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.

Bristol Traffic and your privacy rights

A while back, we documented how selfish pedestrians trying to squeeze past Hampton House hospital staff cars parked on the pavement forced the BRI hospital van WR58UMS to drive down a bicycle only contraflow and then park half on the pavement, half on the yellow lines, and keep the door open to reduce the risk of any bicycle damaging their paintwork.

Our reporter also says that the driver warned "if a photo of them appeared on the web site, they would be prosecuted".

This raised an interesting question, one we raised with the Information Commissioners Office,  namely what are the data protection rules surrounding photographs of vehicles in public places.

We now have a response

From:  casework at ico.gsi.gov.uk

Date: Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 11:22 AM
Subject: Data Protection Query[Ref. ENQ0341761]
To: bristol.traffic at gmail.com

19th August 2010

Case Reference Number ENQ0341761

Dear Sir/Madam

Thank you for your email.

In order to fall under the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 the data concerned must be personal data; that is data from which a living individual can be identified.  Vehicles and their registration numbers in isolation from any other information are not considered to be personal data.

As such its seems unlikely that the Data Protection Act 1998 will apply to the situation you outline.  You may need to ensure that you do not include images of the drivers when these pictures are taken as this could lead you into the area of data protection.

Obviously there may be other legal issues you will need to consider but these are not matters that this office could give you advice on.

I hope this clarifies the matter for you

Yours sincerely

Louise MacDonald

Lead Case Officer

 ____________________________________________________________________


The ICO’s mission is to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.

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So there you have it. Cars with registration numbers yes, people on their own, OK, but photographs of the drivers with the reg nos, maybe. Interesting. We shall have to consider this. Good email signature.

Trouble at Hampton House

We like Hampton House. A physiotherapy hospital where even the staff drive to work and park on the pavement. Those are people who know most about the dangers of physical exercise, who know walking is dangerous. That is not only why they don't walk much themselves, they try to discourage others. Presumably inside there are posters encouraging people to take up watching TV instead of playing football or walking.

Today, T508BGD has a note in its window.

Not a ticket, not some printed junk, something handwritten.

Please Mate!

This car is

parked illegally your

car is on the

(obscured) not on

Hampton (obscured)

you are liable

to be fined by the

police or Traffic Wardens

Mary,

1st Floor reception

P.S. We have had complaints about

this

This is interesting.To be honest, we are surprised by this. We would have thought if the local troublemakers were to be whining, it would be about an NHS van driving down a bikes only contraflow then stopping half on the pavement, half blocking the path. That one even we in B.T. think is just pushing the envelope of defensibility. But why was the van forced to do what it did? Because of the commuters parked on the pavement. If the Hampton House staff didn't block the pavement, there would be a way for vans to legally drive and park that wouldn't even upset the tax-dodgers who pootle round here.

BT Openreach at Hampton house

We love Hampton House: a bit of the hospital at the top of the hill, a bastion of Bristolness. A Mock rural architecture with plenty of pavement to park on.

But what's this? A sign?

NOTICE
Hampton House is not
responsible for cars parked on
public highway
thank you

the management

Where is the sign? On the pillar between the staff car and the BT openreach van, to the right of the near-empty car park

You see, it's not just that people need to park on the pavement because they have no choice, or because a BT openreach van wouldn't have been allowed to use one of the parking spaces in the car park.

No, we park on the pavement to show that we are in charge, not those pedestrians who are always whining about something like no safe way to get over the road to the hospital. Let them drive! That's why the driver of FD55KMU parked here: to leave space for patients!

Note at the back of the van a sign, how's my driving, 0800 876 6699. No number to call with parking issues. They aren't relevant.  

NHS: Protecting people from themselves

Having recently spent some time at the BRI, one of the B.Traffic correspondents was pretty appalled by how all the patients in the respiratory and heart clinics took a fire-alarm evacuation as an opportunity to go outside and have a cigarette. In one way it's poignant: these are why these people are in here, in another, painful. If, under a new government, the NHS needs to make "economies", one way to do so would be to discourage anyone who ends up with breathing or heart problems from smoking.

The same rules would apply to physiotherapy. The bits of the UBHT hospital portfolio that deals with exercise-related injuries up at Hampton House needs to stop people from engaging in physical exercise. Certainly they know the risks themselves: that's why they drive. They also park so as to discourage people from any form of physical exercise, and so stop them becoming patients. But still people walk and cycle past. How to prevent them becoming customers?

Here we see the NHS Facilities Estates at 09:34 on May 5 doing their best to stop anyone cycling by contraflowing the top of Cotham Hill, then stopping so as to block the bike lane.

That should have been enough to stop a late-running school-run family from getting down here, for them to realise the error of their ways, return home and drive in, but no, the parent and attached child with a flag coming out their head choose to go on the pavement instead -shamelessly!

From the front, you can see how WR58UMS not only blocks bike access, it tries to stop pedestrian crossings via the dropped kerb, and of passing pedestrians; there not being any gap between it and the staff cars all parked up on the pavement by the double yellow lines.
The driver also opened the door to catch anyone trying to sneak past on the bit of the bike contraflow lane which it was not blocking.

Our reporter also says that the driver warned "if a photo of them appeared on the web site, they would be prosecuted".

In this instance, the driver is sadly mistaken.

Photographs of people taken in a public place are legitimate -and a van driving the wrong way down a one-way street to park across a dropped kerb on double yellow lines is technically in a public place!

There has been some debate about whether the Human Rights Act provides some assumption of privacy, but if a new government repeals that it becomes a non issue. We do not know whether to extend our sympathies to the driver to have their expectations so rudely shattered, or hope that when a "British" version of the human rights act comes in, it will return some assumption of privacy to members of the house of lords, everyone with hereditary titles, or who are important in some other way. Assuming that the notion of "importance" is both relative and transitive, all drivers of motor vehicles would be more important than cyclists or pedestrians, so both would be denied the right to take photographs.

Refuse Collection by Environmental Waste Solutions

Environmental Waste Solutions UK Ltd. 0870 919 4357

Here on Cotham Hill, outside the hospital. Seen them before. Previously they'd been positioned in such a way as to make it impossible for contraflowing bicycles to get round safely.

By driving all the way up the bike CN54EHH can close off the bike lane completely, so eliminate such risk in future.

It is through such considerate actions that everyone in the city can get round safely.

Incidentally, it is interesting to note how often Hampton House appears in our dataset. We shall have to discuss this with them some time. Congratulate them for the way their staff and those of delivery vehicles together resist the anti-car agenda of the city.

Insult to injury

Hospitals. Places where ill people go -even walk. Exactly the kind of place where good pedestrian access would seem important. Yet today we have photographic proof that cyclists selfishly occupy the pavement.

First, outside Hampton House, a woman on a bicycle makes a phone call on the pavement.

That is despite the fact that the cars MW02OUC and RF04ZFW have gone to a lot of effort to not provide any room for bicycles, that there is only enough space left to get a single width push-chair through, yet some tax-dodging cyclist gets on the pavement just to take a call. Do you see us car drivers pulling over onto the pavement to make a call? No. Exactly.

At the bottom of the hill, the BRI ontology unit car park. A cyclist has selfishly parked their bike on the railings, so making this part of the pavement unusable by pedestrians.

Yes, most of the footpath is closed and pedestrians walking to Accident and Emergency or many of the other BRI facilities are forced to walk down this road, hoping that no road traffic is coming up the hill and round the blind corner at speed. For a bicycle to occupy some of the few metres of footpath is a crime they should be clamped for.

More Persecution

Last week we saw how R848CGS was being harassed by students merely for parking on a build-out by a pedestrian crossing, in front of a hospital. Today we see that the council, rather than ticket pedestrians for occupying our pavement, is instead ticketing this car. Yet because the pavement has been widened here, there is plenty of room for pedestrians to get past.

Further down the hill in Kingsdown, KF02YWW is ticketed for parking in a disabled space.

Does Bristol Parking Services not realise that on a busy weekday, pavements and disabled parking spaces are the only spaces left for people to park? We don't want to use these spaces, but its always very frustrating driving round the block when there is a nice empty bit of pavement calling out to us, or an unused disabled parking bay. We are forced to use these spaces. And then what? They ticket us.

Back to normal

The roads are all briefly snow free, as are the pavements, so they can be used again. Not by pedestrians, who we still think should be made illegal, but by car drivers who prevent congestion problems by parking entirely off the road.

Here on Eastfield Road, the Audi RK08KCJ has to park here as the owner, through no fault of their own, only has a garage big enough for a 1970s hatchback.

Up at Hampton Road, some students have been causing havoc with the wipers on this car R848CGS strategically placed to stop pedestrians crossing. This is why when we get our laws against being a pedestrian pushed through, the fine for being a student pedestrian will be double.

And on Whiteladies road, we can see another traffic island that is no use to anyone, and just makes it harder to swing past bicycles.

This car NS03YJP has a disabled sticker, so it is legitimately parked here, before anyone complains. What we really want to highlit is in the background - some of the new Whiteladies road bike parking stands. They are stealing our pavements, our car parking spaces, again.

The AA: turning up late. As usual.

Just like the responsiveness of breakdown organisations is measured in time they take to turn up and fix the the problem, the competence of motoring press organisations ought to be assessed by how long they take to complain about something.

Last Friday, a whole week ago, we were complaining about pedestrians walking in our road space.

A whole week ago. Since then: more snow, more pedestrians in our way.

Yet it was only on Friday, seven days after we highlighted this issue that the AA, the nominal voice of the motorist, speaks out on this in a Daily Telegraph article:

And the AA warned pedestrians not to walk on gritted roads as a way of escaping icy pavements or mounds of snow piled high after roads had been ploughed.

See that? It took the AA a week to notice what a problem pedestrians were creating for us. And they weren't even specific about what they were threatening pedestrians with!

If the warning didn't say something like "or we will follow you home and cut the head of your household pet off and put in the bed" it isn't really a warning, is it? More a polite hint. Yet the pedestrians were out and about for a whole week. Above, in Alma Vale and St John's Roads in Clifton.

Below, in Cotham Hill. There you can see one man happily walking down the road, while a law-abiding pedestrian holds on to a lamppost to keep upright. She may not be able to get anywhere, but at least she won't be trying to use any zebra crossings or pressing buttons on pelican crossings.

The pedestrians should know that pavements are for them.

And for vehicles like P78RHW whose driver has struggled against adverse conditions to get to work at the NHS Hampton House facility. At least in these terrible conditions one part of the council -Bristol Parking Services- helped the motorists by staying in.

We're planning a little critique of the Association of British Drivers for being out of touch, but the AA, the big fault there is that despite their leader, Edmund King, being good at getting quotes into the printed news, if their quotes are a week behind the issues in our streets, what use is that? They are coming out and complaining about pedestrians in the roadway just when the snow and ice is all going away. And they don't even warn cyclists to stay off the roads as they aren't welcome in UK cities.

Bristol Traffic: up to date with the issues, timely with the news. Prepared to speak the truth. The real voice of Bristol's Motorists.

More snow chaos

Nobody has posted any photos in on a par with last year's Nine-Tree Hill disaster, so maybe things were less chaotic this year, what with everyone having experienced snow once in living memory. Also it being the school and university holidays, no students, no schookids, parent's having to handle small children somehow anyway.

One van, EY53LFL, out of control and up on the pavement on Cotham Hill

Another car, VK09KKJ this time going uphill, must have skidded onto the pavement outside the Homeopathic Hospital

And this taxi SF09BHU, taxi #8048 must have had to do an emergency halt in a bus stop

No major signs of damage, so all is well. Some of the team had to push a couple of cars in trouble. Remember, use second gear when the wheels start to spin, don't just push the accelerator harder.

To follow: the bicycles.

Keeping the bike lanes clean: Environmental Waste Solutions

Who is this, Environmental Waste Solutions, on Cotham Hill, where we've been having a bit of lorry/bicycle problems recently?

Well, CN54EHH is collecting waste, this does keep the bike lanes cleaner

And while they are parked on the double yellows/bike lane on a weekday morning at school run time, forcing cycling traffic to swerve out onto the blind uphill lane, they are at least parked outside a hospital. Provided there is an A&E section in the homeopathic hospital, all will be well.

Breaking news: anti-car crackdown in Bristol

Over in Westminster, the council are advocating that their enforcement officers have the right to issue spot fines for cyclists breaking the highway code. Although we think this isn't enough: bicycles should be banned for adults; using them should merit spot fines. we have been giving this idea some consideration.

In the end, we're against it. Why? The Highway Code. In particular, the entire section on road junctions.

Rule 170: crossing pedestrians have right of way over turning vehicles. See that? the highway code claims that pedestrians have right of way over cars. Anyone who tried to walk across a road in Bristol believing that would not only die immediately, they would slow down somebody important who had just run them over.

Rule 172: You must give way to traffic if there is a give-way sign at the junction. All traffic, including bicycles. Bollocks.

Rule 174: Do not enter box junctions marked with yellow hashes unless you can exit. Bollocks.

Rule 178. Do not enter ASL boxes on red; allow cyclists time to clear when the lights change. Bollocks to that too.

Rule 182. Do not cut on in cyclists. Missing the point. We do that to make cycling more miserable.

Rule 183: When turning left "give way to any vehicles using a bus lane, cycle lane or tramway from either direction". This is some kind of joke, right?

You see our concern. If people get out there and start enforcing what are technically the legal traffic laws in this country, not the de-facto ones, then the resulting crack down on the things we need to do to get round our city would make driving round Bristol worse than it is today. That would be unacceptable. The satisfaction of seeing a bicycle fined for cycling through a pedestrian crossing would be offset by the tickets we would get ourselves.

The worst one is rule 170, the one that implies that pedestrians crossing the road at any junction have the right of way over turning vehicles. That is simply untrue. It is a good thing it is never mentioned to pedestrians, as even more people would die.

In the US, the country where, gloriously, jaywalking is a crime, they actually enforce that give way to pedestrians rule. Could you imagine if they started doing that in Britain? We would be stuffed.

No, no need to have the council enforce rules against bicycles. We drivers will make them suffer, and there is no point giving anyone in the council ideas, like letting them read the details of highway code.

On that topic, we have some sad news of the new Cotham Martyrs. Here is the summit of Cotham Hill, at the far end of where a woman cyclist ended up under a lorry last week. In the background, a traffic jam of cars on the school run. That church was set up to remember the Maryan Martyrs; the people burned alive for their religious beliefs at this very spot in the time of Queen Mary. This hill, no doubt to be full of whining tax-dodgers on their Bastard Hills of North Bristol ride, represents a key conflict point in the city over historical timescales, where people suffer due to state oppression of fundamental freedoms. Yesterday: religion. Today: parking.

Cars have always parked here; when the council made the road one-way at the top and added a build-out, this added room for another row of cars on the pavement. We celebrated this only yesterday! Yet today, what do we see? One of the same cars, RF04ZFW parked precisely where it has been free to park in the past. Only today: a ticket! A ticket! Yet there is enough room for a pedestrian to get past on the build-out, so why the fuss?

When you look from the side, you can see precisely how uncalled for it is. You cannot even accuse this car of parking on the pavement by double yellow lines, because where the pavement drops down to make it easier for parents to get their push chair onto the bicycle contraflow and so past the cars -there isn't any double yellow lines! Therefore parking on this buildout by the dropped kerb should not be illegal! We hope this car driver appeals.

This is why we are against Bristol copying the Westminster Council "give our enforcement officers the right to fine bicycles" proposal: we think enforcement officers themselves are a sign of an anti-car city.

We are also concerned that this anti-car theme appears to be getting worse. The question is, how to measure it? We have a plan.

We can assess the official anti-car resentment in the city by reporting "illegally" parked cars to the BPS control room, and seeing if they respond, and how long it takes. 

This does not mean that we do not think that cars should not be free to park where they like, and that the whole idea of yellow lines were invented to bring in revenues to councils. Only that we can measure whether or not the council feels such actions are an issue by measuring their response time to calls. Which we can only do by reporting the vehicles themselves, by dialling the control 0117 903 8070 and reporting what may be perceived as "incidents" but which are in fact attempts by us Bristolians to stand up to an oppressive regime. The response time to the calls will be our way of formally assessing the oppressiveness of the regime. If we, say, report a row of lorries parked on the Stokes Croft bike lane, as we know there will be right now, without even having to bother to go over there, and then later, we do drop by and the vehicles have tickets: Bristol is getting more anti car. Yet if we report them and later on: no tickets, Bristol is resisting attempts by the cyclists to take over the city.

How you can help

For this to work, we need people all over the city reporting cars parked on pavements by double yellow lines, or on double yellow lines, such as those under bike lanes. Remember, we aren't being anti-car here, we want the council to ignore the calls and let Bristol's car and van drivers carry on as we have always done -but we want to make sure. We need to be sure that there isn't secretly a bit of the council cracking down on the cars and vans that keep the city moving. And the only way we can do that is by making the calls, and seeing what happens.

January, that is when the experiment begins. This month is the "before"; the baseline dataset. Nobody should report vehicles parked outside Hampton House, on Cotham Hill, on the bike lanes of Stokes Croft or Cheltenham Road. We must start by assessing what happens without interference. Look at your streets, take photographs, note if any tickets are issued.

[This experiment is supported by the NERC and ESRC funding bodies.] 

You're dangerous, rude and need educating, Bristol cyclists told

There was an article in the Evening Post this week, You're dangerous, rude and need educating, Bristol cyclists told, in which the danger that cyclists pose to pedestrians is discussed. We agree.

Look at this scene here. There is a risk that cyclists coming down the hill could run straight into this mother with a push chair. Do you think the cyclists will care? No, they will probably shout at her to get out of the way -yet they pay no more road tax than her, why should she not have equal right to the bike lane?

At the time these photos were taken, the far end of this road, Cotham Hill, is cordoned off while police investigate precisely how a bicycle ended up under a lorry. The cyclist is at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, at the bottom of St Michael's Hill. This is the junction between the roads. Do you think cyclists are going round here with caution, with care? Or are they sprinting around, some of them without helmets or hi-viz clothing, expecting pedestrians to jump out their way, for cars at junctions to give way to them?

That building to the side is of course the Hampton House; the student health centre on the ground floor and on the upper floor the UBHT Physiotherapy Department. This building exists to help people to learn to walk, run and even cycle again. You cannot expect the staff at such an important institution to walk or use public transport to get there, yet there is nowhere but the buildout for WJ59CJU, LD02URP and RF04ZFW to park. They may be patients, yet if you look at the travel directions, there is no on-site or disabled parking. These people have no choice, the fact that parents with push chairs are forced into the road is not something they can do anything about. It is perfectly safe for parents to take their push chairs into the bike lane -provided those tax-dodging criminal cyclists look where they are going.

We should ban all cyclists from our streets until they do some kind of test. Then they will follow the highway code, as we car drivers are forced to.

BBC gets on message: bicycles are the problem

We were really worried when the House of Commons Public Accounts Committe report on road safety came out -once we'd read the report.

Key findings

• Focus on child safety in deprived areas.
• Speed amplifies injuries so 20 mph zones are great
• Monitor road safety schemes to see if they actually work
• Nobody is monitoring injury rates, so all statistics on road safety have to be viewed as doubtful. Reducing the death rate is not enough if the injury rate is increasing.

We were worried. We we worried that they might pick up on our right to use a build-out by zig-zags for parking, such as demonstrated on Whiteladies Road by YA55VDY at 08:22 on October 7 2009.

Similarly, we were worried they might express concern that driving and parking on pavements at popular junctions during the school run might be viewed as endangering kids, such as again demonstratedby YA55VDY at 08:13 on October 17, 2009.

What to do? We had an emergency phone conference with our fellow travellers, the Daily Mail, and a couple of MPs who were courting the Daily Mail vote. And we had an idea. One of the points said "look at the perceived cyclist/pedestrian conflict", as apparently those people who write lots of letters in green ink to their MPs care about this a lot. That's it, the problem we in Bristol Traffic think is the route cause of risk in our streets: bicycles on pavements.

That's it! we said, focus on this, pretend it is the key finding, not that cars speeding through the less well off parts our cities are killing the children, not that there isn't room on the pavements for bicycles or pedestrians on account of all the cars.

We were a bit concerned that the statistics didn't hold up, that nobody in our city has been killed by a bike on a pavement, but we have had people killed this year crossing the road, we have had schoolkids killed on the pavement by cars, we have had cyclists killed on the road. What to do? Get some quotes from the docile MPs who will do anything to get their names in the paper. And we did.

We got the article out the Daily Mail, that was to be expected -MPs call for laws against bicycles, but since the Jan Moir article on Stephen Gately exposed the paper as being a relic of the 1930s, and something to ridicule, we needed a more mainstream channel.

We wanted to appear on question time, but apparently the BBC had already booked their speaker, so it had to be a bit of journalism instead. Which had us worried. Journalism. That means research, insight and writing. How would the BBC report this?

Would they read the report and come down hard against our right to drive round the city at speed, to finish our commute by parking our cars on the buildout by the double yellow lines, here outside the physiotherapy department of the BRI?

Would the BBC pick on the speed issue, embrace the Bristol Council proposals to reduce the speed limit in the deprived parts of the city? Would they look at the discussion on injury rates, enquire of hospitals what the trends are, and perhaps find some unpleasant facts about that Britain is becoming a more dangerous place to walk around, on account of -dare we say it- the cars.

Fortunately, they went for the MP's quotes rather than even looking at the report's summary This produced some lovely "Target pavement cyclists" headlines and with a consistent "Parliament blames the bicycles" story, even the on-line bicycle press didn't bother to download the report and realise that we, Bristol Traffic, had made the headlines and all the quotes up.

I mean really, how could a respectable news outlet fall for quotes that are straight out of Monty Python? Like this one from Geraldine Smith (Labour), "A police superintendent was at this forum with me and he said that it was legal to cycle on pavements." That is so wrong; the police not enforcing things that aren't actually illegal. Or this one, from Tory MP David Curry, some cyclists were "irresponsible and arrogant road users"? Yes, that is what we want: the next parliament to make being "irresponsible and arrogant on a bicycle" a crime. It will be the first step to banning the two-wheeled terrorists from our streets entirely.

Victory! Success! We, Bristol Traffic, in collaboration with the Daily Mail, are not only writing articles for our own news outlets, we are setting the agenda for the country. Now that the Daily Mail can't be racist, can't blame rape victims and can't be homophobicwithout 25,000 press complaints, attacking the cyclists is the oneluxury the press has left, and we will exploit it to the utmost.

All those bike people that view us as some kind of satire will have a different look on their face now, now that they realise that we are setting the battle lines for the next election. It won't be about financial competence, how to handle the fact that Britain is £270 Trillion in debt and rising, it won't be that the mass employment industries are toast and with North Sea oil declining year on year, we won't have the cash flow that kept us going through the 1980s. The issue that neither party who stands a chance of getting a majority appears to know what to do isn't going to be raised. No, the next election will be about what really matters: bicycles on pavements.

Fear Bristol Traffic! We are in charge, and you, the little people, don't even realise it!

Effective Physiotherapy #2

Here on this bright morning we can see another patient for the BRI physiotherapy unit practising their leg exercises, here by carefully reversing their golf up a bike lane and hence under the archway of this building.

Somehow the car Y956NLF has managed to get onto the pavement facing out -probably driving up onto the bike lane from Cotham Hill, then backing up onto the pavement at the dropped kerb. This will take careful clutch control (knee and quadriceps) as well as lots of arm/wrist/elbow work for the steering. A quick massage and stretch and the day's exercises will be complete

If the driver turns their head to look backwards, neck muscles too.

And there they are. You wouldn't notice they are there. By parking this way they do appear to be leaving room for another vehicle in front -maybe this is intentional?

(PS: please, no comments from random physiotherapists round the world hoping for some linking from our site. The comments will be deleted)

Effective Physiotherapy

When, eventually, the letter turns up telling you that you have a physiotherapy appointment at Hampton House, on St Michael's Hill roundabout, they warn that parking is not available, and that you should find alternate transport options, such as the free bus from the centre. Well, you could walk, but it is a the top of a very steep hill: from here, every way is down.

Some people do walk though, because they know that the key concept of physiotherapy is "getting better through exercise". Which is why this delivery van to Hampton House is actually contributing to the recovery of the patients.

By parking on the pavement, just opposite the pedestrian crossing, all patients walking to the hospital from the North have to veer around the van W57JYG. Which means they have to stop, to turn, to start, to walk, to slow down and turn again, and continue on their way. What would be a couple of steps -no real exercise- now works all those leg muscles. This shows how not just the hospital, but the infrastructure around it, can help the patients.