| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Closing Weltje Road/Rivercourt Road access | |
| Posted by: | Al Webber | |
| Date/Time: | 25/03/23 09:19:00 |
| Things are changing though. In the short term, 20mph speed limits are coming in all across London. The big thing is longer term, when driverless cars arrive on the scene. They will respect the rules of the road around cyclists. With no driver to pay, an Uber will be half the price of what it is now. For most people, owning your own car in London just won't make sense. Once they are legal, they will proliferate very quickly, and become the majority of vehicles on London's roads. Culture on the roads will change in the space of a few years. Should we really be spending lots of money now on infrastructure that will be redundant in 10 or 15 years time. The other thing is that a lot of streets in London are not wide enough for segregated lanes. Cars and bikes will always have to co-exist in London. The best way to make cyling safer is to go after bad drivers. Get more traffic police out on the roads. Let them keep the money from fines to fund the extra police officers. One specific thing I would do is put police out on bikes in plain clothes with cameras, and equipment to measure the distance cars give when overtaking. The fines from cars overtaking too closely would pay their wages for the day in less than half an hour. Instant driving bans for anyone who leaves less than half the legal clearance would get a lot of bad drivers off of the road. The Evening Standard reporting tens of thousands of fines and bans being issued per month would make car drivers a lot more careful about how they driver around cyclists. Changing the culture on the roads will do far more good than segregating cyclists away. The segregation appraoch is already leading to the "you don't belong on the roads" brigade getting louder and more vocal. |