The Bike Show

Jenny Jones asks all the right questions. Good, campaigning stuff from the Green Party Assembly member.

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Yesterday I wrote a letter to Keltbray, the lorry company whose vehicle was involved in the collision with a cyclist on Borough High Street. (It was a Keltbray lorry that killed cyclist Haris Ahmed earlier in the year, on a backstreet just a few yards from where yesterday’s collision took place).

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Not much text needed to accompany these photographs taken yesterday on the streets of Southwark and posted on the SE1 Forum.

Exhibit A: Lorry and cyclist collide on Borough High Street, junction of Dover Street. Keltbray services the Shard construction site and one of its lorries killed a London cyclist back in March, just a few [...]

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A long, hard look at the Mayor of London’s plans for 12 cycle superhighways – bike routes from the outer boroughs along London’s main arterial roads. With Kulveer Ranger, Boris Johnson’s top transport adviser, Rob Ainsley of the Real Cycling blog, and Charlie Lloyd of the London Cycling Campaign.

 

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The London Cycling Campaign have released an excellent video.

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Last Thursday, on what felt like a warm, sunny first day of Spring, I was witness to the immediate aftermath of a collision involving a cyclist and a 32 tonne articulated lorry. It was a truly horrible, chilling sight. The lorry was stopped in the middle of the road and the crushed remains of a [...]

 

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Nigel Warburton, whose Philosophy Bites is among the brightest stars in the podcasting firmament, appeared on The Bike Show late last year, talking about the ethics of running red traffic lights.
In the current issue of Prospect Magazine, he takes a deeper look at whether breaking the law can ever be morally justified. In a passage [...]

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Should cyclists stop at red lights? Why do we feel such a strong urge to keep rolling? Should our behavior be guided by the law of the land or the laws of common courtesy? What would Isaac Newton and Thomas Aquinas have to say about the matter? Bringing their expertise to a discussion of the [...]

 

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The Bike Show moves into advocacy mode this week with guest in the studio Debra Rolfe, Campaigns Director of the Cyclists’ Touring Club (CTC), Britain’s largest cycling organisation with 60,000+ members. Debra is spearheading the CTC’s new campaign against bad driving by motorists called Stop SMIDSY. The aim is to draw attention to the dangers [...]

 

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It’s late on Friday afternoon, well past beer o’clock, but here’s an idea to make London safer for cyclists: keep the biggest lorries off the streets during the morning rush hour. If enacted I am confident it would save lives. It can be done by tweaking existing legislation.

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Transport for London has published a draft Cycle Safety Action Plan. Comments on the plan are required by December 11th 2009. The plan is good in parts but the emphasis is on voluntary measures, partnerships and awareness raising, when what is really needed is tough action against dangerous driving and facing up to the hard [...]

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Boris Johnson is London’s first cycling Mayor and he has put a ‘cycling revolution’ at the heart of his programme of government. As well as the Cycle Hire Scheme, Mayor Johnson has announced plans for what he has dubbed ‘cycle superhighways’. There will be twelve superhighways, each offering “safe, fast, direct routes to central London [...]

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London’s cyclists have plenty to contend with whether it’s deadly lorries and trucks, bendy-buses, white van man or suicidal pedestrians stepping out without looking. But now there is a violent cyclist-hating rollerskating monkey impersonator on the loose on our city streets. MovingTarget has the full story and the London Fixed Gear and Single Speed Forum [...]

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An accident of geography means that, official speaking, I’m a Lambeth Cyclist but I’m a Southwark Cyclist at heart, not least because of the dynamic Barry Mason, the quirky Rob Ainsley, the luminous Rebecca Lack and the feisty Ann Warren. I can even see the Southwark-Lambeth ‘county line’ from my doorstep. So I was delighted [...]

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I previously wrote about last months’ City of London Police’s recent Road Safety Forum. I mentioned some statistics that were presented by Sergeant Alan Rickwood. Sergeant Ringwood was kind enough to send me his slides afterwards, and I can share them here.

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After a summer of fun on two wheels, we turn to more serious matters. The entire show this week is devoted to the problem of lorries killing cyclists in London. With Barry Mason of Southwark Cyclists and Cynthia Barlow, chairwoman of RoadPeace, the national campaign against deaths on Britain’s roads. We also hear from London [...]

 

 13 October 2008: Emergency - Lorries Killing Cyclists [33:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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This morning I attended the Road Safety Forum organised by the City of London police, at their Snow Hill police station, near Smithfield Market. It was a good meeting, well attended by a range of officers, including at a senior level, plus those responsible for implementation on the streets. There were also representation from Corporation [...]

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Nice to see the police setting an example. Today at 2.20pm on Webber Street, corner of Blackfriars Road, SE1.
For those who don’t know, this is an Advance Stop Line, a ’safe place’ for cyclists to wait at junctions. If it wasn’t filled with two tonnes of Plod, that is.
The license number of the [...]

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Two cyclists have been killed and another injured in collisions with lorries on the streets of London in the past week. This brings the unofficial total fatalities in 2008 to 8 or 9, depending on whether you count someone killed while wheeling their bike a cyclist or pedestrian. Whichever way, it’s 8 or 9 too [...]

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Totnes in South Devon is where the rapidly growing ‘transition town’ movement all began. Transition towns are a response to the problem of resource depletion, peak oil and climate change and embrace the practical and more esoteric aspects of changing lifestyles and mindsets. Totnes and the surrounding countryside – like many rural areas – remain [...]

 

 Transition Town Bicycling [30:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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