-
In Spain they had concerted adverts about how much clearance to give cyclists, a law about the safe distance and strict liability.
Cool. What was the cost, how was success measured, and how do they know it worked? I'm not saying it did not work, I just suspect that if you pick in to it you will find that being really, really sure that attitudes were changed and cycling became better is pretty tough to measure and conclude with a degree of certainty.
I would also claim the 'but spain tho' argument, and try to point out that spain has more roads than us, and more space, in the same way that France does, meaning drivers get to see cyclists less and are less pissed when they get mildly inconvenienced by them. It doesn't stop them from being douchebags though - even in Morzine yesterday I was close passed and pooped myself a little bit. To me, cycling is pretty shit everywhere, unless there are very few drivers or I am separated from them.
Drink driving is a good one because you are right - it's not as common as it once was. Well, that's the perception, anyway, and unless I see some data that's credible stating the opposite I'm happy with that. It's also really interesting in that NOBODY thinks drink driving is a good idea, even the people that do it, because there's a good chance that they might die, or even kill someone else, even in another car - even the drivers are threatened. Socially engineering change isn't that tough when everyone agrees with you.
You could argue that generally slowing down and being more attentive is a good idea and will benefit everyone - it does - but I suspect people don't think they need to slow down or need to be more attentive, because if these bloody cyclists just fucked off everything would be OK.
Howard-
From a piece of WHO literature:
http://www.who.int/management/programme/health_promotion/MakeRoadsSafe.pdf"In 2002 more than 7000 people were still being killed
each year on French roads. By 2005 fewer than 5000
people were killed, a drop of more than 20%. Interest-
ingly road user behaviour began to change soon af-
ter the highly publicised speech by the President and
the announcement of new road safety enforcement
measures, but well before the measures for penalis-
ing traffic offences were actually put in place. The
President’s high profile political act of making road
safety a priority issue was decisive in encouraging a
corresponding change in the public’s attitude and in
driver behaviour.
The Government also allocated €400 million to a 3
year investment plan to purchase automatic radar
devices and breath testing equipment and to set up
computer centres for the automatic monthly process-
ing of hundreds of thousands of speeding offences.
This was reinforced by a sustained communica-
tions campaign using hard hitting media messages.
Though the sums involved may appear consider-
able, the amount spent on new road safety actions
since 2003 demonstrate a significant rate of return.
The economic benefits in reduced crash costs for the
country represent 50 times the annual amount spent
on road safety promotion10.
The success of President Chirac’s initiative has en-
couraged other nations to follow his example. Italy, for
example, has achieved a similar improvement in RTI
numbers through the introduction of a driving licence
penalty point system."For some reason this very rarely gets mentioned. The inclusion of a commitment to reducing the death toll on French roads in the President's decree was about as an impromptu political act as can be imagined. He pretty made it up on the spot and saved tens of thousands of lives.
The British don't kill each other on the roads in quite the same way as the French but there are lessons to be learned.
benborp
In Spain they had concerted adverts about how much clearance to give cyclists, a law about the safe distance and strict liability.
It's similar to changing perceptions about drink driving, people used to think it was ok, maybe others were too intoxicated after a couple of pints, but, you know, they were better than that and it was fine for them to do it. These days drunk driving is no longer socially acceptable and if caught for it people generally accept that the person who has been caught should lose their license and accept the punishment.
What is it that puts people off cycling? It's the risk from other road users, especially people who drive inconsiderately.
Make it a legal requirement for people to give cyclists adequate clearance, educate them of this change in the law and the potential consequences for flouting the law, and then fucking well enforce the law. This is what happened with drink driving.