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

[Cudzoziemiec]

One thing that's puzzling me about lockdown traffic, though I suspect it's a purely local factor, is where did the parked cars go? For the first few weeks, when no one was going anywhere and the roads (here at least) were really empty, you'd expect all those cars which are no longer being driven during the day, to be parked. But there were fewer parked cars than normal. This is an RPZ so it's not the absence of commuter of shopper parking. The only two things I can think of are student exodus and/or more free spaces due to lack of tradesmen's vans. The first seems more likely, as there are more students than builders, plumbers, etc, and in fact quite a lot of building work has gone on uninterrupted. But it doesn't seem large enough a factor, particularly as I still see quite a few students around.

And now the moving traffic is returning to pre-covid levels, so is the parking. Well, the shops are open and the RPZ is not currently being enforced (I think) – but the parking on the main road where the shops are, is still empty. So it does seem to be residential. Odd.

[Ben T]

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

[ian]

Re. banning cars...

I thought long and hard about getting rid of our car, but I can see a lot of downsides and situations where the car has been extremely useful and irreplaceable.

I don't know how I would be able to go to the local recycling centre to dispose of stuff that doesn't get collected by the council... wood, rubble, large cardboard boxes, metal, broken electric appliances etc... or go to the garden centre and buy a bag of soil

During lockdown, a car has been extremely useful to go to the supermarket and shop for a full week, as opposed to the two days we were used to shop previously... that might have even kept us alive...

With public transport out of use, I have no idea how else we would be able to travel... even with public transport on, many places you might want to visit are off limits

The ban cars rant is the usual London-centric view of folks that are used to have everything by their door step, live in microscopic flats with no garden and therefore don't need to buy or dispose of large items. They only head out of their neighbourhood for leisure on their bicycle, otherwise they are enclosed in their social bubble. Trains go everywhere from London, so why would you need a car?

This is circular though, you only need to drive to these things because you can drive to these things (and coronavirus is an atypical scenario). The council should collect these things (I've never been to a recycling centre in my entire life). The car made it happen. If people didn't drive everywhere, there would be other solutions.

Sure things are different in London, but a majority of Londoners have chosen to live there (for all sorts of reasons), including perhaps that they can get about without cars. That said, lots of Londoners have cars despite that.

 

[bludger]

Exactly.

The entire problem is everyone is quick to defensively start with "well I need a car because xyz" without thinking twice about how the availability of cheap motoring (and a "pass once, drive for life even if you kill or maim someone" licensing system) has brought about this situation in the first place. This guy https://road.cc/content/news/271271-dangerous-driver-who-killed-cyclist-fails-have-10-year-driving-ban-overturned killed a cyclist in 2014 when marauding around in his motor taking photos from the steering wheel. He will be legally driving in 3 years because this country has decided that driving is so "essential" to life that even so irresponsibly killing someone shouldn't be a bar to your right to drive.

Take supermarkets. The reason we have out of town supermarkets is the car. If you visit the Netherlands you'll notice that out of town superstores don't exist. Why? Because they have banned the car from their built environments which has resulted in shopping that is close to home. https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2010/36/supermarket-within-walking-distance-for-most-dutch-people

It's a bit like someone in the wild west saying they need to carry six shooters because everyone else has them so you can't ban guns. Well yes that is exactly the problem.

The only way out of this toxic trap is banning cars. Maybe only limited forms of banning cars such as from one street at a time are all you think are possible but the required direction of travel is the removal of these ghastly killer machines, ending the subsidised access to cheap, destructive motoring, and replacing it with solutions that don't foster this death spiral of urban sprawl, pollution and road rage. In short; ban cars.

[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.

[nicknack]

Banning cars would also put a stop to any local music scene. I can't get to a gig (when such things used to exist) without a car.

[ian]

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).

[bludger]

I can't get to a gig

Again. That problem is a creation of the car. did music not exist before mass motoring? Of course it did.

This insistence on refusing to examine how the car has created this trap is why it's just easier to say "ban cars." Just exhausting to point out all the time how the cheap, easy access to motoring is what has shaped this situation.

[Tim Hall]

Banning cars would also put a stop to any local music scene. I can't get to a gig (when such things used to exist) without a car.

(pointless anecdote alert)
I went to see a band at The Hundred Club back in February (Terry & Gerry, featuring our very own turista). The support were The United Stoats of America, who hail from Horley. As I skeddadled across the concourse at Victoria Station on my way home, I over took one of the band. The bass player, or more correctly, the double bass player, with his bull fiddle. I think getting it onto the over head luggage rack might have been a problem.

[bludger]

Double bass you say

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AFFEKrp2hjJa-eF1js5QMnn3br-A1oET/view?usp=drivesdk

From my last tour to Germany via NL...

Actually I don't think that's the video of the chap with the double bass in his cargo bike but there was one.

Ban the car from the built environment, put in alternatives, and suddenly it isn't absurdly hard any more

[Davef]

So plumbers, electricians, doctors doing home visits, school inspectors, disabled people, farm 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.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[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.

[bludger]

Yeah the "hide behind the shield of a tiny minority to stymie reform" is a common defensive strategy for the car junkie. "How can the blind disabled move the fridge" sums it up.

Did you know British (mainland UK) military deaths in World War 2 were about 380,000.

Using a rough estimate from https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7615/ we've incurred about the same number of dead from drivers since 1945 not even factoring in a share of the 30,000 a year dead from air pollution.

[Ben T]

I can't get to a gig

Again. That problem is a creation of the car. did music not exist before mass motoring? Of course it did.

Yes, but it was largely the preserve of the rich.
Only the local country squire (the "landowning royalty" to use your phrase) who could afford to enslave 6 peasants to carry the harpsichord on their backs could have music.
It obviously escapes your blinkered view of the world that cars in a lot of ways actually foster equality and enable the poor to have more similar privileges to the rich.

[bludger]

Lmao the poorest people in the world pay the cost the highest. 1.35 million people a year are killed by drivers (which is about two holocausts a decade in terms of numbers killed). 90% of them in the "developing world." Oh to be a car junkie.

My "blinkered view" is that people's right to cycle and play in their street and not choke to death on funes trumps your right play Mr Toad. And the rest of the wabenzi for that matter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabenzi

[Jaded]

Yeah the "hide behind the shield of a tiny minority to stymie reform" is a common defensive strategy for the car junkie. "How can the blind disabled move the fridge" sums it up.

Did you know British (mainland UK) military deaths in World War 2 were about 380,000.

Using a rough estimate from https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7615/ we've incurred about the same number of dead from drivers since 1945 not even factoring in a share of the 30,000 a year dead from air pollution.

I think you've missed a trick there.

I think you'd have been better lumping all the deaths from cars since they were invented and then compared them with the military deaths in an intense, 6 year conflict. Far more valid comparison.

Out of interest, what battles happened on the UK Mainland?

[Davef]

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.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[bludger]

Go along to Tim's meeting with the council and you'll soon find out!

[Jaded]

The only way out of this toxic trap is banning cars. Maybe only limited forms of banning cars such as from one street at a time are all you think are possible but the required direction of travel is the removal of these ghastly killer machines, ending the subsidised access to cheap, destructive motoring, and replacing it with solutions that don't foster this death spiral of urban sprawl, pollution and road rage. In short; ban cars.

Nope.

Change rules and attitudes.

I am interested how you got on with your visit to PistonHeads?

[bludger]

Change the rules yes - to ban cars.

[Ben T]

Lmao the poorest people in the world pay the cost the highest. 1.35 million people a year are killed by drivers (which is about two holocausts a decade in terms of numbers killed). 90% of them in the "developing world." Oh to be a car junkie.

My "blinkered view" is that people's right to cycle and play in their street and not choke to death on funes trumps your right play Mr Toad. And the rest of the wabenzi for that matter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabenzi

Hypothetical situation: let's just say you, with your 'ban cars' campaign, become slightly powerful and get a bit of a following. Nowhere near powerful enough to form a majority government, but noticeable - let's say about as influential as say one of the minor parties, say the lib dems or the green party are now - you've maybe even got a handful of MPs. The ruling party offers you a choice between: you can ban cars now, just in London (which means anywhere inside the M25) - but nowhere else, and you have to agree to drop any further campaign to ban them anywhere else, OR, you can carry on trying to further your campaign to get them banned everywhere, with the attendant risk that it might never happen at all. Which do you choose?

(You're of course free to take the childish view that "that choice would never present itself so it's a pointless question" but the point of a thought experiment is to consider a hypothetical situation.)

[Nuncio]

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.

41.5 million full, and over 8 million provisionals. Don't let understatement undermine your argument.

[bludger]

Keep campaigning obviously. Run this experiment again.

Go back to 1960s and put the civil rights movement in touch with Kennedy or whoever. Kennedy promises to end lynching and jim crow etc but only inside metropolitan areas and on the condition that the campaigning everywhere else stops. They'd rightly tell Kennedy to do one and I'd do the same. The momentum is always with the campaigner, the authorities only offer concessions like that when they're frit and on the run.

Incidentally your thought experiment exemplifies why devolved metropolitan authorities e.g. mayor of London are important

[rob]

I almost got run over by a Peloton van the other day.

[Jaded]

Keep campaigning obviously. Run this experiment again.

Go back to 1960s and put the civil rights movement in touch with Kennedy or whoever. Kennedy promises to end lynching and jim crow etc but only inside metropolitan areas and on the condition that the campaigning everywhere else stops. They'd rightly tell Kennedy to do one and I'd do the same. The momentum is always with the campaigner, the authorities only offer concessions like that when they're frit and on the run.

Incidentally your thought experiment exemplifies why metropolitan authorities e.g. mayor of London are important

When does the screeching stop and the campaigning start