I saw that David Cameron fellow riding his bike to work down Constitution Hill this morning on my cycle commute to White City. He appeared to have a bit of an entourage and wasn’t wearing a cycle helmet. When I mentioned this to a friend at work he suggested he didn’t need a cycle helmet with all that protection around him.
Meanwhile, it’s good to see something being done by the Evening Standard to help London’s cyclists… (of course, this doesn’t have to be limited to London)
Evening Standard’s 12-point charter
- A real cycle network across London
- Better cycle lanes with proper segregation
- Enforcement of special advanced stop lines for cyclists
- HGVs to be fitted with special cyclist safety mirrors
- Compulsory cyclist awareness training for all bus drivers and new HGV drivers
- Make safe the Thames bridges: some of the most dangerous places for cyclists
- Cycle-friendly streets: fewer one-way systems which funnel cyclists into the middle of traffic
- More cycle parking across London
- A police crackdown on bike theft
- Campaign to urge the selfemployed to claim a 20p a mile cycling allowance against tax
- Better cycle-bus-rail coordination: adequate parking at all railway stations
- Cycle training for all schoolchildren and any adult who wants it
I saw Tony Blair today, motor cycling outriders galore. The cheekey get should be ashamed of himself, for all of those boys he conned into Iraq.
How very dare the lot of them, they are all products of marketing every bit as much as Innocent Smoothies. I was invited to drinks many years ago by Charles Kennedy – he was a ginger then, and he is a ginger now…
I’d hardly call our political party leaders innocent smoothies 😉
Go dulwichmum!
I wonder if Eco Worrier Dave will pedal another less oil-driven foreign policy when it comes to the crunch. If he does, he’ll need more than a cycle helmet to ward-off the brickbats.
Cyclist charter should be:
Never cycle on pavements.
Cyclists to pay Road Tax
Cyclists to take a test before they ride
Bicycles to carry a clearly identifiable number like a car.
NO cycle lane till cyclist’s pay road tax.
All cyclists to be insured
Cycles to have the equivalent of MOT
Minimum age to ride on Public Roads 17
No extra parking for cycles
No special cross London Route unless of course they pay for it.
No cycles in bus lanes
Cycling becomes illegal after dark.
Now that is a charter!!!!!
Andrew, you are a fool.
Thanks for listing these. Hopefully we’ll get progress on each point and cycling will continue to get safer in London. One thing though. While I like the idea, how is a tax allowance making cycling safer?
[…] London’s Evening Standard recently published a twelve point charter for safer cycling which Nic Price has detailed here. […]
How is it right that motorists can insure fully comprehensive in order to have their car repaired even when an accident is not caused by a third party, If this was not the case I believe that most motorists would drive a little more defensively and be as a consequence safer drivers.
Perhaps if Andrew Pierce rode to work he might have a better understanding of the dangers involved and he could work of some of the misplaced aggression he seems to be suffering from.
Hopefully this thoroughly praiseworthy campaign by the ES will lead to fewer injuries and fatalities of London cyclists. Where do we sign up?