J
Just zis Guy, you know?
Guest
On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 16:59:10 GMT, Sniper8052 <[email protected]>
wrote in message <opsfy2tfnj2wix5t@hogwarts-83efbf>:
>>>> Residential roads are the largest areas of public open space in most
>>>> communities.
>>> They are not open spaces they are roads.
>> They are open spaces. Public rights of way, not rights of way
>> exclusively for motorised traffic. And the success of home zones in
>> both saving lives and building communities suggests that it is
>> precisely the idea of roads as car-owned space which is the problem.
>I say they are roads but I will qualify that by your argument accepting
>that some roads can be amenities where the passage of vehicles can be
>reasonably reduced or eliminated except for access to allow deliveries and
>residents to enter premisis.
And in some cases blurring the boundaries - de-prioritising motor
traffic - has reduced injuries enormously, improved the local
environment and given people their community back. Turning the clock
back half a century, in effect, to the days when the private car was
not automatically assumed to be master of every square inch of
highway.
>You snipped a bit here which illustrated that I was not wholly opposed to
>'play streets' which was unfair.
Not really. You are in favour of little ghettos of community
ownership of roads, as long as the Almighty Car is not hindered
anywhere else. You still have it the wrong way round. The roads
which run through a community are part of that community; fast through
traffic is destructive of that community (ask any villager with an A
road running past their door) and represents a fundamental failure to
respect those into whose environment we intrude.
>> It's a depressing vision you have there, where the
>> Almighty Car has more rights over a community's roads than do the
>> members of that community.
>No, so the motorists know they can't go down there, a swinging gate with a
>padlock would be enough perhaps with a sign to say when the road was open
>and closed to traffic.
The presence of houses is to sufficient to alert you to the possible
presence of children? You want gated communities?
Essentially two sets of needs conflict here; you believe the needs of
the more powerful party should be paramount, I believe the needs of
the local people should have precedence.
>> I think we differ on precisely which personal liberties should
>> be curtailed.
>It is my belief that parents should be responsible for their children at
>all times which includes whilst at play and that drivers have a
>responsibility, a very great responsibility to act and drive sensibly.
>Unfortunately very many parents and very many drivers ignor their
>responsibilities. I do not think that either group can exclusivly blame
>the other when each must share a portion of the responsibility.
I am not exclusively blaming either side, I am suggesting that the
balance of responsibility is currently wrong. Wrong in that drivers
get most of the benefit and bring almost all the danger, and wrong in
that it is ridiculous to suggest that children should be required to
display adult levels of judgment, or imprisoned in their own homes
until they can.
>Child casualties fell by 8 per cent. The number of children killed or
>seriously injured in 2003 was 4,100 (down 11 per cent on 2002). Of those,
>2,381 were pedestrians, 16 per cent down on 2002. There were 171 child
>fatalities, 4 per cent fewer than in 2002.
Don't tell P**l S****h, those casualty reductions were mostly on the
kinds of roads where speed cameras are most common...
>> the
>> measure of "safety" which you use includes as a benefit the fact that
>> many roads are now so dangerous that only motorists dare use them.
>Can you explain your argument in relation to what you think I am saying
>here as I don't understand what your trying to say IE .. Second, the
>measure of "safety" which you use..
The road "safety" lobby like to use casualties as a measure of how
safe the roads are. So if a road is so dangerous that pedestrians and
cyclists are scared to use it, that is counted as a safety benefit,
even though there is a significant loss of utility for a large number
of people. H Alker Tripp suggested in the 1930s that pedestrian and
cyclist traffic could never share the road safely with motor traffic,
and his solution was to give the roads over to the motorists and
exclude the rest. We don't seem to have moved on very far, except
that these days not many people care that pensioners are too scared of
traffic to walk to the shops.
>> Do you honestly think that urban roads are safer now than they were in
>> the 1950s when children could play a game of football in the street?
>No. I say the road environment has changed because we in general (not as
>motorist and the other lot) expect a greater level of personal freedom
>through private transportation and this means we need to change the way we
>interact with the road system or, through discussion, the way we manage
>that road system.
That's a fudge. The roads are generally more dangerous; there are
more, and more aggressive, drivers than ever before. The fact that
they look safer on paper is merely a testament to the fact that people
have been scared off.
>> Meyer Hillman has discussed this many times. In other European
>> countries they manage to achieve substantially lower child road death
>> rates with much less restriction on independent mobility.
>Could you example this I seek more knowledge.
I suggest you read a book called "One False Move" by Mayer Hillman and
John Whitelegg (Policy Studies Institute, 1990, ISBN 0853744947. He
puts it much better than I could.
>> What is sad is that you, and many others, apparently view the
>> existence of a right of way as automatically excluding the possibility
>> of any other use.
>Hmmmm, Thinks... I did give some thought to play streets above but fair
>point I think parents should take their children to the park, to 'play' at
>friends houses for walks to the shops etc untill they are safe in the
>traffic environment. I was raised to think of this as normal behavior.
Quite. I was raised to think that walking to the park by myself was
normal behaviour, by the age of ten at least. So what has been lost
is a degree of independence. What effect is that likely to have later
in life?
[chicken on the A road is not representative]
>No it's not representative but it accounts for some of the figures and
>shows some accidents are reasonably unavoidable.
Some, but in my view many fewer than are generally believed. There is
a real tendency these days to consider road fatalities as "accidents"
- some kind of act of God, but according to the police around 90% of
fatal crashes are caused by driver error, which suggests that we
should spend much more time and effort working on drivers' hazard
perception. More powerful, quieter, "safer" cars lead people to drive
faster and with less care, because the risk to them is lower (see
Risk, by John Adams).
>Yes in all cases a driver should be driving at a speed condusive to their
>stopping within the distance they can see to be clear, if they are and
>they still can't stop in time you have given that there may be some
>occasions where the 'accident' may have been unavoidable.
But where we differ is, I believe that in many residential streets you
should driver much slower than that. You should drive on the
assumption that a child may well emerge from between parked cars (and
notice that here the cars are a source of danger even when
stationary).
>> Remember who gets all the benefit from the presence of their car on
>> the road, and who brings all the danger to the situation
>Possibly most but unfairly all unless you ban cars completely.
It's not necessary to ban cars, only to ensure that the drivers are
behaving appropriately. Appropriately from the point of view of those
whose community they are driving through.
>>> Self caused: IE Me running out, Kids playing chicken...
>> In the same way that the victims of bullying are "self caused" by
>> failing to run away?
>That's not fair or relevent.
But it is. If I live in a residential road, and my children want to
cross the road, then they should not have to be escorted. Which is
better, to curtail the freedoms of children or to curtail the freedoms
of drivers? I am arguing for a swing of the pendulum away from the
long-term trend in favour of ever increasing freedom for drivers at
the expense of those least privileged in society.
>> 2002/2003 injury admissions for England:
>> Cycling: 5,804 (approx. 50/50 road and off-road)
>> Pedestrian: 3,429
>> Other land transport: 3,465
>> Non-transport: 77,512
>ROAD CASUALTIES GREAT BRITAIN 2003: MAIN RESULTS
>The number of deaths rose, by 2 per cent from 3,431 in 2002 to 3,508 in
>2003. 37,215 people were killed or seriously injured in 2003, 6 per cent
>fewer than in 2002. There were 290,607 road casualties in Great Britain in
>2003, 4 per cent fewer than in 2002.
And most of the additional deaths were on motorways and fast A roads,
and the group which suffered the largest increase in deaths was
motorcyclists. If you consider the roads which pedestrians are most
likely to use, they have continued to improve.
But as I said above, that may not be the right metric; as with
Australian cyclist head injury stats, it counts as a benefit those who
have been driven into their cars.
You may be assured that I am completely familiar with the road
casualty stats.
>> So you don't feel that independent mobility for your children is a
>> valid aspiration for parents? You don't believe that children have a
>> right to be able to go and see their friends without being escorted by
>> an adult? That's a very sad view of the world.
>I am suggesting that parents are responsible to educate their children in
>the correct use of the roads and pavements untill they are able to cope
>with the demands that these environments place upon them.
In other words, rather than restricting the drivers who derive the
benefit of private motoring and bring all the danger to the situation,
in recognition of the fact that children behave like children, they
should be imprisoned or supervised until they are capable of deferring
adequately to the dangers posed by adults.
A bleak view of the world and not one I share.
>> I don't think there are many [parents who let kids play with the traffic].
>There are lots of parents like this. They do however all love their
>children. They just can't be bothered with them untill it's to late, one
>way or another.
But once again you propose solving a problem with adult behaviour by
restricting the freedom of children.
>> And I think a parent who never
>> allows their child to gain independence is doing them a great
>> disservice. Many middle-class parents chauffeur their children
>> everywhere, building an assumption that nowhere is reachable without a
>> car. Fat Land here we come...
>I never said that, I agree that to never allow a child to gain independent
>experience would be very damaging. But that independence must be after
>the child has the skills to cope with the local road environs in the
>presence of an adult not as a sink or swim experience which is so often
>the case I see.
You can't suddenly produce a child aged X with road sense,
responsibility and judgment. It is learned, and it can only be
learned by giving gradually increasing freedom. The culture of total
deference to the Almighty Car stands as a huge barrier to that.
Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University
wrote in message <opsfy2tfnj2wix5t@hogwarts-83efbf>:
>>>> Residential roads are the largest areas of public open space in most
>>>> communities.
>>> They are not open spaces they are roads.
>> They are open spaces. Public rights of way, not rights of way
>> exclusively for motorised traffic. And the success of home zones in
>> both saving lives and building communities suggests that it is
>> precisely the idea of roads as car-owned space which is the problem.
>I say they are roads but I will qualify that by your argument accepting
>that some roads can be amenities where the passage of vehicles can be
>reasonably reduced or eliminated except for access to allow deliveries and
>residents to enter premisis.
And in some cases blurring the boundaries - de-prioritising motor
traffic - has reduced injuries enormously, improved the local
environment and given people their community back. Turning the clock
back half a century, in effect, to the days when the private car was
not automatically assumed to be master of every square inch of
highway.
>You snipped a bit here which illustrated that I was not wholly opposed to
>'play streets' which was unfair.
Not really. You are in favour of little ghettos of community
ownership of roads, as long as the Almighty Car is not hindered
anywhere else. You still have it the wrong way round. The roads
which run through a community are part of that community; fast through
traffic is destructive of that community (ask any villager with an A
road running past their door) and represents a fundamental failure to
respect those into whose environment we intrude.
>> It's a depressing vision you have there, where the
>> Almighty Car has more rights over a community's roads than do the
>> members of that community.
>No, so the motorists know they can't go down there, a swinging gate with a
>padlock would be enough perhaps with a sign to say when the road was open
>and closed to traffic.
The presence of houses is to sufficient to alert you to the possible
presence of children? You want gated communities?
Essentially two sets of needs conflict here; you believe the needs of
the more powerful party should be paramount, I believe the needs of
the local people should have precedence.
>> I think we differ on precisely which personal liberties should
>> be curtailed.
>It is my belief that parents should be responsible for their children at
>all times which includes whilst at play and that drivers have a
>responsibility, a very great responsibility to act and drive sensibly.
>Unfortunately very many parents and very many drivers ignor their
>responsibilities. I do not think that either group can exclusivly blame
>the other when each must share a portion of the responsibility.
I am not exclusively blaming either side, I am suggesting that the
balance of responsibility is currently wrong. Wrong in that drivers
get most of the benefit and bring almost all the danger, and wrong in
that it is ridiculous to suggest that children should be required to
display adult levels of judgment, or imprisoned in their own homes
until they can.
>Child casualties fell by 8 per cent. The number of children killed or
>seriously injured in 2003 was 4,100 (down 11 per cent on 2002). Of those,
>2,381 were pedestrians, 16 per cent down on 2002. There were 171 child
>fatalities, 4 per cent fewer than in 2002.
Don't tell P**l S****h, those casualty reductions were mostly on the
kinds of roads where speed cameras are most common...
>> the
>> measure of "safety" which you use includes as a benefit the fact that
>> many roads are now so dangerous that only motorists dare use them.
>Can you explain your argument in relation to what you think I am saying
>here as I don't understand what your trying to say IE .. Second, the
>measure of "safety" which you use..
The road "safety" lobby like to use casualties as a measure of how
safe the roads are. So if a road is so dangerous that pedestrians and
cyclists are scared to use it, that is counted as a safety benefit,
even though there is a significant loss of utility for a large number
of people. H Alker Tripp suggested in the 1930s that pedestrian and
cyclist traffic could never share the road safely with motor traffic,
and his solution was to give the roads over to the motorists and
exclude the rest. We don't seem to have moved on very far, except
that these days not many people care that pensioners are too scared of
traffic to walk to the shops.
>> Do you honestly think that urban roads are safer now than they were in
>> the 1950s when children could play a game of football in the street?
>No. I say the road environment has changed because we in general (not as
>motorist and the other lot) expect a greater level of personal freedom
>through private transportation and this means we need to change the way we
>interact with the road system or, through discussion, the way we manage
>that road system.
That's a fudge. The roads are generally more dangerous; there are
more, and more aggressive, drivers than ever before. The fact that
they look safer on paper is merely a testament to the fact that people
have been scared off.
>> Meyer Hillman has discussed this many times. In other European
>> countries they manage to achieve substantially lower child road death
>> rates with much less restriction on independent mobility.
>Could you example this I seek more knowledge.
I suggest you read a book called "One False Move" by Mayer Hillman and
John Whitelegg (Policy Studies Institute, 1990, ISBN 0853744947. He
puts it much better than I could.
>> What is sad is that you, and many others, apparently view the
>> existence of a right of way as automatically excluding the possibility
>> of any other use.
>Hmmmm, Thinks... I did give some thought to play streets above but fair
>point I think parents should take their children to the park, to 'play' at
>friends houses for walks to the shops etc untill they are safe in the
>traffic environment. I was raised to think of this as normal behavior.
Quite. I was raised to think that walking to the park by myself was
normal behaviour, by the age of ten at least. So what has been lost
is a degree of independence. What effect is that likely to have later
in life?
[chicken on the A road is not representative]
>No it's not representative but it accounts for some of the figures and
>shows some accidents are reasonably unavoidable.
Some, but in my view many fewer than are generally believed. There is
a real tendency these days to consider road fatalities as "accidents"
- some kind of act of God, but according to the police around 90% of
fatal crashes are caused by driver error, which suggests that we
should spend much more time and effort working on drivers' hazard
perception. More powerful, quieter, "safer" cars lead people to drive
faster and with less care, because the risk to them is lower (see
Risk, by John Adams).
>Yes in all cases a driver should be driving at a speed condusive to their
>stopping within the distance they can see to be clear, if they are and
>they still can't stop in time you have given that there may be some
>occasions where the 'accident' may have been unavoidable.
But where we differ is, I believe that in many residential streets you
should driver much slower than that. You should drive on the
assumption that a child may well emerge from between parked cars (and
notice that here the cars are a source of danger even when
stationary).
>> Remember who gets all the benefit from the presence of their car on
>> the road, and who brings all the danger to the situation
>Possibly most but unfairly all unless you ban cars completely.
It's not necessary to ban cars, only to ensure that the drivers are
behaving appropriately. Appropriately from the point of view of those
whose community they are driving through.
>>> Self caused: IE Me running out, Kids playing chicken...
>> In the same way that the victims of bullying are "self caused" by
>> failing to run away?
>That's not fair or relevent.
But it is. If I live in a residential road, and my children want to
cross the road, then they should not have to be escorted. Which is
better, to curtail the freedoms of children or to curtail the freedoms
of drivers? I am arguing for a swing of the pendulum away from the
long-term trend in favour of ever increasing freedom for drivers at
the expense of those least privileged in society.
>> 2002/2003 injury admissions for England:
>> Cycling: 5,804 (approx. 50/50 road and off-road)
>> Pedestrian: 3,429
>> Other land transport: 3,465
>> Non-transport: 77,512
>ROAD CASUALTIES GREAT BRITAIN 2003: MAIN RESULTS
>The number of deaths rose, by 2 per cent from 3,431 in 2002 to 3,508 in
>2003. 37,215 people were killed or seriously injured in 2003, 6 per cent
>fewer than in 2002. There were 290,607 road casualties in Great Britain in
>2003, 4 per cent fewer than in 2002.
And most of the additional deaths were on motorways and fast A roads,
and the group which suffered the largest increase in deaths was
motorcyclists. If you consider the roads which pedestrians are most
likely to use, they have continued to improve.
But as I said above, that may not be the right metric; as with
Australian cyclist head injury stats, it counts as a benefit those who
have been driven into their cars.
You may be assured that I am completely familiar with the road
casualty stats.
>> So you don't feel that independent mobility for your children is a
>> valid aspiration for parents? You don't believe that children have a
>> right to be able to go and see their friends without being escorted by
>> an adult? That's a very sad view of the world.
>I am suggesting that parents are responsible to educate their children in
>the correct use of the roads and pavements untill they are able to cope
>with the demands that these environments place upon them.
In other words, rather than restricting the drivers who derive the
benefit of private motoring and bring all the danger to the situation,
in recognition of the fact that children behave like children, they
should be imprisoned or supervised until they are capable of deferring
adequately to the dangers posed by adults.
A bleak view of the world and not one I share.
>> I don't think there are many [parents who let kids play with the traffic].
>There are lots of parents like this. They do however all love their
>children. They just can't be bothered with them untill it's to late, one
>way or another.
But once again you propose solving a problem with adult behaviour by
restricting the freedom of children.
>> And I think a parent who never
>> allows their child to gain independence is doing them a great
>> disservice. Many middle-class parents chauffeur their children
>> everywhere, building an assumption that nowhere is reachable without a
>> car. Fat Land here we come...
>I never said that, I agree that to never allow a child to gain independent
>experience would be very damaging. But that independence must be after
>the child has the skills to cope with the local road environs in the
>presence of an adult not as a sink or swim experience which is so often
>the case I see.
You can't suddenly produce a child aged X with road sense,
responsibility and judgment. It is learned, and it can only be
learned by giving gradually increasing freedom. The culture of total
deference to the Almighty Car stands as a huge barrier to that.
Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University
