No More Lethal Lorries - Petition

The site isn't working

EDIT oh it's today.

How do you do that??

hah I honestly dont know

I'm off to Hyde Park corner now to help LCC get their petition signed - come and say hi and/or sign it here - http://www.no-more-lethal-lorries.or....asp?PageID=17

i'm afraid i gotta 'fess up to being a fairweather activist. was quite up for helping out in the sunshine.

(signed at least)

signed and sent to friends.

Signed, even though I don't live Darn Sarf. Been reading Rider Down, which is pretty heartbreaking stuff.

I don't know how realistic changes like cab design are - that's big money, and the existing fleet will surely be in service for a while yet? Nonetheless, as BlueQuinn (hope that shoulder heals quickly) stated upthread, it gives a bargaining position from which to negotiate down to a decent compromise.

Good luck with the campaign.

Glad I work from home on Wednesdays so I could choose to not work and get signatures instead. People seemed really positive except for the guy who told my cyclists should be trained and then wandered off down the cycle lane with his dog. Helpful. Oh, and an unimpressed lorry driver. But other than that people were really eager to sign. Good things.

Thanks again to all those who helped with out petition day of action yesterday. Altogether we got more than 4,000 new signatures. I was amazed at how many people really wanted to stop and sign up, even when they missed the green light by stopping to help.
If there are still of you who haven't signed it is still open on line at:
http://www.no-more-lethal-lorries.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=17

This is worrying:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/bike-blog/2011/mar/31/longer-lorries-road-accidents

This is worrying:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/bike-blog/2011/mar/31/longer-lorries-road-accidents
I've tried to make sense of the consultation documents but have failed so far.
There is masses about trailer steering systems, not yet available on the market. Also extended cabs and 'nose cones' making them safer - not yet designed or prototyped. There are no diagrams of turning circles, trailer cut-in or tail swing. All those things that will affect the way these lorries interact with cyclists at every junction.
Part of the defence is that these lorries will mostly be used outside urban areas, where everyone knows that cyclists should not be allowed on the road.
When I do work out exactly what is afoot, I will let you know.

done

Join us to be part of the hand in tomorrow.
Now we have many thousand signatures; thank you everyone.

Be part of the HGV petition hand-in team
We need AS MANY cyclists as we can get! Tomorrow morning LCC will be presenting it's biggest ever petition to 4 leading assembly members at City Hall.

This is your chance to do something visable to reduce lorry danger on London's streets. Be part of our presentation team, meet us at City Hall at 8:45am tomorrow.

Please email charlie@lcc.org.uk if you can help. If you have either a red or black LCC t-shirt please bring it along, otherwise let me know you t-shirt size and we will try to have one for you.

See the facebook page: http://fb.me/RnMixDLe

My mum was driving in her car & pulled away at a traffic light, apparently the lorry didn't see her & drove into her, her car spun around and the lorry kept on driving into her! I can't bloody believe it...Luckily she came away unhurt :-) if that was a cyclist then it would be very different!

Do you mean a bit like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5g6AJbQKfo

Yes-Can't put the pic on here...

that video is nuts.

Signed and donated

Got an email from Friends of the Earth this morning prompting me to write to my MP about this. So I did. Here's the link:

http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/take_action/longer-lorries-mps?product=TIP

And here's my letter:

The proposed legislation to allow an extra seven feet of space to be added to lorries appears to be entirely misguided.

There is currently no guarantee that this extra space would be filled. As it is, one in four lorries on our roads are empty and most others are nowhere near full capacity. Perhaps tightening up legislation around this area first would be wiser and more efficient before we rush to make them bigger?

And if we are going to modify lorries, lower cabs, larger windows, improved mirror positions and barriers designed to keep people from getting chewed up by the wheels would all be infinitely better places to start. Less polluting engines would be nicer too. These are things that will actually improve the life of every road user. And indeed anyone else who ventures outside their front door.

Sharing space on the road with a lorry can be nerve wracking when you’re in a car. It becomes even more frightening when you have nothing encasing you at all. Making HGVs bigger will only make their lumbering manoeuvres around London’s archaic horse-and-cart road system even more awkward and dangerous.

Fear of motor traffic is what keeps people off bicycles. But bicycles are actually the most practical way for most Londoners to traverse the city. How can we expect to see more people travelling short distances, which most journeys in the city are, on ecologically and economically efficient bicycles when our roads become less and less hospitable to human life? We’d be losing a healthier, happier, more mobile population and making it harder for people to get to and from their places of work, restaurants, cinemas and parks efficiently.

Longer lorries will mean even slower traffic in our city centres, greater damage to road surfaces, increased danger to all road users, especially the most vulnerable, and even if we choose to ignore all these very practical issues which affect us all, they will still make our roads a less pleasant place to live on account of noise, pollution and their general appearance. If this is law could guarantee a sizeable reduction of lorries, that might mean something, but as it stands this proposition is completely untenable for those of us who intend to enjoy living and working in less stressful, less polluted, safer and more pleasant surroundings. People will be more inclined to drive their cars, and as Noam Chomsky says, sitting in a Hummer in the middle of a traffic jam for hours of end is probably not the apex of human achievement.

Are we really willing to trade sizeable negative externalities, which affect all of us, in exchange for a policy whose economic impact is likely to be imperceptible? Isn’t that just incredibly short sighted, and worse, self destructive?

From LCC's news shot today:

TAKE ACTION: Another cyclist crash shows dangers of artic lorries

Join the 1000 others who've written to their MP to protest against longer HGVs.

Takes just a couple of minutes to send a letter to your MP!

Done

I'll bump a few lorry threads with this very welcome news.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/row-over-plan-for-compulsory-glass-panels-in-lorry-doors-to-protect-cyclists-a3168596.html

It's the most welcome development that direct vision lorries are now coming closer to reality, as these measures (and the even more welcome, later step of gradually replacing the lorry fleet with lower lorries (like bin lorries) where possible).

Once complete (which, admittedly, will take years), this will virtually eliminate cyclist left hooks from lorries.

Obviously, a newspaper has to try and construct some kind of row here, but the cost to businesses is going to be very small indeed compared to the harm that can be avoided, and all drivers who have tried driving one of the new lorries or one with a partially transparent door have been said to have loved it.

I love your optimism:
"Once complete (which, admittedly, will take years), this will virtually eliminate cyclist left hooks from lorries"
This assumes all lorry drivers are benign towards cyclists.

Or that they'll actually look where they're going - they seem perfectly happy to climb into the driving seat of vehicles from which they cannot see where they are going at the moment, after all.

Speaking as a wagon driver, it's got fook all to do with blind spots and lack of glass panels, but everything to do with the drivers inability/laziness to check their mirrors. Been driving hgvs for about 15yrs never once have I hit a cyclist or missed spotting one at turnings/junctions.
Sure, lorry design isn't great, but it all comes down the pink squiggy thing in the drivers seat.