“ABD's plan to separate pedestrians from cars is straight
from the 1960s”

Courtesy requires that I reply to the long letter from Nigel Humphries of the Association of British Drivers (LTT 21 March – 3 April) as it addresses the Road Danger Reduction Forum directly. He refers to letters to LTT (see http://www.rdrf.org/newset.htm ) showing the similarity between the ABD and the mainstream of official transport and road safety thought in the main motoring organisations, as well as many (but by no means all) transport professionals, and government.

We also suggest in this correspondence that the ABD worldview is so remote from reality that the prospect of meaningful debate is somewhat difficult. For example, in this latest letter: “the DfT have fully embraced (the RDRF) position and are running (it’s) agenda…”

The RDRF was formed fifteen years ago to promote a sustainable transport policy agenda of reducing danger at source. This included a commitment to reducing motor traffic, not dissimilar with the Road Traffic Reduction Act and John Prescott’s (in)famous pledge to be held to a commitment to reducing journeys by car. If Mr. Humphries is correct, either the Government’s Department for Transport is spectacularly incompetent or less than sincere in attempting to “embrace” us.

In the real world, we have had a steady increase in motor traffic, continuation of predict and provide road building, declining costs(as set against inflation) of motoring, abandonment of the National Cycling Strategy as well as the Road Traffic Reduction Act, no real commitment towards transport’s necessary reductions in CO2, to name but few features of the transport scene.

How exactly does one debate with people who describe this as “embracing” an agenda of reducing motor traffic and the danger from it?

I believe we can reduce the argument to simple issues. We think it comes down to whether you see specific problems coming from those road users who have far more potential for lethal damage, and whose vehicle use poses particular environmental and other problems to society.

If you take the ABD view on the danger from the motorised to the non-motorised as expressed by Mr. Humphries, the solution is grade separation as part of a 1960s fantasy where we all live in a Milton Keynes environment with highly car dependent lifestyles. Most of us will not be living like this. That means that separating out cyclists and pedestrians can only be achieved by firstly linguistically banishing us – we are not part of “the traffic” – and then physically banishing us into places which either cannot exist or else can only be achieved by removing vast amounts of space from motor traffic, which is not what I believe the DfT, RAC/AA and the ABD have in mind. That means that we have to learn to live together, with the particular potential for lethality from the motorised recognised as the central problem.

Of course, in a crucial sense the ABD and legions of saloon bar bores are correct – if there are any pedestrians anywhere near any motor traffic, there may well be pedestrian casualties. It is then possible to blame pedestrians or anybody who is not happy with Milton Keynes as the only model for life anywhere. Just in case anybody thinks such an approach is contemptibly ridiculous, I have to point out that such a logic is at the heart of official “road safety” ideology.

Indeed, one has to look no further than the current issue of LTT’s feature on “road safety” to see a nice example of this: the spokesman of a major “road safety” organisation – PACTS – points out that one of the two main reasons for a relatively slow decline in fatality numbers in the UK is a rise in the number of motorcyclists. While the RDRF does not support policies of promoting motorcycling, to suggest that a legitimate safety target has been missed because of an increase in a group of road users who happen to be vulnerable is quite wrong. But that is the world of “road safety” – if pedestrians and cyclists are forced out of a road environment, often precisely because of the danger to them – then their casualties (but not necessarily casualty rates per journey or distance travelled) may well decline and “road safety” records “improve”.

At no stage in the feature is measurement of casualties considered in terms of casualty rates – such as casualties per journey - based on actual human experience. The difference in lethality between different modes is neutralised in pseudo-scientific number crunching. Reported casualties resulting from quite different kinds of incident are aggregated together in a way which defies the basic statistical law of comparing like with like.

The “road safety” industry was formed some 80 years ago by a motoring lobby as an attractive cover for its aim of accommodating not just increasing motor traffic, but careless motorist behaviour. It really is time that LTT and modern transport professionals take a more critical view of it.

Robert Davis
Chair, Road Danger Reduction Forum
P.O. Box 2944,
LONDON NW10 2AX