Grass a driver week: MK59USB, texting across a junction

Apparently some police forces in the country are now rolling out enforcement of driving too close to tax dodgers, maybe even section 59 ASB orders, which are interesting as there is a lower burden of proof. It doesn't impact penalties or insurance, simply threatens to take the car away.

We watch these experiments with trepidation.

Meanwhile, Bristol has a page to report incidents for their records alone.

This week we are conducting a small experiment to report a few dangerous drivers to this site, to see what happens. Expect followups if there are any results.


First, MK59USB on Tyndall's Park Road, crossing Whiteladies Road while reading their phone.



There are now pedestrian crossing lights on some of the arms of the junctions, specifically Tyndall's Park Road has a walk and ike one (a small dip in the kerb allows the bikes over); Whiteladies Road inbound also has green. These require left-turns to be restricted, which has long been a rule more ignored than observed. The council has recently done some raised corner sharpening; be interesting to see what's happening.

Where there is not any pedestrian crossing is on St Pauls Road —the Clifton Side— people run across when there is a gap, such as when vehicles heading inbound are waiting to turn right, and in that little gap between Whiteladies Road going read and TPR/St Pauls Road going green.

Which means this mercedes is about to head towards a junction where there are likely to be people sprinting across. Will they put down their phone?

No, is the answer, they keep on looking at it, going down to one-handed so they can hold the steering wheel with the other. About half way through the junction, they look up, notice the cyclist, and hold the phone down out of sight.

Interesting question: what would have happened if the tax-dodger hadn't been there?

The experiment begins, then, by filing this on the A&S police site, see how they react.

What about the full report an incident process? Too much hassle given its inevitable that nothing is going to happen. If they don't act when you go to the station with a CD of a video and a complaint, it's unlikely that they will react to a youtube URL.

Leigh Woods: nicer cars, more polite twats

One of our Bristol Traffic expendable tax-dodging reports was tasked to head over to Leigh Woods on a weekday morning, to see what all the fuss about the Clifton RPZ destroying the prestigous mock-rural suburb. It doesn't appear to be.

Watch this video and consider that all inboud traffic is paying £1/vehicle to drive into Bristol. The Clifton RPZ rollout does not seem to have discouraged this flow of traffic from the "nice but dull" parts of N. somerset, and the "simply dull" parts like Portishead. All the vehicles here will have come down the A369 from Portishead/Gordano M5 junction, or from Clevedon via Beggars Bush Lane. Yet despite the inner city waging a war on the hard-working motorist of the mock-rural suburbs, there's still a line of cars heading in.

What is notable, compared to inner Bristol, and even more so the Glasgow of Magnatom's videos, is

1. All the cars are nice, shiny and relatively new, with a bias towards the overweight SUV.
2. They all have their wingmirrors. This shows that they neither drive nor park in much of the city. These vehicles do not cross Whiteladies Road to points east.
3. There's nobody texting except P277FAL. This implies the flow rate of the traffic is higher than Gloucester and Whiteladies Roads.
4. When the self-important twat driving Mercedes EH03DHJcomplains to a cyclist that they are holding them when there is a bike lane, it's done in a genteel, polite, "could you use the cycle lane", rather than the stream of Glaswegian abuse or a screaming fit of the kind you'd see in Richmond.

That said. EX03DHJ is still a self-entitled wanker. He's just pulled out from the residential side road and is immediately on the horn because the cyclist is in the middle of the road in the line of slow moving cars, then comes up with the "I'm a cyclist myself, you see" cliche, while politely asking the tax-dodger to please use the cycle lane. It being nice sunny morning in Leigh Woods, the cyclist politely says no, rather than telling them to fuck off, the way you'd be expected to do in inner Bristol.

For those residents of the inner city, we have provided a translation

Selfishly holding up a Mercedes

Shocking Footage of a Cyclist holding up an Important Person(tm) in a Mercedes not once, but twice.




This is in Oakfield Road, Clifton, where, despite the ongoing efforts by the council and the Neighbourhood partnership, cyclist are still seen. In the opening sequence we see two of them not looking at all intimidated and almost acting as if they belong in Clifton.

At 18s in, after letting an Important Person(tm) in a Range Rover past, the cyclist flips back their head to see what the vehicle sound is -where they spot a recent Mercedes. Rather than immediately get out of the way of what at this point is a narrowing road, the subsersive carries on, -again, acting as if they have a right to be there.

Once they turn off, however, they sprint ahead -why? to get in front of the Mercedes at the zebra crossing. If the car is turning left, it will be held up directly -and if it is going straight on the tax dodger can use the zebra crossing to clear the main road first, and then cycle in their way again.

Today the car is turning left, the cyclist dismounts and walks slowly enough in front of the car that the pedestrians coming the other way can get far enough over to again hold up the car. As the tax dodger dismounts and proceeds down Whiteladies Road, they glance back at the Important Car(tm) to see the Important Person(tm) looking unhappy at the audacity of a tax-dodger to hold them up not once, but twice.

Park like you've earned it

Being a rich and successful driver presents many opportunities for you to present your achievments to the lesser mortals. You have the car and the personalised plates and this gets the admiring looks, well for a while at least. But then what? How do you tell the world that you have really made it? Anyone can get a flash motor and personalised plates hide the age.

Well, nothing says that you can afford not to give a damn like illegal and downright inconsiderate parking. This car park had plenty of available spaces and at £1 an hour, surely it is within the means of anyone. But no, far better to take not one but TWO disabled parking bays to show you can afford not to care about tickets. No blue badge here nor even a pay and display ticket. That's for the little people.

R8 AMG does this with such finess that they even manage to do this next to a bicycle jumble sale! Let's show the poor people who can't even afford a new bicycle, let alone a car, what real achievement can bring!

Don't condemn this driver. They are giving us something to aim for.

K33VYP shows their imagination

Imagine a different world. No speed cameras, no traffic lights, cash back whenever you fill up your car. We can. The ABD can. "Hoverboard Hammond" can. And in Clifton, K33VYP is imagining a world without double yellow lines.

Such out-the-box thinking is what we need in this area to solve its problems. If there is one thing that's unusual is that this Mercedes is the only car parked here on Oakfield Place

We know why that is: they stole our rat run. Stepping back a few paces and turning the camera to the left:

A whole road has been blocked off and turned into cycle parking. Worse yet -a through route for cyclists, who could then endanger the paintwork of important cars, like K33VYP itself.

This road blocking not only provides a parking area for visitors and residents, it takes away the parking opportunities nearby simply by making it so hard to get to them.

Bus lanes: not even buses use them

Disappointing scenes here of not even a bus using the bus lane on Whiteladies Road

The video shows this is not a one off event, as taxis drive down our lane, the taxpayers lane, too.

If it wasn't for the Mercedes M88RKW parking there, this lane would be completely wasted.

Save Double Parking!

Following on our campaign against zebra crossings, we find ourselves forced to start new campaign "Save Double Parking!". The anti-car council has come out against double parking as being dangerous and anti social. Maybe but for residents is the only way to park a car after the morning school run, and for commuters, its the only way to park a car with all the legal spaces taken up by those selfish residents who don't drive to school or work, so freeing up spaces.

Every cyclist who owns a car and goes round being smug, "I pay my road tax", is missing the point. The car they've paid the road tax for is on the road somewhere, that's the rectangle of tarmac they have rented, and by not using it they are inconveniencing not just the vehicles they hold up on their crawl round town, but those commuters who rely on the spaces they create.

Returning to the double parking problem, the BBC have an article calling it anti-social, an article that includes this road as an example:

We don't normally cover double parking, and when we do we never name the roads. Those streets where you can get away with it are secrets we do not dare share, as then we will have nowhere to park. Certainly this road looked familiar.

The buildings look Cliftony, possibly university area, the road is wide and quiet with an RV on the left, opposite a smartcar. Time to send a query off to our petabyte scale datacentre to see what shows up -and yes, we know this road. It's Belgrave Road, BS8.

View Larger Map
What's interesting about this road is why was it chosen? Did the council have to tip off the journalists that this road was trouble? Was in in fact staged purely to push out new CPZ/RPZ restrictions, our very own WMD-for-iraq claim?

We have a theory there. Belgrave road is right next to the BBC. The journalists just popped out for 30 seconds to get a couple of pics and then went back in, job done. Of course, that does not mean that the photo was not staged. More research is needed.

This is where our new experiment to instrument cyclists and pedestrians in the city has begun to pay off. By having them filming themselves, we can review exactly what they've done wrong, from their own position. This is a lot easier than filming them ourselves, as it is really hard to hold a camcorder steady while driving through Montpelier, especially when you are trying to text someone. We just let the bikes do the work, then later get the pics. Up until now most bike filming has been written by the cyclists, always whining about something or other, such as this Glaswegian Magnatom, who has taken up the classic sport of that city -starting fights with strangers- out of the bars, and onto the roads. We aren't like that. We will criticise the cyclists and any other tax-dodging subversives we see.

Here then, is our ride-by of this road, where we can say that yes, it looks like a good place to double park. Nobody seems to mind, and it's handy for the BBC. This is important if you are Noel Edmonds, on a visit to the competition to see if your latest idea for a Saturday evening show has got any interest. The video was taken ten days ago, in term time, so if the council staged the entire double parking scene, they kept it up outside the BBC for a long time -it probably is genuine.



Analysing this video, we see a number of events which concern us

1. At 0:06 a tax-dodging cyclist -correctly dressed in hi-viz and helmet- sticks her arm out to force a Mercedes to stop its manoeuvre, a turn into the bus lane. This was a premium car, and clearly belongs to someone important -possibly Noel Edmonds himself. All the cyclists should have given way, and not held up this car by being in front of them in the bus lane.
2. At 0:13 we see a skateboarder on the road. Again, another form of tax-dodging
3. At 0:31 we see a Vauxhall Zafira being forced to brake hard after overtaking the bicycle.
4. Throughout the sequence, we see pedestrians crossing the road -only one of them is wearing hi-viz clothing.

Event #3 concerns us, the car which has to put their foot down to swing past the bicycle, then cut in , apparently to double park right in front of them. If the cyclist had not been pootling up this double-parking-friendly road at 5 mph, the driver would not have been forced to take such action. It is not environmentally friendly having to accelerate and brake like this, showing that while bicycles themselves may not be polluting, they cause the other vehicles in the city to waste more fuel, to pollute the city more.

We can see then, in 46 seconds, how a couple of bicycles can hold up the journey time of cars, be they important cars who need to use the Bus Lane, or merely someone who needs to double park outside the BBC offices. It is bad enough that these cyclists are allowed to do this, that they do not pay any tax, let alone compensate us for our lost time -now we see that the council is trying to take away our right to double park. Furthermore, the video showed how pedestrians, cyclists and even skateboarders are trying to take our roads away from us. We must resist!

When will this anti-car oppression end!

Mercedes Hit and Run - Fishponds

While Bristol mourns the tragic loss of Troy Atkinson in the city centre, it is worth noting that the day before there was another hit and run involving a Mercedes, this time at the junction of Alcove Road and Fishponds Road.

According to the Evening Post

"A 40-year-old man was riding a black racing bike towards Bristol on Fridaywhen the incident happened.

At around 7.45pm, a blue Mercedes turned into Alcove Road and knocked him to the ground, causing him to suffer minor cuts and bruises."

We checked out Alcove Road to see if there were any blue mercs on the pavement. Not today. Two vans on the corner, providing a lovely bit of traffic calming by hiding all chances at seeing oncoming traffic.

And a car, WN56ULM, proudly sporting its "baby on board" sticker to let people know that this car has to park on the pavement to get its small child in and out the house.

Overall, not a nice place to walk or cycle, which is a shame, as it is one of the access points to the Railway Path.

It is probably a quirk of statistics that two hit and runs collisions involving Mercedes cars happen in the same week, but it is also worrying. It is nice to get onto the R.P. and enjoy the safe chaos of the evening traffic up and down the path.

Branding

We can't come out and say "premium German-branded cars park worse". All we can say is "premium German-branded cars appear a lot in our database", but that's a self-selected dataset and not defensible. What we really need is access to a (suitably anonymised) dataset from Parking Services, say a week's worth of issued ticket data, with all the number plates replaced with random numbers and some other tweaks to prevent de-anonymizing, but with car make/model retained. We'd also need to know the percentage of these brands in use in the city compared to other models, to see if there was a significant variation. Then we'd know.

And, being city-wide, it would stop us being picking on particular schools. Like Christchurch School, Clifton, that appears to have a serious parking problem. The problem being: not enough space for everyone driving in. And seemingly everyone who does drop their kid off there uses Ein Auto aus Deutschland.

X21SJC may actually be a resident's car parked on the school-keep-clear zone, so denying parents their rightful place.


The parents are forced to park round the corner, the red BMW H674HJO narrowly avoiding being scraped by a small child having the audacity to cycle to school with a parent -neither of them wearing a helmet. We are shocked and appalled by the risks these people are taking.

Further along, another Mercedes R116KTC.


At least the disabled parking area is left alone.

Some of these cars could belong to residents. We'd need to audit the street on a Sunday morning to build up a better model of who is parking where round these narrow streets -streets that voted against becoming residents parking, incidentally. Presumably because it was obvious to all that an RPZ would take the pavements on these roads out of play, which would be unacceptable.

Demi-Drives of Montpelier

Contributor KL sends in this snap of a mercedes SUV on St Andrews Road, Montpelier, parked in the entrance to Montpelier Park, sticking out into the pavement. Apparently this space "belongs" to this car, despite a sign on the wall behind warning that cars parked here will be towed.

When you compare the other vehicles on on this pavement, this car, Y529KTF, is actually taking up less of the pavement than most of them. It is possible to get a push chair up this part of the hill. The only way it could be interfereing with pedestrians would be if it stopped those parents-with-babies from taking their little one into Montpelier Park itself. But given that urban park is not "area for small children to play" as "place to take your dog for its bathroom duties" for everyone who lives near, this vehicle is actually protecting children. It is a valuable contribution to child safety in this part of town.

Incidentally, one reason why anyone who parks here gets as far on the pavement as they can is that there is a "St Andews Road Avonmouth" which is the right size and shape for HGVs. If the driver taps in "St Andews Road Bristol" to the SatNav by accident, this is the road where their truck ends up.

How bus lanes slow down traffic

Our strategic partners, the Association of British Drivers, have a special dislike of Bus Lanes. They make some valid points. One of their criticisms, for example, is that they make buses more popular, hence more people get on them, hence the bus gets slower. That is an important issue, for which all existing bus passengers must thank the ABD for looking after their needs by fighting bus lanes.

Another criticism is that they slow down traffic by creating congestion, forcing two lanes of traffic into one. That's a bit simplistic, as Amdahl's Law implies that the bottleneck is always the single lane stretches: you have to make everything dual carriageway. Still, the idea merits investigation, on the showcase A38 route, down at the Arches.

Here we can see that they are in fact of so little value, even the buses do not use them.
The problem is that solid lane markings mean that car drivers cannot use them. The double yellow lines mean that law-abiding car drivers cannot park in them.

This means that only drivers like that of L794FWO who refuse to recognise double yellow lines park in them. which renders it useless to buses and taxis, and is of no value to anyone wishing to ignore the restrictions and drive down it. Yet it is still of no value for anyone wishing to park legally.

Clearly the solution to this is to downgrade it from a bus lane to a car parking lane, so that anyone can park there. That way, it will have some value at least. Right now, with even the buses blocked out of it, it is a waste of valuable road space.

We are very grateful for the ABD drawing our attention to this problem, and encourage every grateful bus user to contribute to this forward-thinking organisation by purchasing one of their recommended driving CDs.

the Wing Mirrors of Montpelier

This little Peugeot, KC51YBX, is showing that it has paid the price for not parking far enough up on the pavement of Fairlawn Road, Montpelier

Because it has paid the "wingmirror tax". Fortunately, being a French car, loss-of-wingmirror is something they assume happens a lot, so it will clip back on easily, or be replaced at at a low price.

It is German cars that tend to have a higher wingmirror tax. Their engineering team is given the goal of wingmirrors "fur autos ohnen geschwindigkeitgrenzen": for cars without speed limits. With a need to be stable at 220 km/h, they stay on when bolted on, and cost a lot when they come off. Take your merc or BWM round to the show room to get a new mirror and they will sit you down in a luxurious waiting room, serve you coffee, let you check your stock and bank balances with your macbook on their free WiFi, before breaking the news to you that the new wingmirror costs about the same as a new engine for a Fiesta, and that all your few remaining shares in non-nationalised banks will be required before you get your car keys back.

This may explain why we had an interesting encounter with a blue Mercedes estate driver while cycling back from work with a friend this week, on this very street. There I was, cycling far enough out to not hit parked cars or get squeezed by oncoming cars, when the oncoming car decided to come through anyway. I tried the "Stop the bike but not move in gambit", which normally causes the car to a halt, then we can negotiate the problem safely. But no, this car speeded up, got through safely, and then came to a halt, jumped out and started screaming at me about not getting over enough. That's the kind of incident where you are glad you know the back streets and the bike-only bits better, as there are lots of escape routes. Some drivers out there have anger management issues. Remember, if you are trying to drive round the back streets of Montpelier at speed, do it in cars with affordable wing-mirrors.

Traffic calming the bike route

That little bike crossing in Montpelier between Richmond Road and Picton Street is dangerous. Bikes heading onto Richmond Road pull out with no warning, and could run into anyone coming down the hill -including other bikes.

The people who care most about this danger appear to Montpelier's 4X4 users, who do their best to control bike speed by blocking the exit. Nobody else nearby cares -they are too selfish, choosing to park near their houses rather than park in a way that would reduce the risk of road accidents and make the district a safe place to walk and cycle -as this Mercedes, H19ODG, is doing.

Gloucester Road

Photo and commentary by Jon Roger:
The driver of GF08BAU has managed to demonstrate four important principles of Bristol parking.


First, they have managed to use one of the many "corner parking spaces" thoughtfully provided in the City. Second, they have been careful to park one wheel on the pavement, so as not to obstruct other road users. Third, they have thoughtfully left a suitable gap at the rear of his car to allow pedestrians to cross the road, because of the limited space at the front of this car. And finally because it is raining, they have parked as close as possible to the Gloucester Road to avoid getting wet.