Awareness Raising Spoke Cards Campaign Project?

i think the steady drip drip drip effect combined with them knowing that we are constantly watching them for action will bug them and then begin to work. they do not want to caught with blood on their hands.

The more people contact politicians, the better, as politicians don't actually get that many letters, and they do react. Write to your MP, ministers, even influential local councillors or your ward councillors. Individual letters are best--politicians get a lot of template letters that are just copied and pasted and they're not as effective, as they are often interpreted as showing less genuine concern. (Which is obviously often not true, but it's just how these letters are seen.) We at the LCC often have template letters on our web-site. These give some basic facts that can easily be adapted into a different letter style. See one on lorry mirrors here:

http://www.lcc.org.uk/documents/lettertomeps.rtf

when they ask what can be done. we refer them to ctc and lcc who both have a number of good proposals / strategies to improve road safety for cyclists.

See:

http://www.lcc.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=846
http://www.lcc.org.uk//index.asp?PageID=1195
http://www.lcc.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=1196

(i believe ctc / lcc cannnot email the politicians in this way because they get govn funding which would be cut if they got up their nose).

we dont have govn funding issues. that is why we are in a good place to get up the politicians noses - by being direct and aggressive. we have nothing to lose.

We certainly wouldn't mail politicians with particularly inflammatory rhetoric or aggressive 'getting up their noses'--I think you'd find that that's not very effective. Being direct is good, as per above. It's more than enough to show genuine concern and certainly keep up the pressure if you feel that your concern is not getting through.

You may also be thinking of the fact that we are non-party political? That's not relevant here as obviously all parties are in agreement about the need to reduce road casualties. We do have a number of other constraints to do with our charitable status, but these do not extend to campaigning--we can e-mail anyone and we do it all the time.

Preventing these horrible and tragic deaths from HGVs is one of our absolute top campaigning priorities, and any support is hugely appreciated. Cycling in London has been getting safer for years, and there is no reason whatsoever for the Government to be dragging their feet over the compulsory introduction of advanced mirror systems on all lorries--currently only planned to be compulsory for post-2000 lorries. Naturally, awareness raising campaigns that send the right messages (unfortunately often they don't) are also extremely important.

Oliver
LCC