The Grove Road Experiment

The local polis are out on the streets monitoring junctions and telling everyone off if they do something they shouldn't, which comes down to : Cyclists and red lights, cars and ASLs and one or two mobile phones.

Yet anyone who doesn't see people in hi-viz police wear at a junction is either too busy reading their facebook notifications or just dim -they should have noticed what what was happening, and behaved.

But no, people got caught by police wearing hi-viz, on a publicised operation. Which makes us wonder: would many more have been caught if the police hadn't been wearing hi-viz.

Being a data science organisation, we decided to see if people do actually change their behaviour and drive legally when they believe that they are being observed.

We chose Grove road for this, as the "no entry" sign has only been there five years and people still resist this unwanted war-on-motorists infrastructure by ignoring it completely.

Key features

1. Contraflowing it can shave about 3 minutes off the journey time from Redland Hill to Whiteladies Road, so aid the school run or the commute
2. You have to commit before you get stuck in the last twenty or so cars at the Redland Hill roundabout, so either plan to use the cut through always, or make a decision based on congestion.
3. If you change your mind you have to reverse and cut up to Redland Hill again -losing you time, especially as you will now have to wait to cut back in: it will cost you more than if you had stayed in the queue.

Being game-theory enthusiasts too. we like this, as it means

1. You have to decide whether to opt to break the law before you can see if the junction is monitored.
2. The gain of breaking the law is 2-3 minutes saved.
3. If the junction is monitored, you are left with the choice of retreat -costing you more than if you hadn't turned off, or you can continue

People aren't likely to just turn back because you point out its a no-entry sign: they know that, and they've made a conscious decision to ignore it because the gain "2-3" minutes matters to them more than the probability that they will get penalised for driving the wrong way down the road.

What then, does it take?

This experimented was conducted on a weekday between 08:28 and 08:38; this sequence shows all but one of the cars choosing to run the sign (that one was omitted as the camera team were in a conversation with a friend and not watching it properly -they shall be soundly beaten).  Only three cars came the other way, showing that that there are two cars driving illegally for every one legally. This gives all car drivers a bad name.

Experiments included:

• Point and talk: no, driver calls cyclist a git
• Wave at passing car for attention: no eye contact
• Point at sign: car does not slow down
• Stand in middle of road and act like you are texting: first car stops, but the mercedes  CLS 320 S22JBW doesn't.

What does appear to make a difference -and you can see from the final two events -is be blatantly holding a phone up as if you are about to take a photograph of the car. Once the driver decides that they are going to be photographed, then they change their minds and revert to the original route. We got a 100% success on that option.

This argues that it is not public attention that changes people's behaviour, nor is it the presence of registration numbers on the vehicle. It is the drivers' concluding that the risk of there being a penalty of of being photographed driving past the no-entry sign outweighs the cost of reversing back and continuing on the original route.

It doesn't matter if people see you, as long as the police don't.

The irony is, of course, that the entire experiment was being filmed on a helmet camera -yet somehow the sight of a phone being used as a camera changed driver behaviour in a way that a cyclist with a helmet with a camera attached did not.

Room for Manouevre

Very often people who park their vehicles in mandatory bike lanes are accused of being lazy, selfish and of endangering and inconveniencing cyclists. This may be the case sometimes, but it is not always true, as shown here in Grove Road, Redland

As you can see, it is possible to safely negotiate the junction

the cyclist may be left facing oncoming traffic where they appear to have just popped out from behind a van, but as this is part of the Sustrans NCN4 route, who doesn't want a frisson of excitement before the dullness of the Railway Path?

Corner work

The parking of this vehicle may seem completely random, but as it has a disabled sticker it is allowed to park on double yellow lines. The only issue, then, is why WN07HCX is parked on Elm Lane, Redland at such an unusual angle. It may actually be intentional.

By parking the way they have, passing vehicles can't tell whether or not the car is actually about to pull off without indicating, or is just parked at a random angle on the double yellow lines by the corner. You can't even be 100% sure there isn't a driver in there, not from this angle. This forces any experienced local driver to slow down and pass carefully, looking out for any sudden movements.

As such, it is actually better at slowing down vehicles approaching the corner with Grove Road than the give-way signs themselves are -  signs which used to historically mean "pause and look for passing vehicles" but which will, in the forthcoming 2010 Highway code, be changed to mean "stop texting for a moment".

it also penalises anyone who is not paying attention to the curve of the road, by scraping bits off their vehicle. Again, this encourages attentiveness, and hence safer driving.

Building Works

Here are some building works underway on Grove Road, Redland. It used to be two-way, but this was causing problems at the bottom, so it was made no entry except to bikes, who get their own little entrance.

The builders are not blocking the entrance with their skip. The builders are also not blocking the bike lane with their van. This is inconsiderate and dangerous.

Why? Because it creates a blind spot for bikes when they merge with the cars running the no-entry signs, such as WM56ESN, at 3:07 pm on a weekday afternoon.

If the bike contraflow was blocked by the skip and van, bicycles would be forced to go through the no-entry signs, and so integrate better with the main flow of illegal traffic.

(Saw this on the way up to the police RFID giveaway on the downs, and was taking the picture of the van and skip about to criticise them for not following the builder's code "always block the bike lane first", when I hear the sound of this car accelerating hard behind me, so, keeping to the side I left the camera ready to grab the shot. This car went through at speed, and after I'd put the camera away, two more followed it. Presumably these people used to use this road to bypass the roundabouts at the downs, and even though it's been made one way, they have retained "Grandfathered rights" to ignore the signs.)