]

I don't know jaded, maybe you'll kick your car habit one day. Thinking of you <3

[Ben T]

Keep campaigning obviously. Run this experiment again.

OK, says the government. You've got us over a barrel. You can write one law into the UK statute books, and it can be whatever you want.
An official gives you the massive heavy ceremonial fountain pen and puts you in front of some vellum.
What do you write?

[bludger]

"ban cars"

[Jaded]

I don't know jaded, maybe you'll kick your car habit one day. Thinking of you <3

I'm asking you. How have you got on on PistonHeads, are you unable to answer?

[Ben T]

"ban cars"

You write the law and it gets enacted.
Only a few days into your new regime and it's noticed that everyone seems to be simply buying and driving around in VANS 
The roads are now MORE congested due to the increased average size of vehicle.
NO2 levels are through the roof because they're ALL diesel
Your (ex) MPs are throwing eggs at you
You need armed guards if you ever go anywhere near coventry, sunderland or various other part of the UK for your own protection
You had one chance and you blew it. 

[bludger]

Not sure what point you're trying to prove here but ok

[Cudzoziemiec]

Apparently if * our neighbourhood is anything to go by, a lot of them have actually got allocated parking spaces but they use the street instead cos it's either nearer their front door, or they aren't blocking their partner in - and they're going out to work again in 12 hours.

* The less salubrious part of, I should add

No allocated spaces here, you get a permit allowing you to park anywhere in a given zone (about a dozen streets, maybe a bit more). Virtually no one has off-street parking, the street layout and architecture don't make it possible. There were a few garages built at the ends of gardens (long Victorian/Georgian back gardens which stretch right to the street behind) but they've all been converted into housing (the landspace, not the actual garage buildings).

[Ben T]

Not sure what point you're trying to prove here but ok

That things aren't quite as simple as you obviously would like to think, that if you want to be a policy maker you have to spend a bit more time thinking about it than you obviously have, and that people will try to (often successfully) circumvent laws they don't like.

[ian]

Parking permits. Luxury.

Here you get to turn your front garden into parking spaces, park two cars there, and then claim the pavement for your third.

Then write to the council complaining there's not enough on-street parking.

[bludger]

gosh you know that's really made me think I never realised that "ban cars" doesn't suffice as legislation. Thanks for this valuable lesson Ben you really showed me 

Ban cars

Wonder if people were this obtuse about "save the whales" e.g. "wow do you really want to go parachuting out of aeroplanes to save EVERY whale, ever? What about whales dying from old age? ahahha gotcha!!" etc ad nauseam, because that's what this poor quality chat amounts to.

[Ben T]

gosh you know that's really made me think I never realised that "ban cars" doesn't suffice as legislation. Thanks for this valuable lesson Ben you really showed me 

Ban cars

Wonder if people were this obtuse about "save the whales" e.g. "wow do you really want to go parachuting out of aeroplanes to save EVERY whale, ever? What about whales dying from old age? ahahha gotcha!!" etc ad nauseam, because that's what this poor quality chat amounts to.

It's not really obtuse though, you are dismissing it as obtuse presumably on the grounds that you think it's a problem you can easily sidestep, but you can't:
"OK, ban cars and vans then."
OK - no deliveries. No groceries to shops - people starve.
"OK, ban cars and vans for personal transportation then."
OK - no ambulances then - they're "personal transportation of people to hospital".

"Oh for god's sake, you know what I mean..."

The trouble with "ban cars" is all it actually means is "I want my own personal utopia to simply be magically conjured up without due thought to the mechanism of how it might be achieved, or having to describe the transition to it".

At the end of the day it boils down to "do most people want this" and the answer, at the moment, would have to be no.

You are only going to achieve any sort of success by transitioning the world, gradually, to a world where it is something that most people do want.

[bludger]

Yawn.

Ban cars.

And save the whales while we're at it.

[ian]

So plumbers, electricians, doctors doing home visits, school inspectors, disabled people, farmer workers, wind turbine engineers, power station workers, window cleaners, gardeners, the elderly, the sick, sea fisherman, road workers, small children should all travel by bicycle. Great. I don’t see any problem with that, though I think the coffin on a trailer on the back of the bike for 15 miles might be a little undignified.

I think you forgot disabled people with fridges full of tools.

I don’t know what that is meant to mean.

In low population density areas neither mass transit or active transport is viable for many of the journeys.

It's a meme, your honour. Whenever someone mentions any restriction on motor vehicles, there's an outbreak of whatabouts. Suddenly a lot of car owners become very concerned about the disabled, fire engines, and pollution.

Personally, I'd ban rural living. We need to get these people into cities where they can be properly clothed and educated. Or they should pay a huge tax surcharge to cover the additional expense of their living habits.

[bludger]

Always a hoot when some motorist whinges about the disabled, when disabled Brits are among the people who stand to gain the most from car bans https://wheelsforwellbeing.org.uk/campaigning/guide/ https://wheelsforwellbeing.org.uk/survey-uks-disabled-cyclists/

There are about 13 million disabled people in the UK. According to statistics, there are fewer than 1.13 million blue badges on the system. This signifies that 80-90% of disabled people do not drive and are therefore at the mercy of the motorist if they want to get outdoors and cycle (which a quarter of disabled people do, according to Wheels for Wellbeing).

Motorists unaccountably model disabled people as desperate to live out their lives inside metal tins. The reality is that more disabled people want to cycle. But they don't feel safe in doing so. Because of motorists.

The way to get around this problem, of motorists marauding around close-passing or left-hooking someone trying to use a handcycle or whatever other adaptive cycle they have (which probably cost them more than many cars) is to ban cars and to tear down the motor supremacy.

[Hot Flatus]

33.6 million people hold a driving licence in the UK. We have some of the safest roads in the world
Sorry to let facts get in the way of hyperbole.

They might be comparatively safe, but that really illustrates how bad it is elsewhere. Direct effects of road accidents impact 180,000 people in the UK every year. That doesn't include pollution or other corollaries. Or the impact on long term health of people driving everywhere (and most drivers do drive everywhere).

My post was a counterpoint to the accusation that everybody who gets behind a wheel is intending to commit murder.

Of course there is a human cost to motoring.

[Greenbank]

Of course there is a human cost to motoring.

There's a human cost to cycling too.

Banning something because it takes even one life is farcical.

[bludger]

Cycling is terrific and good for everyone.

It's cars that need to be banned.

By the way motorists don't care even if something like a modal filter is used. They are road royalty. https://twitter.com/rorymeakin/status/1260898680938397697

Bonus example of driver recklessness and entitlement...



They go where they want in their hideous, dangerous, polluting death wagons frightening people with no regard for the community. The sooner these ghastly things are banned the better

[Solocle]

Ban personal motor vehicles from city centres, with exemptions for unavoidable business trips, the disabled...
But no overtaking of cyclists unless on a dual carriageway, and the cyclist is in the left lane.

Join the urban centre areas to suburbs by high quality, segregated paths. There's still going to be goods traffic in electric vans. No HGVs in the shared spaces, cargo must be offloaded into safer vehicles for last mile delivery (ideally cargo bikes).

A high quality rail network for fast intercity travel, with cycle capacity predicated on 50%+ of passengers bringing cycles. Have cycle racks on the buses, too.

Out of town goods logistic hubs connected to the rail network, and the road network. Integrate these with Park&Ride and Park&Cycle facilities. Make inter-town bus services stop here, with connections to the local bus network. But rail can take you into the city centre with your bike.

Take a lane off the motorways to build intercity cycle roads (well barrier-ed), predicated on the level of goods traffic during lockdown being less reduced than personal vehicles, and the absolutely clear motorways.

That would be my personal utopia.

The queen can still drive from Balmoral to her local Lidl. Rural driving isn't going to be eliminated. But introduce stiff penalties for dangerous driving around cyclists, an automatic 6 month ban to start for example. If you hit a cyclist due to dangerous driving, automatic life ban. And causing death gets you a mandatory prison sentence.

[Hot Flatus]

I know lots of people who have been badly injured cycling, and two killed, with no other vehicle involved.
.

Ban cycling.

[Kim]

Ever quick to react, Birmingham has molished a new *emergency* transport plan:

https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/emergencytransportplan

(The Photo on page 4 shows approximately 50% of COVID-19 related measures that have been implemented in Birmingham to date.)

Like all good transport plans, it mostly consists of "do the things that were in the previous plan" combined with a timeline for making some more plans.  At least it's making the right noises.   

[davelodwig]

So plumbers, electricians, doctors doing home visits, school inspectors, disabled people, farmer workers, wind turbine engineers, power station workers, window cleaners, gardeners, the elderly, the sick, sea fisherman, road workers, small children should all travel by bicycle. Great. I don’t see any problem with that, though I think the coffin on a trailer on the back of the bike for 15 miles might be a little undignified.

I think you forgot disabled people with fridges full of tools.

I don’t know what that is meant to mean.

In low population density areas neither mass transit or active transport is viable for many of the journeys.

It's a meme, your honour. Whenever someone mentions any restriction on motor vehicles, there's an outbreak of whatabouts. Suddenly a lot of car owners become very concerned about the disabled, fire engines, and pollution.

Personally, I'd ban rural living. We need to get these people into cities where they can be properly clothed and educated. Or they should pay a huge tax surcharge to cover the additional expense of their living habits.

Maybe we ought to stop massively subsidising transport in London and redistribute that share to other bits of the country that have been ignored.  Hey wait we can fix all of the road deaths in London, and the pollution by bulldozing it, it's inhabitants, and everything into the sea problem solved.

I know the following might be hard for city dwellers to imagine but where I live isn't massively rural it's a fairly large town, but like many towns around the country that are not London still has piss poor public transport. Quite a lot of the country has basically been left behind.

[bludger]

London pays its own way and funds the rest of the country. London is the UK's golden goose in tax receipts. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/23/uk-budget-deficit-grows-to-more-than-10bn-as-people-spend-less

Always tickles me that people in this country model London as some kind of black hole "stealing their money" when in fact the reverse is the case.

If you really want to play "pin the blame on the region" then you'll be furious when you look at the fiscal profile of northern Ireland. For me I'm just content to ban cars.

I know the following might be hard for city dwellers to imagine but where I live isn't massively rural it's a fairly large town, but like many towns around the country that are not London still has piss poor public transport

Yes and, which you have probably ignored about six times in a row, this is because of cheap subsidised motoring being permitted to supplant cycling and public transport - as well as fostering housing sprawl (and constraining housing supply). QED beeching cuts. Though we should be aware that Beeching was just a scapegoat for a larger lobby that wanted trains slashed, and drivists to take over.

[sg37409]

Cycling is terrific and good for everyone.

It's cars that need to be banned.

Changing the tagline to Restrict Cars from Ban would win a lot more acceptance.  This thread is beyond that as you have previously tried to explain.   It is indeed a poor quality chat now.

[Hot Flatus]

They go where they want in their hideous, dangerous, polluting death wagons frightening people with no regard for the community. The sooner these ghastly things are banned the better

Most people use cars. They are the community.

The community likes cars. If they didnt things would be very different.

You can try and frame it any way you want, but it isnt a them and us situation. Car drivers are us.

[Ben T]

London pays its own way and funds the rest of the country. London is the UK's golden goose in tax receipts. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/23/uk-budget-deficit-grows-to-more-than-10bn-as-people-spend-less

But most of the tax receipts from London are from the finance industry which doesn't actually DO anything other than shuffle money around, creaming some off in the process.
Most of the people staffing this "golden goose" as you call it are the same people that form the "land owning motoring royalty" that are shafting the poor.