New TfL's HGV's can't see you for s*** poster

How will your cycle stuff get from manufacturer to shop? Or food to supermarket?

Argggh! I hate this (non) argument. It is not Sainsburys killing cyclists. The stats are clear. It is tipper trucks, skip lorries and cement mixers. ie construction vehicles, those designed for site and mud and stockpiles, not for narrow urban densly populated streets.

It is this unregulated and flybynight industry that is the problem. Not the retailers. I work in it too, speaking from the inside.

Another way to see it is that a lack of any road markings means the drver has to concentrate harder and will drive more slowly and cautiously.

+1

Similar to the removal of street railings all over London (& UK?): Driving/riding over London Bridge (especially when they first came down) feels scary cos the people are not longer penned in, so anyone could come straight into your path forcing you to be a bit more alert.

Changing access hours from 8am to 10am is hardly going to effect anybody.

Lorry companies could then stay in London until 12am rather than 10pm... it's just a juggling of hours to protect vulnerable road users.

Here's a though, what happen to the cyclists at that time of night?

HGV drivers might end up being less concern about cyclists within the vicinity at the time of night, naturally there won't be many cyclists at that time either way but having several HGV sped past me leaving little room to spare at 12am in clapham common isn't an experience I wish to have again.

Best thing to do is to simply go after the HGV themselves instead of the cyclists as other have said (in term of educating).

This. Someone at TFL has a really black sense of humour to publicise the message "This is a big killing machine, don't go near it", rather that just not having big killing machines in cities.

Actually, the poster just points out the problem. It doesn't say who or what should change (though i accept you can infer who they think should change from who they publicise it too).

That's exactly what the government already does. A life is 'worth' about £35k for the purposes of economic calculation for road policies (if I remember correctly). That is to say, if putting in a speed limit will save 3 lives a year, the economic cost (wasted time on the roads etc) will have to be less than 105k for the limit to be worth putting in...

My dim second-hand understanding was that the 35k figure came from comparing the direct costs implementing road improvements with the safety benefit they produced, and that the analysis was done after the fact by academics. I didn't think there was any explicit assessment of the economic cost of slowing traffic down, and i didn't think there was an explicit value-of-lives-saved threshold that made schemes happen. It's just people allocating finite budgets as best they can. Am i out of date?

I *have *worked in the rail industry where safety improvements *are *explicitly assessed against the value of lives they would save, and a base figure of 1.4M used to be used (i think it's now higher), and this is often multiplied still higher for various reasons.

Argggh! I hate this (non) argument. It is not Sainsburys killing cyclists. The stats are clear. It is tipper trucks, skip lorries and cement mixers. ie construction vehicles, those designed for site and mud and stockpiles, not for narrow urban densly populated streets.

The anecdotal evidence is clear, but do you know of good data to support it?

The anecdotal evidence is clear, but do you know of good data to support it?

Moth, p.31 of "Analysis of police collision files for pedal cyclists in London, 2001 - 2006" contains a work sector table for goods vehicles involved in fatal collisions. It's not comprehensive, but better than nothing.

You can download the report for free at the TRL website, or if you have problems pm as I have a pdf.

http://www.trl.co.uk/online_store/reports_publications/trl_reports/cat_road_user_safety/report_analysis_of_police_collision_files_for_pedal_cyclists_in_london_2001___2006.htm

Hope this helps.

Vans?

A van (ford transit) can typically take a payload of just over 1 tonne. An articulated lorry can take up to if not over 40 tonnes. That would mean 40 vans, 40 drivers and 40 engines to fuel and then pollute. 1 lorry is much more efficient.

A van (ford transit) can typically take a payload of just over 1 tonne. An articulated lorry can take up to if not over 40 tonnes. That would mean 40 vans, 40 drivers and 40 engines to fuel and then pollute. 1 lorry is much more efficient.

If only we had train lines that ran right into the centre of London that could be used for freight at night. That would be awesome.

If only we had train lines that ran right into the centre of London that could be used for freight at night. That would be awesome.

Or even a dirty great river that you could drive barges full of stuff down. That would be good too.

/\ Missed the boat on that one I'm afraid...if only we had a certain Isambard Kingdom Brunel knocking around.

If only we had train lines that ran right into the centre of London that could be used for freight at night. That would be awesome.

Like the disused Mail Rail from Paddington to Whitechapel, been around since the 1920's, only closed because it cost more than van to run despite not running at full capacity.

map showing the route and possible 'expansion' that never come round;

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/London_Post_Office_Railway_Map.jpg

Mail Rail is class and a hugely sad loss.

Our tube lines go empty at night too...

My dim second-hand understanding was that the 35k figure came from comparing the direct costs implementing road improvements with the safety benefit they produced, and that the analysis was done after the fact by academics. I didn't think there was any explicit assessment of the economic cost of slowing traffic down, and i didn't think there was an explicit value-of-lives-saved threshold that made schemes happen. It's just people allocating finite budgets as best they can. Am i out of date?

I *have *worked in the rail industry where safety improvements *are *explicitly assessed against the value of lives they would save, and a base figure of 1.4M used to be used (i think it's now higher), and this is often multiplied still higher for various reasons.
Both rail and road use the same figure for what they call the value saved by preventing a casualty, in 2007 it was £1,638,390. It might be a bit higher now. For some bizarre reason it applies for people who die on the roads within 30 days of a crash, for rail victims they have a whole year.

http://www.dft.gov.uk/webtag/documents/expert/unit3.4.php#02
*2.1.6 The values for the prevention of fatal, serious and slight casualties, given in Table 1, include the following elements of cost:*

• human costs, based on WTP values, representing pain, grief and suffering to the casualty, relatives and friends, and, for fatal casualties, the intrinsic loss of enjoyment of life, excepting consumption of goods and services.
  
• loss of output due to injury. This is calculated as the present value of the expected loss of earnings plus any non-wage payments (national insurance contributions, etc.) paid by the employer. This includes the present value of consumption of goods and services that is lost as a result of injury accidents.
  
• ambulance costs and the costs of hospital treatment.
  
  
  

Table 2 has curious differences in the value for different road users, cyclists being a bit above average but below pedestrians and motorcyclists.

Our tube lines go empty at night too...

for a reason, it need maintenance every night between 1am to 5am.

for a reason, it need maintenance every night between 1am to 5am.

Every night every line?

yep, generally for cleaning, and because it only have two track (one for each direction), you can't exactly close a section of track and bypass the station like the NYC one.

Charlie's probably been too modest to post this--here's a new video explaining our campaign demands on HGVs and our six-point plan.

http://lcc.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=1911

Thanks for posting that Oliver. Nice one Charlie and the LCC.
Every issue raised just highlights the need to get these lorries off our peak hr roads.

A van (ford transit) can typically take a payload of just over 1 tonne. An articulated lorry can take up to if not over 40 tonnes. That would mean 40 vans, 40 drivers and 40 engines to fuel and then pollute. 1 lorry is much more efficient.

Not to mention that van drivers might not be 40 times less likely to kill you than HGV drivers, although your numbers are a bit wrong. HGV gross vehicle weight (gross train weight for artics/drawbars etc.) is up to 44 tonne, but payload is a lot less than that, around 30 tonnes for an ideally specced urban vehicle, while payload on a typical MWB Transit used by courier companies is up to 1.6 tonne. Transits do about 5 times the distance per fuel burned, so the pollution increases by a factor of about 4 if you switch all freight from 44 tonne articulated lorries onto 20 Transits, and the labour cost goes up a little over 10-fold given that HGV drivers command significantly higher hourly pay than van drivers.

All of which is of course a diversion, since there is no practical small-vehicle substitute for the identified hazard, the 3 and 4 axle rigid construction vehicles. If you want Crossrail, for instance, you have to live with the huge number of tipper truck movements needed to take away the tunnelling spoil and deliver the concrete, and the city centre movements don't change even if you go intermodal at a rail head or barge dock. A compromise which adds substantial, but not crippling, labour cost to these movements would be mandatory co-pilots. They're not allowed to move around construction sites without a banksman, so it seems odd to allow them to move around congested city streets, among co-users who have not had the same safety training as site workers, without similar assistance.

That ad certainly made me think - not having cycled on the road for quite a few years I could probably do with some lessons (once my bike is roadworthy!). Doesn't put me off wanting to cycle again, though.

gutts, I strongly recommend you to take cycle training, I feel you'll be able to not only be able to have confident but also being able to work with the traffic easily without risk of a collison.

Have a look at this section made entirely for Cycle Training;

http://www.lfgss.com/forum49.html

I hope you'll find this useful, I highly recommend it.

gutts, I strongly recommend you to take cycle training, I feel you'll be able to not only be able to have confident but also being able to work with the traffic easily without risk of a collison.

Have a look at this section made entirely for Cycle Training;

http://www.lfgss.com/forum49.html

I hope you'll find this useful, I highly recommend it.

Thanks! I was planning on getting some training (specfically riding in traffic), this has just highlighted the importance to me.

I've got a foot in both camps. I've been cycling in London for the last 13 years, 10 of them as a courier. I still cycle every day, but during work hours I'm a HGV driver. I have absolutely no problem seeing or being aware of cyclists on my inside; and I don't have extra mirrors. It's simply a case of road awareness. No different to what you do on a bicycle. You know instinctively who's around you and who poses you a threat or needs extra attention.

The only people I have nearly run down and killed (and there have been a couple) are the mugs who have seen you indicating 100+ metres further down the road from them and decide that they can't be bothered to wait for you even though you're already half-way around the corner. They inevitably pull up in front of the cab and point at their eyes with forked fingers, shouting "Are you fucking blind or something?" I'm not. They're just fucking stupid

Thank you teaboy, I occasionally still drive HGV and am terrified by peoples stupidity.

Argggh! I hate this (non) argument. It is not Sainsburys killing cyclists. The stats are clear. It is tipper trucks, skip lorries and cement mixers. ie construction vehicles, those designed for site and mud and stockpiles, not for narrow urban densly populated streets.

It is this unregulated and flybynight industry that is the problem. Not the retailers. I work in it too, speaking from the inside.

I prefer flipant reply, this is a HGV campaign NOT the trucks you mention. I agree with your points regrds construction vehicles