HD06NZY texting school runner

You can spot a car when the driver is texting. Rather than pootle along with the car in front, they leave a gap, then, when they look up and see it, finally jerk forwards, before repeating the manoeuvre one SMS interval later.

Here you can see HD06NZY doing precisely this in the oncoming lane, a queue on Cotham Road to get to the roundabout which is blocked by school parents.



It being school run time, our expendable reporter opted to turn round and ask them to stop it. As you can see, they're a school running parent themselves. Presumably one of those parents who thinks it is too dangerous for their kid to ever walk or cycle to school -so instead they drive. And as anyone who ever has to do that school run by car in Bristol will know: its not fun. It's slow and boring. Hence the need to do something other than talk to a small child in the back.

The mum doesn't seem too happy about the other school parent telling her off. It's bad enough having to sit in a traffic jam without having some sanctimonious tax-dodger complaining that they are endangering all children trying to walk or cycle to school. People like that should,

If those parents who let their children walk or cycle to school really loved their children, they'd drive them to school. It's too dangerous to do anything else!

A&S Police: this is not a crime. Move along now

Some people ask if a 20 mph speed limit is bringing the city to its knees. The answer is no: all you have to do is overtake any car driving too slow for you

The driver of L861CDW demonstrates the correct way to do this, overtaking the Fiat 500 which had slowed down to let a school-running family, a family signalling to turn right.




We aren't going embed it as there is a lot of swearing at the point when the cyclist thinks they are about to get hit by the car. 

If you see the discussion afterwards, the driver runs over the cyclists foot (so they assert), and state this to the driver, who looks back and just swears.

After going to A&E that evening to make sure that their foot was not broken, the parent visited the police, who, after taking a statement and a copy of the video, went to the driver and got his statement

1. The driver of L861CDW overtook the Fiat 500 because he felt it was going too slowly.
2. At the time he started to overtake, he had not seen the cycling family.
3. He did see the cyclists during the overtake, but chose to continue as they were not actually turning.
4. He asserts that if they had been turning, he would have given way to them. This is not an assertion that can be tested, of course.
5. Apparently the driver felt intimidated by the cyclist going "why are you trying to kill me and my family?"
6. Apparently the cyclist damaged the wing mirror of the car as the driver drove off in terror. As he works in the motor industry -runs his own garage- he fixed this himself and is not going to bill the cyclist.
7. The reason for the driver swearing at the cyclist is not because the cyclist just told them that they'd driven over their foot -it merely looks like that in the video. In fact the driver was unaware that he'd done such a thing, therefore "failure to stop and report an accident" does not arise.

As result of his statement, in combination with the hi-definition head-cam video, the police are not going to prosecute the driver for careless driving or any other offence. 

There is not, apparently sufficient evidence that he meets the legal standard of "driving without due care and attention"

If the family had actually been turning, and the driver had failed to give way to us -that is hit them- it would have constituted careless driving and he would have been prosecuted. But the driving seen on the video is not sufficient.

Furthermore, the cyclist swearing at the car as he thinks that he and his son is about to get run over does not put the cyclist in a good light. This means that any claim "they drove off as they felt intimidated" is defensible, even when that driving off includes over the feet of the cyclists.

Lessons for drivers

1. If you are driving in a 20 mph zone, it is acceptable to overtake cars going at a speed you consider too slow.
2. Even if you cannot see more than one vehicle in front of you, the overtake does not constitute "careless"
3. And during the overtake, even if you see that you misjudged what was in front, you can continue with the manoeuvre -provided you don't actually hit anyone in front.

As for the cyclist

1. Even if you are about to get run over, don't swear at the driver.
2. If you follow up a near-hit with the driver, don 't ask intimidating questions like "why are you trying to kill me and my family". As something more subtle and polite.
3. If someone drives over your foot, do make sure you get that on camera too.

It also has some interesting implications:

1. It shows that either it is police policy or the legal system, but videos of driving like this are not considered sufficient for A&S  Police to prosecute the driver for careless driving or other offences. 
2. Cyclists in Bristol may as well give up on the head cameras if they expect it to fulfil any role other than be entertainment for others, or use in an inquest.

Anti-RPZ myth: an RPZ makes the school run harder

With years of data, Bristol Traffic can go back in time and look at problems before the RPZ was rolled out -and compare it with today. This is why when people say "RPZ makes school runs worse", we have to say "you are joking, right?"

The RPZ will make the school run easier, whether it is by car, foot or even bicycle.
Here are some reference points as to the existing problem.

Cotham Road, where the sole drop-off point free on a weekday was a bus-only area where you would sporadically get ticketed.



Parents who drove had no option to park anywhere else -as there wasn't anywhere else. Ticketing was
always a risk -and with only room for four cars, contention with other parents. When the buses turned up -they'd double park, selfishly, not only blocking you in, but creating traffic jams inconveniencing other school runners.

T
Colston Primary School, where the only parking spaces were on the corners -where your car could get scratched by push chairs.


There was that and the yellow "keep free" area. As everyone knows, the keep free area means "keep free for parents", but now the council has a CCTV car doing drivebys, you can't use them for that.

That was before. Now look at exactly the same corner, now that the RPZ has been rolled out


So much space for dropoff and pickup, that those parents who walk or cycle don't give you a hard time for driving to school.

In the mornings, the RPZ restrictions only kick in at 09:00. As residents leave, their spaces where historically taken up by commuters. As that no longer happens, that frees up spaces for parents to park.
When coupled with the fact that there is now parking near their houses, even people who live in the city without a driveway can take their kids to school and get home again. Nobody should have any excuse for not driving their children to school




In the afternoons, those spaces are still there for pickup. Yes, the zone is still live, but you get 15 minutes of free parking (soon to be 30). No doubt somebody will say "only 15 minutes of parking before you get a ticket" -but you never even used to get that 15 minutes, as there was never anywhere to park where you weren't at risk of ticketing. And look at how much space there is -you don't have to worry about not finding a space.

As well as the extra parking spaces, morning and night, here are some other benefits

1. A reduction in commuter traffic will reduce congestion during peak am school run times.
2. The bicyclists can keep out the way when you are in a rush.
3. No double parked parents by other schools you need to get past en route to your children's.
4.  

Together, this should reduce journey times and parental stress, reducing redland-mum incidents,  where a "redland mum" is defined as: anyone who is prepared to kill or inure anyone else in the city if the alternative is to drop their kids off at school late.

Again, then, the fact that the RPZ will improve life for residents trying to drive round the city -here the essential school run- that it is leading us to suspect that the anti-RPZ campaigners are in fact cyclists who are trying to keep driving round the city so miserable that people will want to cycle instead.

We will resist the tyranny of the bike lobby! We need to embrace the Resident Parking Zones for what they really are: Resident Driving Zones.

Big Hello to R242AAC: roundabout jumper

We've had this video for a while, but been keeping quiet about it. Why? because there is a limit of six months for charging anyone for any dangerous driving/careless driving offence, and this driver has been successfully avoiding all attempts by the police to contact him. While that creates a new offence, "failing to report who was driving at the time an offence was committed", again, that has a limit.

This is profound. It means if you can hide for long enough, you can even get away with nearly running over a family at a roundabout.

The video and email came to us from "S":

I have a video of a near miss by a car that failed to stop for me and my nine year old son at a roundabout.

We are cycling up Cotham Road, about to go down over the roundabout to Cotham Hill. Cotham Road is calmer now the zebra crossing is in, and as you can see, the few cars passing on the bank holiday gives my son a wide berth, which is appreciated.

As we approach the roundabout, at 08:00 on 29 of April, I get my son in the correct place to go over, check that nothing is pulling out and we set off. I can hear the sound of a car approaching from the left, from St Michael's Hill, so I warn my son that this this car on the left is the next hazard we are going to worry about -as you can hear in the commentary.

As we get partway over, I pull ahead of my son, to make sure the approach car sees us slows down in good time.

However, instead of looking, instead of slowing down, this car pulls straight out onto the mini roundabout. If I had been about 50cm further ahead, I would have been hit, and if my son had been about 1.5m ahead of where he was, he would have been hit.

The car registration was R242AAC, I repeat this phonetically multiple times after the incident, along with the date and time, and at 1:12 in the video you can see the registration number, along with the Honda logo and the Accord model name.

The driver was a white male, with -I believe -brownish hair. He saw me and waved mildly apologetically as he continues through the junction without slowing down, continuing down Hampton Road. I follow him briefly enough to confirm the registration number, then turn back to see my son.

We are impressed not just by the driver's bravery in pulling out on what can be a busy roundabout without looking, but in their successful attempt to avoid what are apparently repeated attempts by the police to contact the driver, as with a video like this it would be pretty hard to deny your car was there.

We hope that nobody in the Bristol Area manages to spot this dark blue Honda Accord registration number R242AAC, that is R242 AAC and then immediately contacts the Avon and Somerset police on the phone number 101. All readers of this blog must keep an eye out for this car and make sure there are no cyclists in the area, to defend this bold driver from the menace caused by militant troublemakers who video their journeys round the city and complain about such minor things like nearly being killed.

The fact that if you hide for six months you can avoid prosecution is a new one to us. We look forward to using that technique ourselves in the near future.

RPZ expansion plans

The Evening Post is terrified that the RPZ zones "the great RPZ failure" as they call it, will be expanded after the people in the area who responded to the six-months-live survey were more in favour of it than at the beginning of the zone.

Some people expect us to come out the newspaper's side. Sorry, we're a data driven project which means we drive out to get the data.

1. The RPZ makes it easier for us to get past bicycles as they now keep closer in to the pavement. Result: time saved, and with less fear of dooring, even the underpeople seem happier.

2. The spaces that were normally used by commuters are now free for delivery vehicles.

• We don't get held up by vans in our way who don't move until we sound our horn and shout at them.
• Our vans can park outside their destination without having to walk or double park and get harassed by people trying to get past.

Kingsdown is one of our popular destinations in the sex-trade-supply-chain, especially as some of the massage parlours use our services to give the punters a lift up the hill again "after you get it up -we get you up", the slogan goes. Having easy parking makes this faster and more discreet.

We suspect the Clifton-faction, the "Keep Parking Free" people will be foaming at the mouth at the expansion plans. Already the Clifton Conservatives are complaining that it has made illegal parking worse in other areas. This is not something our dataset shows, and we have data going back three years now.

We actually look forward to the rollout of an RPZ in Clifton, as that's another popular delivery destination for our products and faster journey and parking times will help our business model. They should get out more -we'll give them a ride home!

Bristol's Balloon Problem

Sometimes the congestion in the city is so bad that people take to the air, but if you try that in a helicopter you soon discover that not only is the cost of fuel excessive, everyone on the ground assumes that there's trouble on the ground and comes out watch. You could create a riot just by hovering over Bedminster on a Saturday night.

What else then? Obviously: balloons.

But here there's still heating bills to run up, and the fact they tend to only go west to east.

This is why inbound commuters from the west of the city use them in the mornings -maybe even to Bath- but other mechanisms are needed to get home. We propose allowing ballonists to get towed by the trains from Bath to Bristol, but we think some of the bridges may cause problems. Experiments are required.

Incidentally, this post-RPZ photo of Cotham Road shows some consequences of the actions. The bus- only parking area is now only used by buses; school-run parents have many free parking spaces, and, interestingly, bike/car conflict is reduces, as now the bicycles can get to one side of the road. Admittedly, there are a couple of build outs and the odd car for them to swerve round, but it is actually easier to drive along -at least until you get to Cotham Brow. For everyone but the commuters who wanted to park here, it's better.

Which causes us to worry about these Clifton proposals to add more parking "For traffic calming". We don't want calmed traffic. We want to drive round fast without bicycles in our way. Yes, we'd like more parking, but it shouldn't be at the expense of slowing us down, or providing short-stay parking areas marked in yellow lines.

We'll be looking at "the Clifton proposals" more next week.

Kingdown RPZ and the school run

The government still pushes out its lie that the war on motorists is over. How can that be while the cost of oil is so high -and the exchange rate with the dollar so bad? The only way to end this war is for the price of oil to come down, which could done by  revaluing the pound -regardless of its consequences to industry or the economy. After all, that's what Thatcher and friends did in the 1980s, back when they were on our side.


Yet not only are Cameron and his cronies in London secretly cycling round, laughing as they pedal past petrol station, here in Bristol, the libdem allies in the coalition are making it harder for commuters to drive to work, by not providing enough free parking -and taking it away from the park-and-walk zone nearby. Kingsdown was ideal for this, not just because it was somewhere where your car would probably still be there in the evening, mostly unscraped, but if you drove in from the western end of town, you could void the anti-car features of "the triangle" and "park row".

Now, one interesting consequence of the RPZ zone is up here at the western end of Cotham Road, looking at Cotham School.

This area here is going to be mixed resident and pay to park - with 15 minutes free parking. This is actually going to make school dropoff easier, especially for people within the zone, who will also have the ability to park near their home after doing the dropoff. Until now, nobody in Kingsdown could drive their kids 500m to Colstons, Cotham, St Peter and Paul or St Michael's schools, because some commuter would steal their space while they were gone. Not now. With space at both ends, the school run just got easier by car than by walking.

It's also easier than cycling, on account of the hills. Here we see a couple of cyclists who have struggled their way up the hill, in the cold. Do they look happy? Not to us.

They are just getting on with their suffering while a whole new short-stay parking area awaits us, the important people.

We'll keep an eye on this area to see how it pans out.

It's only once the university students are back that we'll see the full consequences.

One thing we are worried about is the BRI physio department at the end of the road, because its paveparking area (yellow lined) is now a paveparking area in a resident parking zone. Will the pavement by the dropped kerb at the mini roundabout no longer be a staff parking area? This we will watch.

Roundabout work #3: WR08ADK pays the wing mirror tax

Here's the next in our St Michael's Hill Roundabout series, this time looking at how a single cyclist trying to use the route can cause mayhem and destruction.

Normally when the bicycle/wingmirror collision is discussed, it is the cyclist complaining about how they get hit by a car in a hurry. Nobody ever looks at it from the motorists perspective. We may have damaged a wingmirror, but do the cyclists ever compensate us? Most aren't even insured.

Take this scene from a video of our secretly instrumented cyclist, apparently as the car squeezes past them at the traffic island, the car's wing mirror bashes against their handlebars.

The vehicle WR08ADK is lucky to escape from the enraged cyclist, who will probably commit more acts of violence against their Toyota Aygo, and again, without cyclist insurance, it'll be the motorist who picks up the bill.



We would say the motorist's insurers, except for one small detail: WR08ADK doesn't appear in the insurance database. Askmid denies it, while the AA refuse to give it a breakdown quote, "the car is not in the database", they say.

By not being in the database that this car driver not only has to pay for their own vehicle damage, be they wingmirrors or that caused by pedestrians, they cannot even get breakdown cover from the AA. This is unacceptable.

(Incidentally, this isn't a case of misreading the reg #, the car was seen cutting in front of a bike on Cotham Hill last week. It's a car whose # isn't in the database, a "ghost car").

(update: replaced Toyota Auris with Toyota Aygo. Nimble round town, though the wingmirrors and body coloured bumpers put it at a disadvantage when parking or working narrow streets).

Roundabout work #2: 08:17

Once the mercedes that blocked vehicles getting off the roundabout had cleared it, vehicles wanting to get onto St Michael's Hill could pull out, and here see the correct tactic: stop cars getting onto the roundabout. It's the only way to reduce demand, and so ensure the junction clears.

Which vehicle do we see here? Yes, its YA55VDY, the cult van of Bristol Traffic

Notice how the vehicle following this car is also in the mini-roundabout, but it hangs back to actually allow pedestrians to cross at the traffic island. Of course, this will prevent vehicles turning right to pull out, which is a bit selfish, but it does allow the roundabout to clear by reducing vehicle ingress rates to match that of egress rates.

The key point here is that it shows that those fellow-motorist-activist groups who advocate removing traffic lights are either missing the point or hiding the truth. On a junction without lights -like this one- the only way to get through is to be aggressive: drive the big vehicles, the 4x4, or even better, the battered big-vehicle, such as the white van. Now we, as white-van drivers, are happy with this, but we think the harsh truth should be discussed in the open, not discovered once they remove lights from the city centre: whoever values their vehicle least wins.

Roundabout work #1: 08:15

08:15 to 08:16 on the top of St Michael's Hill.

First a car with a Montpelier-MOT wingmirror duct-taped into place. Someone just horned it as to get to this part of the junction (see on the dashed lines) it had to sprint up the oncoming traffic lane.

But by doing so it gets to pull out where the mercedes stuck in the middle of the mini roundabout has left a gap, follow the van through to the right and hope that there isn't anyone crossing the zebra crossing, which would block up the roundabout some more.

It does clear, the gap allows a car coming up Cotham Hill to pull out and turn right into St Michael's Hill.

Or it would, if the Mercedes hadn't stayed where it was.

Do you see what's wrong here? By staying back on the mini roundabout, by allowing cars out of Cotham Road, the school-run-driver is, sadly, making things worse. All the vehicles who are held up on Cotham Hill will see this and drive more considerately.

Sunday Cyclists vs GN56FJA, RV10OBJ and RO57WFG

The trouble with a nice spring Sunday is the Sunday cyclists come out -with their kids attached. Unlike commuters, who know their place: the bottom, these militant parents have unrealistic beliefs.

First up Cotham Road, 14:15 on a Sunday Afternoon - GN56FJA is forced to aggressively overtake a bike which shouldn't be in the way.

It's not too dangerous, the oncoming golf doesn't even flash their lights -and they have given the bicycle lots of room. They even waited until the top of the hill had been cleared, so there was enough visibility to see the oncoming golf before pulling out. You wouldn't see such courtesy in London.

A short while later, probably 14:25, the tax dodging family are walking their bike across a zebra crossing on Pembroke Road. We love Pembroke Road -a fast alternative to Whiteladies Road, not a single light, speed camera, bus lane light or other feature to interfere with the sprint from Clifton to the Downs, apart from two Zebra crossings at the bottom. The woman driving RV10OBG -the first 2010 car in our database-, just had a different interpretation of the rules from the cyclist.


Yes, a car is required to give way to a pedestrian waiting to cross or on a zebra crossing -but what if there is an island? Once a traffic island appears, you can ignore the other lane, so they aren't on your bit of the zebra crossing. And as they aren't waiting to cross the zebra crossing -they are on it- that rule doesn't apply either.

Finally, at about 14:30, you can see why we really hate these people, when RO57WFG gets abuse from the parent purely because it turns straight over them while turning from Clifton Park to Clifton Down Road.



The parent and child were probably turning left, so there was no need to slow down or indicate -and this VW Touran was clearly in a hurry -because the man driving didn't indicate at the miniroundabout either. But he achieved his goal: got to the bridge first, where unlike the tax dodging family, the driver paid for the upkeep and the illumination of the bridge.

This shows that one single cyclist can, in the space of fifteen minutes, nearly cause three collisions. You can also hear a small child in the background asking questions about why the deranged parent is shouting registration numbers at the car. What kind of example is that? He will grow up to be one of those people who get banned from supermarkets for shouting at people.

Troublemakers and Zebra Crossings on Cotham Road

Spotted while parking the car up in the coaches-no-parking bit of Cotham Road during the school run, a group of people loitering around. By the entrance to two schools? Should we call the police?

No need, the headmaster of Cotham School has popped over, presumably to tell them the police are on their way.

But what's this? Smiling and happiness?

Turns out, these people are plotting together to get a zebra crossing put up here on Cotham Road, so that kids and parents can walk to school safely. One at the top, by the school entrances. This is so wrong. After you struggle on the commute up Cotham Brow, with its congestion and crossings, this road is somewhere to put your foot down and make up lost time. And now they want a crossing here?

What's worse, the councillors support it, and the councillor for the Cotham School side of the road, Neil Harrison, says he may have some money for the crossing. That our road-tax money, I bet.

The troublemakers -the Bristol Living Streets people, we believe - have a petition up for a zebra crossing and a build-out for bicycles! One that people are signing!

We are taking note of everyone who puts their name up there, we can assure you. A zebra crossing here, on top of St Michael's Hill, will not only make it possible for pedestrians to walk to any of the three schools nearby safely, they will encourage the students to walk, the residents to walk out to the shops and cafes, instead of driving. This will set back motoring in the area, just when the RPZ plans implied that the residents would get somewhere to park when they came back from the shops and cafes, while the school-run parents would have commuter-free parking areas.

Dads, you can be Redland Mums too

A special callout to CV53EJX, here going down Cotham Brow. Moving too fast for a good photo taken one handed from a moving vehicle, low light conditions..

For some reason the school run went well on the way in. Yes, it was by bike, but since the DVLA sent a note asking for the license back in a pre-paid envelope, driving is not currently an option (*). But when you consider yourself a driver, not a cycling or walking under-person, you retain some of the old habits. You know, you occupy a lane, when an oncoming vehicle stops for you, you wave with your hand, they wave back. Sometimes you pull over for them, they wave at you. A friendly morning. Sprog delivered within a few minutes of the specified delivery time in a state of calmness. Perhaps the week off has left everyone in a good mood, no more Redland Mum "Death before a late dropoff" driving.

Then this, on the way home. Being still in motor-driver mode, after negotiating the buses parked in the downhill lane of Cotham Road, on account of the school parents parked in the coaches-keep-clear-zone, I slowed down to let a car coming off Hartfield Drive pull out. Mistake. Bicycles are not allowed to stop to let cars out, as it gave this CV53EJX a chance to overtake the bike and cut up the car pulling out.

Obviously, I caught up with the driver at the zebra crossing, where those bastard students hold up everyone. "I stopped to let a car out", I said. The driver look over with so much anger, his whole face torn up in rage and frustration "Oh Shut Up", I think mouthed, as he sprinted off to get caught behind the next car. 

Getting kids to school is pretty stressful. There's a hour or so of a parental attempt to impose schedule on small kids that would rather play with lego or read or watch Horrid Henry. But once you are out the door, there is no way to regain lost time. It's the rule of project management: time lost upfront cannot be regained. Trying to drive aggressively round Bristol on the school run doesn't do anything for your journey time, because that is a function of the number of the junctions (a constant) and the traffic load, while variable, is mostly a function of time, t, and whether it is a schoolday or not, also a function of (t). The equation becomes something like

T(journey) = congestion(t)*schoolday_factor(t)*junctions.

There is nothing you can do about this, you may as well mellow out unless you are out the door so early that t is earlier in the morning, and hence congestion lower. But not, clearly, this Redland Dad, who is suffering too stressful a life. We hope that it does not impact on their family life, that his kids and partner do not suffer. If they do, the news outlets inform us that there is a National Bullying Helpline which provides support, though you can't trust them to keep the calls confidential, not if the story is interesting enough.

(*) Details not to be discussed. All those people who pine for "real" police rather than speed cameras should note that they've never experienced being pulled over by armed traffic police on US Interstate 5 between Seattle and Tacoma. Cameras aren't as scary.

Bristol Living Streets stealing our photos

We are shocked that one of those pro-pedestrian, pro-bicycle, anti-driving-kids-to-school web site has stolen our photographs to push their agenda.

Look, their coverage of Cotham Road RTCs, includes three of our documented "incidents".
We don't really resent their use of our photos, as they do link back to us -except they are pushing their agenda of road safety by demanding a zebra crossing between Rowan House Nursery and Cotham School.

They say this is needed because the Bristol Traffic dataset shows how dangerous the road is. Yes, we agree it's dangerous! But that's why schoolkids should not walk across it! The only safe way to cross the road is by car, and our data backs that up!

A zebra crossing between these schools would not only endanger schoolkids, it would be another anti-car activity that would show everyone how little the council cares about the needs of us, the commuters. First, they block up our rat-runs. Now they want to slow us down on the main roads.

G827YLA: redland mum

Hello, this is a note to the man driving the car G827YLA down Cotham Road at 08:48 on Monday December 14.

I don't think you read this blog. In fact, I don't think you pay any attention to anything other than the little bluetooth headset you had in your ear as you sat at the zebra crossing at the bottom, trying hard not to to make contact with a cyclist. Me.

However, at some point in the future, unless they destroy that car under the scrappage scheme, you are going to try selling that vehicle, and when it happens, whoever is thinking of buying it is going to type in the registration number into google, possibly with spaces, "G827 YLA" . And you know what's going to turn up? This article. The one that accuses you of being a redland mum.

As background, here is our definition of a redland mum: a parent who is in such a hurry to get their children to school that the lives of of any person on the road are unimportant. If there is a choice between the death of a pedestrian or a cyclist and pulling up on the "school no parking" area after 09:00, then somebody has to die.

I know this, because I am the cyclist you nearly ran over, the one who had stopped to let a mother and two children cross the road. I'm sorry I had to slow you down to let a family get to school, but since they were walking, they rely on generosity to get to school on time, and I was feeling generous. This area, outside Cotham Grammar, is a marked "please drive at 20" area, and those buildouts are to make it slightly easier to cross, to avoid having to run through parked cars. But the pedestrians still have to rely on vehicles stopping to let them across. Back when the build-outs were put in some people did ask for a zebra crossing, but it was turned down "nobody has died here yet". Well, you almost managed to get the criteria met today, didn't you, my little redland mum, the man driving the 1989 Toyota G827YLA.

I guess you were a bit surprised that after swerving round to overtake all us (without signalling, we note) and sprinting off down the hill, I did actually catch up with you. For some reason you didn't want to wind down the window, you just sat their looking surprised, muttering something into your phone, and unhappy at having to stop for all the students. No need to fear - we Bristol Cyclists don't believe in violence. It doesn't fix problems, it only creates more animosity. And we come out worse. I was just planning to get a video of you to stick up on the web site for what we do instead: public humiliation. But you got away, even as you went down Cotham Brow, trying to work out where you could go that the cyclist wouldn't catch up with you. To let you into a secret, I'd memorised your number at that point, there was nothing else to do. I let you go down Arley Hill. There you are, thinking "Oooh I got away from the angry cyclist", when in fact my goal had been achieved: you were now heading away from whichever school you were trying to get to, you would be stuck in the 9am Arley Hill traffic queue, and your children would be late. Your initial goal: get to school on time at the expense of a family and a cyclist would not be met.

Oh, and you are in the database. Forever. That's Google's BigTable, which, as they say themselves "is a distributed storage system for managing structured data that is designed to scale to a very large size: petabytes of data across thousands of commodity servers." By replicating facts "G827YLA is driven by a redland mum" across multiple datacentres, each with thousands of "commodity" x86 servers with IDE or SATA hard drives, BigTable's storage capacity is bigger than any database ever built before. By distributing those datacentres round the world: Mountain View, California, The Dalles, Oregon, Dublin, Singapore, BigTable won't just cope with an earthquake scale disaster, they'd even cope with something more dramatic, like a small Tunguska-class asteroid. It would take something big like another K/T Boundary Event or an accidental or intentional exchange of strategic armaments to take your registration number offline.

Which means when someone looks up the car registration, this article pops up. It could be you, it could be a friend, it could even be one of the kids you had in the back of the car who will then start snickering and call you a "redland mum" behind your back. It could maybe be the police if you try something like this again and it goes wrong, someone does end up injured, and they decide to do a checkup to see what anyone knows about the vehicle. Which means that this posting, accusing you of dangerous driving -not just to cyclists, but to pedestrians- will show up. You now, as they say "have a history."

Goodbye, or is it just au-revoir?

Shared use parking area

It's nice to see that the Shared Use area is being used effectively on Cotham Road, now that term time is started.

It can be used by parents dropping their kids off at the Steiner School. We have seen them argue with Parking Services whenever an attempt is made to discourage this, and clearly this term BPS are avoiding the area, so helping harmony develop.

First, the parents use the "buses only" parking area -respected by residents and commuters- for their short stay work

What happens when buses come, cynical viewers may ask? That's simple, they just double park in front of the commuters, just above the build-out indented to help pedestrians to cross.

Doesn't that make it harder for walking schoolkids to cross? not really. There is now parking for those parents who wish to drive to school. More subtly, they make what is otherwise a fast and dangerous road to cross one-way-alternating-traffic. Parents who wish to endanger their children and slow down tax-paying road traffic by walking them to school can now actually cross this wide and fast road more easily

This shows how a mixed use: school-run-parent and bus parking area can actually enhance all school transportation options.

Mum Rage

No video this time of the driver of WU57KJF, but you can be assured she gave a good rant about how her overtaking and pulling in while half-way past one on Cotham Road was fine because her husband is a cyclist.

Maybe he is, but we suspect that he waits until his wife has gone off on the school run before venturing out the door.

The fundamental problem here is that Cotham Road is narrower because of the building works, yet the drivers still think it is safe to pass bicycles while there is oncoming traffic. This is not the case. We understand that drivers may have been upset at having to wait 30 seconds for a large lorry delivering building materials, but a moment of patience and even the slow-moving tax-dodger can be passed safely, without them getting annoyed and sticking your photo and registration number up online. She was not happy.

Note in the background the small child on a scooter without any hi-viz clothing, and the teenager walking in on the left on their phone -again, no hi-viz. Without the proper clothing, these schoolchildren will never be safe from parents on the school-run

The Polis on Cotham Road

Bristol Traffic has developed a little rule, which is "always treat any crash with sympathy"; it's always a mess, nobody is happy. The only exception is when its one of us doing the crashing -scanning in some old photos on that theme is on our todo list. But if it is not us, then sympathy.

We also try and balance out coverage of the city, though for some reason there is a bit of a skew towards Cotham, Redland, Kingsdown and Montpelier. It's started that way, and becomes self-reinforcing. Though commute routes for some of the contributors also has something to do with it.

Here, at 17:58 on a weekday, we are at Cotham Road -again. Covering a crash, the third in this street, after a probable drunk-driving incident, and a car not looking where it was going. Today, a Fiat Bravo/Brava has taken a pretty harsh bash to the side of the car -but only to the door. It's stopped in front of a driveway, so probably hasn't been parked here. No other vehicle in sight, no bicycle or pedestrian.

Some people are talking to the police. This is just above the big zebra crossing BTW, you can see the zig zags in front of the policeman giving our cameraman a hard stare

You can just see, to the left foreground of the photo, a hint bit of this policeman's colleague, coming over for a quiet word with the cameraman. Which we have on video, obviously. A nice feature of the old Canon Ixus cameras is that you can flick them from photo to film with your thumb, and then record conversations while trying to film what's going on.

Unfortunately, our camera crews do need to learn how to make videos, a key trick being "point the camera at something interesting" -the hard part in this context being trying to do this while talking to the police.

Anyway, anyone sitting through to the end will notice that they are in fact quite happy to let us take pictures, even if they don't see why anyone claiming to be from the Bristol Cycling Campaign should have any interest in road safety. Perhaps next time one of our reporters gets stopped, they should say "press" and measure the reaction then. The key thing is that the police agree that it is perfectly legal to take photographs of pretty much anything, and that we can can carry on. Which perhaps shows the difference between Bristol and London.

Over in Croydon, the local MP got stopped and searched for photographing a bike lane, an event which provided much entertainment to Crap Cycle Lanes of Croydon. Over in Waltham Forest, their Crap Cycling and Walking team got told to delete all their photographs of a bus crash. London? Even MPs get pulled over for looking at a bike lane. In Bristol? Subversives are allowed to carry on, without being arrested and soundly beaten.

This is unacceptable.

Steiner School Mum Rage video

Cotham Road. With the school building going on, the trees are missing, its more hazardous to cycle along, but at least the builders are trying to retain safe access for schoolkids from Cotham Grammar to their coaches, by providing somewhere for the coaches to park.

They have sign telling you not to park there.

Today, Bristol Parking Services are out to make sure that the sign is obeyed. That's their car behind the Renault, WP51XXU. Two parking officers, talking to a mum.

Not a Cotham Grammar School mum: one from Steiner School across the road. According to the web site, their slogan is "Where education is a journey, not a race". True, but there is always the parking at the far end. Today, the topic of Steiner School discussion is this: is it acceptable for a parent dropping off their child to stop coaches parking, hence endanger other schoolkids?

Alternatively: is it acceptable for the BPS staff to endanger children being dropped off, by stopping them parking? As you can see from the video, the officers are being given a fairly hard time, and yet taking it quite well.

In the background, one of the officers is saying that this is nothing, if you want to see a road where they get a hard time, go to Guthrie Road. Oh yes -been there.

(update: saw one of the mums in this video on a different day, trying to find somewhere to park her Mercedes R320 family-friendly-not-for-real-offroad SUV. Parking Services should recognise that only important people drive such important cars, and leave them alone)

(update2: patched in the video. Thanks Chris!)

Skanska: Improving the Image of construction

The ongoing school development at the back of Cotham Grammar is causing much entertainment, and despair at the Bristol street trees group, who have seen some of the older trees cut down without the right paperwork being signed off.

The road-side of the work is also interesting, as it is one of the causes of our forthcoming "Mum-rage" video; 20 seconds in the life of a traffic warden at school dropoff time.

Then there is also the matter of the timing of exactly when deliveries come in. No doubt all the cars below feel somewhat aggrieved about the fact that a large crane is being dropped off at exactly 08:15 of a weekday, but then it is walk-to-school week, so everyone on a school run has no right to complain.

Furthermore, this traffic jam, combined with the closure of the downhill lane, eliminates all issues with any Turner Bus coaches overtaking for those parents doing the school-run on a bike, so all is well.

Councillor Neil Harrison has been pursuing the work -in particular the fact that they have stuck up a large steel fence over the only mildly-safe crossing at the top of the hill -this a road with two schools on it, one round the corner, and a university nearby, most of whose staff and students walk in.

Neil says

Met with roadworks expert this morning on-site and he agreed problem - helpfully illustrated by the arrival of two buses to take the kids to games.

Saw that -but are you sure that none of those vehicles were in fact building site vehicles? they were gone by lunchtime, so maybe it was the roadworks expert himself?

On the buses, he will be seeking to reduce the barriered off area and to extend the bays further down the road to accommodate at least two at a time.

On the crossing, the intention is that the 'pavement' will be moved out between the blue fences and the red-and-white barriers. He will be getting the bollards removed and ramps put in so that the crossing can continue to be used (inc. by buggies and wheelchairs). He will get the barriers moved out further into the road, both to slow traffic and to give pedestrians more space. He will also get "Slow - Pedestrians Crossing" signs at either end.

He is happy with the blue fences regardless of the presence of huts. He wants to make sure that pedestrians are kept well away from the crane that will be active in the area, especially after a recent accident elsewhere.

He also feels that there is scope to put in a zebra crossing on an experimental basis to upgrade the safety there, especially if the rear entrance is to be used more by the school. I have started the process of formally asking for this. It won't happen overnight, but experimental schemes can happen quicker than permanent ones.

That's interesting, and good to see that the interests of pedestrians are being looked after, especially in comparison to the past Tyndall's Park work by Bristol Water. It is nice to see a company caring for their needs.

As you can see, the barriers are ensuring that children can walk to school without them coming into contact with the building workers cars and motorbikes parked on the pavement, such as the car GF55VHC. This ensures a safe journey for students at the nearby schools, without depriving the builders of the opportunity to drive into the city, park on the pavement and cut down trees for their portakabins. It also ensures their wing mirrors don't get bashed by small children on scooters.