20mph in Brighton and Hove: it ain’t over yet

As per previous blogs, Brighton and Hove will be getting a whole lot more roads where 20mph is the speed limit - great news for pedestrians and cyclists, and should help with the move towards living streets. But interventions by Labour and Conservative councillors mean that some roads have been wrongly excluded: Preston Drove and Stanford Avenue lost out due to a proposal by Labour Councillor Gill Mitchell, supported by other Labour and Conservative councillors, to exclude the roads on the basis that they were "key bus and taxi routes and a majority of residents in both roads having voted against these roads being included within the 20mph scheme." These roads are NOT key routes for buses (which only use sections of the roads or are infrequently scheduled), and the residents’ response rate was only around 20% almost evenly split, for and against. You can sign the petition to save lives and restore some balance to these roads. Remember, it only needs 1,250 signatures to trigger a full council debate.


Further amendments by Conservative Councillor Geoffrey Theobald and the Labour Group had Surrenden Road, Braybon Avenue and an area west of Ditchling Road denied 20 mph speed limits despite overwhelming road safety evidence to support speed reduction, and a community road safety campaign. Also, due to amendments, Portland Road has to await further monitoring.

Thanks to Tony Green and Becky Reynolds from Bricycles for the above links and info www.facebook.com/Bricycles

Letter to the Argus about cars and shoppers

Happy to see my letter challenging the myths about high-spending car-borne shoppers published in today’s Argus alongside one in similar vein from Becky Reynolds of Bricycles. If you’re in the majority of Brighton and Hove residents who don’t read the Argus (more on this later), here’s the letter.

“Chris Todd (letters, 5 November) is right to point out the importance of pedestrians, cyclists and bus users to the prosperity of London Road. Unfortunately, research shows that retailers are prone to over-state the importance of the car, and can massively over-estimate the number of shoppers arriving by car. Further evidence published in the independent report on The Pedestrian Pound commissioned by Living Streets, sets out the business case for better streets and places. Data in the report shows that pedestrians spend up to six times more on our high streets than those who arrive by car. Investing in the public realm – including pedestrianising areas and slowing down the traffic – has been shown to boost footfall and local economies by up to 40%.

It’s time that retailers (and others) gave up asserting that we need to unleash more cars into the city. What’s needed are measures which support those who choose to spend their money without using a car. Turning Brighton and Hove into an unsafe, traffic-choked and pollution-blighted “car friendly” city is not the answer to the challenges facing retailers.

Yours etc”

20mph: A Momentary Lapse of Unreason on Planet Argus

The Argus has published two remarkable letters in the last couple of days on the subject of the 20mph speed limit in Brighton and Hove. Remarkable because both letters contain facts rather than opinions, and evidence instead of assertion. One from Becky Reynolds of Bricycles, one from Ian James of Portslade.

There’s still time to support a policy based on evidence and join the forces of reason by participating in the council’s 20mph consultation before it times out this Friday, 4^th October.

The Paradox of Bikes in Britain

There’s an interesting article by Anthony Young on the European bicycle market in the latest edition of Bricycles magazine, the magazine for Brighton and Hove’s cycle enthusiasts. It comments on the latest statistics on the European bicycle market and I’ve taken the liberty of extracting a chunk.


“The UK…. has easily the highest bike sales of the big five nations – well ahead of cycling-mad France, and twice as high as Italy, traditional centre of the bike world. UK bike sales, over 3.5m p.a., or 58/1,000 people, are over 40% higher than the European average. This isn’t a Bradley Wiggins Olympics phenomenon – the figures are for 2011 and the UK’s lead in bike sales has been like this for many years. Nobody knows how many usable bikes there are in the UK, but it must be around twenty million. That would mean over 30% of Britons has a bike, even though apparently less than 3% ride their bike regularly. Perhaps that’s the link that squares the circle. Britons have more bikes than anyone else, but use them less. Is this to be explained by a lack of safe opportunities to cycle in the UK? Cycle facilities here are much poorer than continental countries, where they actually have fewer bikes.


This portrays cycling as a huge unrealised opportunity for the UK. We’re perfectly capable of riding our bikes. If facilities were better and if those millions of bikes (which have car driving owners) were used as they are in Europe, we would make huge savings on petrol and our roads and hospital wards would be far less crowded. We just need to get people who own bikes to see themselves as cyclists, those who don’t own bikes to see that they’d be better off if more people rode bikes rather than driving cars, and public authorities to see that it would be in the national interest to give equal priority to cycle facilities.”

Well said, Anthony.

Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry, Big Lorry, Bigger Lorry

This was in the January-March edition of Bricycles.  As if our towns and cities aren’t already besieged with giant lorries, the government seems determined to unleash even more behemoths onto our roads. The figure for large truck involvement in cycle deaths is grim stuff.

Make Streets Safer for Pedestrians: Get Strict on Driver Liability

Becky Reynolds of Brighton cycling group Bricycles spoke to the Argus newspaper about the need to change the rules on liability for crashes involving motor vehicles and bicycles (and by extension, pedestrians). Here’s a taste of the arguments, from the Argus article.

Bricycles advocates a change in the law to “stricter liability” so that motorists would be liable for collisions with more vulnerable road users. The proposed change is outlined at www.stricterliabilityforus.org.uk, which points out that this already happens in most of Europe.  It’s called “proportional liability”, “stricter liability” or “strict liability”. Road Peace and CTC are supporters, as is Bricycles.  So is Living Streets. Not to mention 20's Plenty For Us, The Campaign for Protection of Rural England (CPRE) and the (late) Sustainable Development Commission
The main points are below.

• In road traffic personal injury cases in the UK, the burden of proof is on the victim to prove the other party was negligent. The injured party in a crash between a motor vehicle and a pedestrian or cyclist is most likely to be the vulnerable road user. Under strict liability, the burden of proof is reversed. Vulnerable victims, not drivers, are the ones assumed innocent with regard to causing their injuries.

• Strict liability already applies to passengers in vehicles.

• Pedestrians and cyclists are not only most likely to come out worst in road collisions, but they also find it hardest to obtain justice when collisions occur.  At present, the UK is one of just four countries in western Europe where the burden of proof falls entirely on injured pedestrians and cyclists to show that the driver who hit them was “negligent” before they can claim compensation (the others are Ireland, Cyprus and Malta).  Moreover, these unprotected road users are also less likely to have the insurance to provide both for funding and for lawyers if and when an injury occurs.  Worse still, they may well suffer memory loss in any injury which is particularly serious - so in the cases where compensation is most sorely needed, the victim is often unable to persuade a court of the driver’s negligence, simply because they cannot provide adequate evidence of how the collision occurred.

• Reversing these injustices would help restore the imbalance of risk on Britain’s roads, by encouraging people to drive with more respect for the safety of vulnerable road users.  Although the UK has one of the world’s best overall road safety records, it is nonetheless one of Europe’s poorer performers when it comes to the safety of pedestrians, cyclists and children.

• “Stricter liability” rules would only affect the workings of civil compensation.  They would not “criminalise” drivers – this would only happen if they were proven guilty of a crime beyond reasonable doubt in the normal way.  They would however ensure that pedestrians and cyclists, including children, would be able to claim compensation without having to go through years of harrowing court processes in the aftermath of life-changing injuries, possibly only to see their claims refused due to lack of good evidence.

• It is sometimes suggested that "stricter liability" rules would increase the overall burden of drivers’ insurance schemes, but there is no evidence to support these fears.  On the contrary, their aim is simply to promote to safer driving, by making drivers more aware of their responsibilities to avoid endangering more vulnerable road users in the first place.  This would lead to fewer deaths and injury on our roads, and hence fewer compensation payouts.  There would also be more people feeling it was safe to walk and cycle, and who would feel confident about allowing their children to do likewise, with the health, efficiency, environmental and cost-saving benefits that would result, both for themselves as individuals and for society at large.”