Cycle campaigning

Since LCC has shifted to Go Dutch, which despite attempts at explaining what this means, seems to me so much vaguer and wooly than campaigning for specifics like 'lower vehicle speed limits' Strict liability law' 'Permeable filters through neighbourhoods' all of which are campaigns for facilitating shared space.

The fundamental problem with all these shared space campaigns is that they are campaigns for riding on the road in traffic, and that reinforces the idea that cycling is an activity reserved for fit, energetic, highly skilled and trained experts, because who the hell else would even consider cycling on London streets? Faciliting shared space puts vulnerable cyclists next to HGVs.

Campaigning for lower speed limits not only gets motorists backs up, including those who are also enthusiastic cyclists, it is ineffective, because London motorists don't obey the limits we have anyway and lowering them will change nothing. Besides its not speeding drivers that are killing cyclists. It's slow moving HGVs. To stop that you have to campaign to remove them entirely from the streets at times when people are likely to be cycling, and the LCC are not doing that.

The 'Go Dutch' campaign is something that can reinforce the idea that cycling is for everybody, man woman and child, no matter what their skill or fitness level, because the ambition is to close streets to cars entirely. That is much better that a vague 'permeable filter' campaign. And who except planning officers know what a permeable filter is anyway? I think that perhaps taking entire streets off cars would oddly meet with less resistance from motorists than taking parts of them does.

Strict liability is important, and of all the campaigns it is the one that has the greatest chance of success and will have the most profound impact on the habits of road users. There must be a reason why Belgian cyclists take such care around pedestrians as they enjoy their car free streets, and why the French drivers extend such courtesy and respect to motorcyclists and cyclists. Strict Liability is that reason.