Get off my road

This is a more opinionated verison of Bloody Cyclists

Motorists increasingly claim that cyclists have no right to use the road because (a) they are less numerous and (b) they do not pay; the inevitable implication is that motorists' obligation to take reasonable care is somehow lessened, and that the obligation is in some way transferred to the cyclists themselves. We should defer to the tyranny of the majority. This argument relies in part on choosing your definition of "majority" to fit the case you are trying to make: pedestrians are still the most numerous road users, and walking the most inclusive and ubiquitous mode. Despite this, drivers have at least the rudiments of an argument. In recent years rises in road fuel duty and vehicle excise duty have seen the revenues from car use approach for the first time (and possibly even surpass according to some estimates) the total costs of roads to the economy. The motor lobby likes to quote a subset of the direct costs, to make their argument look good, but including things like the cost of ambulances and fire crews cleaning up after motorway crashes appears to me to be inherently reasonable. Before we cyclists buy into this seductive chain of illogic and take to our dangerous alternative "facilities," though, let's reflect a bit on the history of the situation. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when motor cars were a strange and experimental device, the state of the roads was poor. The campaign to build up a network of good quality paved (not cobbled) roads with surfaces usable all year round was led by cyclists, especially the Cyclists' Touring Club (CTC). These roads were paid for out of general taxation on the grounds that it was to the public good, partly in order to facilitate the ever-growing use of bicycles as an efficient and accessible means of personal transport. In the 1930s cycle journeys counted for a far greater proportion of all journeys, both numerically and by distance, than motor traffic - of which only a proportion, in turn, was car traffic. Under the circumstances the cyclists could legitimately make the claim that, as the more numerous road users, they had a right to be free of the danger posed by the small motoring elite. Yet in 1935 Britain's first cycle lane was constructed, along the A40 Western Avenue. This "facility" would be familiar to many modern-day cyclists: it was poorly maintained, stopped at junctions (where the danger is greatest), gave left-turning motorists priority at junctions, and required cyclists to give way at every side turning. In the 1950s motoring was still very much the province of the privileged few, and revenues raised from motor taxes were not expected to make more than a 50% contribution to the construction of any road. Yet in 1959 the first motorway was opened, a road exclusively for the use of motor traffic. The CTC even supported this as a means of reducing the amount of fast traffic on other roads, while motoring organisations opposed the idea as it might weaken their rights on other roads. They need not have worried. So to claim now that car drivers account for the bulk of journey miles and are the largest contributors financially to the road system is not so much a recognition of rights fairly obtained, as the assertion of rights of conquest. Once the motorists have filled their excise dutied cars with excise dutied petrol (pretty much the same price as in France, by the way), they can move onto a road network paid for in large part by non-motorists, and subsidised for generations by the general public out of tax revenues. And even if the amount of duty paid by motorists did make a difference in terms of ownership, which I suggest it doesn't, surely the job of Government is to redistribute cash to compensate for the failures of pure market economics? The market dictates that the weak and unproductive have no place in society; society (or at least the society of which I wish to remain a part) dissents, and provides safeguards in the form of health and social benefits. As a high-rate taxpayer I get far less back from the government than I put in. That is how tax works. Why should motoring be any different?

Cheap, and getting cheaper
One final myth to be nailed is that driving is becoming more expensive, or that the Exchequer is squeezing the motorist until the pips squeak. This is a siren call of the more militant motorists, but it is demonstrably false. The average cost of fuel, inflation adjusted, was 85p per litre in 1975 - and 83p in 2004. The average annual cost of running a car in 1975 was £5,387 according to the RAC; in 2004 it was £5,335. In real terms, motoring costs have stayed constant over the last two or more decades, while bus and rail fares have risen by up to 80%. Nor is the trend rising, as the motorists' organisations would have you believe: since 2000, motoring costs have fallen by 2.8% in real terms while costs of bus and rail travel have increased by 1.4%. If the costs were truly hurting, as they are notionally intended to, we would see some evidence in reduced traffic levels. Only with London's Congestion Charge has anything of the sort been in evidence. Elasticity of fuel use with fuel cost is very low, and the period of the fuel duty escalator saw the rate of increase of traffic decline only very slightly (and this could well have been due to other factors). The reality is that private motoring is cheap and getting cheaper. And even now, with driving probably the cheapest it has ever been, over a quarter of British households have no access to a car, and at least half of British women do not have use of a car for many or most of their utility journeys. Car use is not, and can never be, universal. We are not "all drivers now" - and indeed that is the very last thing the motor lobby really wants, as it would finally bring the traffic to a complete standstill. Cars are the least space-efficient mode of urban transport- yet car drivers blame cyclists, buses, lorries, taxis, and in fact absolutely anyone they can find apart from themselves, for urban congestion.

Road Safety - Whose Problem?
In the 1960s the car was beginning to take its place as a mass mode of transport, and the numbers of fatalities were becoming a serious cause for concern. The strong correlation between intoxication and crashes had been recognised for thirty years or more, but the motor lobby still bitterly opposed the introduction of the breathalyser. In the end they succeeded in preventing the legislation from allowing random breath tests - the so-called "sporting chance" which lives on today in opposition to speed cameras. Yet the introduction of breath tests, so fiercely fought by the motor lobby, remains to this day the only road safety measure which can be unequivocally shown to have saved lives. In the 1980s compulsory seat belt legislation was introduced with tremendous claims for the number of lives which would be saved. The year following saw the steepest ever rise in pedestrian and cyclist fatalities, as well as rises in death and injury to rear seat passengers. There was a small (but short-lived) reduction in motorist fatalities, but even that doesn't tell the whole story. Road deaths between 10pm and 4am (classic drink-drive hours) fell sharply but the fall at other hours of the day was very much lower. The same Act had introduced evidential breath testing (the intoximeter) and mandatory bans, with consequently greater chances of being successfully prosecuted and banned if driving drunk: it is this which is now credited with the majority of the lives saved. Once again motorists consumed the safety benefit as a performance benefit, leaving the roads no safer for them and more dangerous for everybody else. For the last three generations road safety policy has, with the single (and singularly effective) exception of drink-driving laws, focused on the victims of the motor car rather than its drivers. On the one occasion where motorists were presented with a real and present danger of losing their licenses, they complied in large numbers - with dramatic effect. It's time to take the diamond grade off the cameras - no more sporting chances.[]