VU61HXM : Nissan Driver doing clifton roundabouts "french style" in the snow

We're an organisation which believes in data and experimentation. We have time for experts.


Normally we can't be arsed to send videos of near misses to A&S police on the basis that it seems an exercise in futility. Let's look at the track record of our limited number of attempts

1. Sept 2012, R242AAC. Shoots out a roundabout, nearly hits the parent. Outcome: Five penalty points. Notable that (then) Cllr Jon Rogers was pulled in early —is this the way to get a result?
2. April 2014: Double-overtaking driver of Peugeot L861CDW nearly runs over family. Outcome: A&S Police Sergeant tells off cyclist for swearing when they think their son is about to die.
3. Feb 2016, SWC scaffolds van HK15FYH. Reporting this van driving over a roundabout while texting involved cycling to Chipping Sodbury to hand over a CD with the video and file a report. When followed later that month, nobody had any record of it. Chipping Sodbury Police: "we passed it on". A&S HQ "we have no record". 

It's got worse. We've gone from Prosecute to Won't Prosecute to No Record of Incident. And that with  a trip to Yate added in.

It's 2019, three years since the last experiment. And this one merits it. A Nissan Note nearly being driven into a cyclist because the driver has chosen to drive the wrong side of the mini roundabout, in winter conditions, where the cyclist is forced to swerve into snow and ice to avoid the car driving into the side of them.

Our tax dodger (expendable) is coming into Clifton on Suspension Bridge road, heading towards the more interesting parts of the city. Because all the side roads are iced up, the main roads are the only options, and there, the central lane where enough traffic has melted the snow.

Our cyclist carefully cycles round the roundabout, making a controlled turn through the junction, avoiding snow, avoiding banking into the turn, lining up perfectly to exit in the snow and ice-free part of the road -the only place to be in these conditions.

Except, what's that engine noise coming from the right hand side? It's the Nissan Note VU61HXM, also taking the roundabout, this time on the completely opposite side of the roundel. If they have a driving license, it had better be a French one. And they have to be able to say more than "quoi? je comprende pas? Est-ce-que il-y-a une probleme?" when questioned.



In normal weather conditions, that would be an selfish and dangerous thing to do. In snow conditions, conditions where the police and met office were warning everyone to think before they travel, and take care when they do —it's tantamount to attempted murder.

The cyclist was: positioned on the snow free part of the road, carefully using their (hydraulic disc) brakes, riding with tyres (2.4" Conti Mountain King ) suited to bad weather, and taking corners really, really carefully, both hands gripping the wide bars for maximum control. Oh, and avoiding the side roads which don't get swept or gritted.

The driver "Oh, this cyclist is taking too long, I'll just dive across the road. Oh, they are shouting and waving. I shall carry on without slowing down or changing my line —they shouldn't have come up the inside of me"

When you see a car aiming straight for the side of you, there's no point trying to argue rights of way, it's time to make an emergency turn into the snow -avoiding braking at the saame time as that's guaranteed to lead to a fall. Then, once to side, controlled deceleration.


If there had been any ice underneath, this would have caused a fall, and, with a car twenty centimetres away, guaranteed injury. We wonder what the driver would have said then —aassuming they stopped at all.

Certainly driving off seemed to be their sole reaction to the near-collision



It's interesting to look back. They only come up behind the bike within the last ten seconds of the approach to the junction —the time the cyclist is gently slowing down. And, irony of irony, because the tax-dodging cyclist stopped to let the family cross the zebra crossing. If instead they'd gone straight over the crossing (the kids hadn't stepped out, so it'd have been legal, albeit antisocial), then VU61HXM wouldn't have had a chance to run over the cyclist.

At the junction itself the driver didn't even make any attempt to drive legally. Look at the angle of the front wheel. They were lined up right from the outset to cut across the roundabout and the cyclist.  Not a moment of hesitation, not even to safely assess whether there were any drivers approaching from the right. The decision to drive on the wrong side of the mini roundabout had been made before they started to pull out.


And it's not like they "just" went onto the painted roundel. They barely grazed it with the passenger side wheels.


The rear view also shows how close they come knocking the cyclist off. With the wide angle lens, that is probably within 15 cm.


The only way to put a safe gap in was to put both hands on those MTB bars bars and steer into the snow, while taking care to stay upright.



This is one of the worse bits of driving experienced for a while. In the worst road conditions Bristol has experienced for almost a year.  In terms of actions, it makes the cut for the CPS guidelines for prosecuting dangerous driving.

• failing to have a proper and safe regard for vulnerable road users such as cyclists
• overtaking which could not have been carried out safely;
• disregard of traffic lights and other road signs, which, on an objective analysis, would appear to be deliberate;

And particularly:

• a brief but obvious danger arising from a seriously dangerous manoeuvre. 

Let's see what happens. Filing planned for Saturday, with the full "dull" long video and a detailed statement; will do a followup in the week to make sure the NIP is in the post, then we'll see whether this makes the cut as something worthy of the CPS's time. Oh and this time: ruthlessness from our side. Missing report: escalate. Failure to prosecute: escalate and publicise.

If A&S police don't do better than they have done in the 2014 and 2016 experiments, they may as well cancel their safe passing program and give out Nissan Notes instead.

Causes of Congestion in the Greater Bristol Area: hint: not 20 mph zones

What has made congestion in and around Bristol worse —for those people driving or sitting in buses?

Some people are saying it's common sense that it's the 20 mph limits, and that common sense beats data. No: thinking beats common sense.

we can argue about whether @georgeferguson_x did things to make traffic worse;

RPZs didn't; they add more passing places to the narrow roads, and if they discourage people from driving in, could reduced traffic levels.

20 mph a factor? Not given average weekday traffic speed. (Source: Waze)



One key point is that if the average speed in a road is 2-7 mph, as Stapleton Road is enjoying, then 20 mph is an unrealised dream. It's not the problem. Question is: what's causing that delay?

The main factor is the number of people choosing to drive. Evidence of this comes from looking at the M4 heading away from Bristol, which is going at 12 mph.

By choosing an away-from-city route we can avoid blaming metrobus related roadworks or buildup from urban congestion. There's none of : cyclists, bus stop buildouts, traffic lights or 20 mph to blame rather than accept the root cause of the traffic jam is the decision of you and others to get in the car that morning..



It's people driving places. Which may be correlated with population growth, and the growth of north fringe sprawl housing and offices. North Lockleaze, or, as it pretends to be, Chiswick Village? New. Those fields north of the A4174 by Emerson's Green? Houses you get to see from the M4. That's a change: more suburban housing, more people driving around the city.

Secondary factors to motor traffic in town:  junctions, buses stopping, vehicles turning right, cars parked where they shouldn't. All amplified by traffic volume: bigger queues, longer waits, more turning vehicles, more people "just parking for a minute" in a bus lane, so forcing the bus to try and pull out and increasing overall unhappiness.

Traffic lights? They have a worse (but fairer) throughput compared roundabouts; see Modeling Roundabout Traffic Flow as a Dynamic Fluid System (skip the pictures and look at the pics on P8-11, knowing that "flux" means "number of vehicles arriving per second"). Essentially, all of junctions overload, but two-lane roundabouts get the most through.However that paper assumes that you can get off the roundabout, which as we know at peak hours (Hello Bearpit! Hello St Pauls Roundabout!) doesn't hold. Furthermore by modelling traffic as an incompressible fluid, they miss out on the game-theoretic aspects of the problem, as in: why you'd pull out in front of other vehicles, even if you know it will block others.

Because one problem roundabouts and traffic lights both have is people blocking junctions, so stopping cross traffic getting through. If anyone has evidence of yellow-hash do-not-block zones ever being enforced, we'd love to see it. We lack that evidence. What we do believe is that it would reduce junction deadlocks and so boost cross traffic. Again, evidence would be good. Perhaps the council could run an experiment —like enforcing the law for a week.

Fast moving cyclists? Nope. They just go past the queues and have an average speed above cars at peak hours. This clearly upsets some people who resent the fact that they have to drive a Fiesta 1.1L up the A38. We would hate driving a Fiesta 1.1L too, even on an empty road.

Cyclists at under 12 mph? No data. They are easy to pass when there is no oncoming traffic, so as the overall traffic volume increases, get harder to pass. Having bus lanes and functional (i.e. not blocked by parked cars) bike lanes, lanes considered safe enough by cyclists that they use them would eliminate that problem. And, if parking spaces taken away for them, reduce justification for driving in.

Oncoming traffic? This is a problem in much of the inner city: there isn't space to get through down a road in the presence of oncoming vehicles. As well as traffic volumes, we have to consider whether the rise of the Urban SUV amplifies the problem. Not only does that oncoming Volvo XC 90 on the school run take up more space, the VW Touran parked alongside the Audi Q6 means that there is less open road to play with anyhow.

Roadworks? We know about those, especially: in the centre, on the M32, along the A4174, the A370 and by Cumberland Basin. Hopefully they will be transient, as in "fixed before 2020"



One thing is for inevitable: the cost of delays caused by these roadworks won't have been included in their already broken cost model.

When that Metrobus work is finished, will the problems go away? Not without some fundamental change in how people get into the city —which means that you need a compelling story from places like Yate, from Portishead, and the other dormitory towns. A railway from Portishead here is potentially compelling, because you get a direct line to Templemeads without traffic delays.  It's a shame that central government beliefs (trains bad, BRT viable) and local government issues (naive optimism) have caused a focus on FirstBus as a solution.

Will Metrobus be compelling for those actually in its catchment area? We have no idea whatsoever. Which gives us something in common with the metrobus team.

Anyway, to close: for anyone saying "it's the 20 mph zones", or "its the traffic lights", we say "explain how the M4 moves at 12 mph on a weekday morning?"

Traffic lights on roundabouts, cyclists and tinted windows

Bristol Traffic does have a twitter account, which rarely gets used for the following reason "to spend time on twitter is to waste an important life". Yet we do get notifications on messages sent to @BristolTraffic, as it is a way for little people to contact us. We obviously care more for little people to call up our Stokes Croft "adult content" fulfilment centre, get redirected to our Luxembourg sales office for Bristol Traffic s.a.R.L, buy entertainment products from the tax-efficient locality and then have us deliver them to anywhere within the former Avon county.

Today, we get a tweet from one Andrew Fawkes:

@bristoltraffic Would you like to R/T this? Even turning them off at peak times would help congestion! Thank you.

Pet hate: traffic lights on roundabouts. RBs were designed to keep traffic flowing. Please r/t if you agree and let's keep traffic flowing!

@AndrewWFawkes is proud to be a "Marketing consultant, career coach, classic car activist, MotoGP fan, guitarist & singer in a band and lots of other spare time activities!", based in Somerset UK".

Somerset is of course the elf-kingdom, which is where important people live, despite the fact that Bristol council is trying to push bike lanes into the kingdom -against the elf-folk's wishes. Everyone who commutes in up the A370 gets stuck somewhere in the way by anti-car policies of the inner city.

The traffic lights on roundabouts are merely a detail -and not one we care much for ourselves.

We are actually against them for a number of reasons.

1. By making it safer for cyclists to cross, they make it easier to cycle round the city, so encouraging cycling.
2. The James Barton Roundabout has a special light for buses coming from the M32 direction, so encouraging bus use.
3. Sometimes we have to wait at them for up to 30s
4. Sometimes when we pull out just as it goes red, our van blocks other traffic who then get upset.
5. The lights on the James Barton and St Pauls roundabouts are still on at 4am, where the only traffic is our van on an emergency delivery of inflatable sex aids to some of our St Andrews customers.

What we aren't sure about is the idea that turning them off at peak times would help congestion.

Having to put traffic lights on a roundabout is an indication that the roundabout has entered a failed state; that without them you woudn't get fair access to the roundabout.

Because a feature of a roundabout is that you can pull out, which can only be done if one of two conditions are met

1. There's nobody on the roundabout.
2. The roundabout is very busy, but traffic is exiting onto your road, so you can pull out as they turn off.

At peak hours, the "nobody on the roundabout" condition is not met, so we depend on the "traffic exiting" condition.

If people don't turn off onto your junction, you don't get out -leading to what is known in queue/scheduling theory as starvation.

For anyone trying to cycle over a roundabout when someone pulls out, this is why we do it. It's not just because we hate the cyclists for being there and not paying -it's because the only way to pull out in a busy roundabout 

Here, for example, is the car AE59JGU pulling out in front of a bicycle on the St Michaels roundabout. It's not that they didn't see the bicycle -it is that it was a weekday morning, and the only way to get out was to cut up the cyclist. There was no reason for the cyclist to catch up with them and say "please don't cut me up like that -it makes you look bad in the video". That was just selfish behaviour by a cyclist that shouldn't have been there.

While covering this incident, notice that the car had tinted windows. This is a great feature from a game-theory perspective, as it introduces more uncertainty into the negotiations. There is no way the tax -dodger could make eye contact with the driver, to see them and for them to see you. Instead, the dark windows depersonalise the car " there is nobody in there that cares -this is only a machine", as well as stopping the cyclist from even imagining that they've been seen.

Given that uncertainty, slowing down is the only thing the tax-dodger could do -creating the opportunity for the audi to pull out. Such an incident discourages the city-folk from cycling, so making easier for commuters from the Elf-Kingdom to come in to the city and so create wealth.

To summarise then:

• Traffic lights do hold up traffic, but not always at peak hours, as they make the scheduling of junction ingress fairer.
• If the council does remove them, we have to correct for this scheduling by pulling out when you don't have the right of way
• Cyclists are much safer to pull out in front of than buses
• Tinted windows are great for reducing the confidence of cyclists, so making it easier to pull out in front of them.

Andrew -thank you for your opinions! We have summarised our views on the matter!

The R242AAC incident: the outcome

There's an article in the Independents aying "Helmet Cameras are useless and the police can't do anything with the videos". Sadly we fear this is untrue: the police can prosecute drivers with the videos -if they choose to do so. The fact that most of the country hasn't seen any such prosecutions is due to the police, not the law.

Sadly, because Bristol police do intervene. Here is the sentencing letter from a small incident in which the car R242AAC forgot to give way to cyclists on a roundabout. We have covered this here and here.


 

Case against Anthony Butterworth, 

I am writing to let you know what has happened in this case in which you are a witness.

At the hearing on 30th December 2011 at North Avon Magistrates Court, Anthony Butterworth pleaded guilty to the following charges:

• Drive a mechanically propelled vehicle on a road/in a public place without due care and attention.

Anthony Butterworth was sentenced as follows

• To pay £375 fine

• Victim surcharge £15

• To pay £35 costs

• Given 5 penalty points.

...etc.

Five penalty points merely for nearly running two cyclists over? It's that -and the impact on the driver's insurance that hurts.

As a reminder, here is the incident in question:



Admittedly, he did pull straight out onto the roundabout without looking, but it was a quiet bank holiday. He had no reason to expect people to be on bicycles at that time in the morning.

The war on the motorists will not be over while the police are using helmet camera videos to impose fines and penalty points on law-abiding motorists!

We actually spoke to the parent who made the video, and got this statement:

"I am pleased that finally this driver was punished for their actions. The police and Jon Rogers were very supportive all through this process -going to a lot of effort to track down and prosecute the driver. I would like to thank everyone involved.

As you can see from the video, my son was wearing a helmet, and he has taken part in the council-backed cycling courses, which instruct children how to cycle safely in our city. 

As you can also see, this does nothing to address the fact that some drivers are selfish and dangerous. You can tell people what the safe position for vehicular cycling is, but unless the drivers look -or care that you are there-, you are still in danger.

The next time someone tries to argue that vehicular cycling is the right approach, that safety in numbers is the answer -and dutch style cycling paths a mistake -point them at this video and say "how could these people have cycled more safely?"

Well, they have the right to their opinions, no matter how misguided they are. We just close with the thought that a police force enforcing laws against motorists for such minor infractions of traffic laws could be one of the most  dangerous parts of a cycling city.

Eric Pickles declares war on infidels

There's been a lot of concern in the press recently about Militant Secularists, who are as despised as much as Militant Cyclists and feared as much as proponents of Sharia Law.

The cabinet has come up with a three pronged plan to encourage more prayer and religion in our streets

1. George Osborne will encourage everyone in the country to pray that his austerity plan will actually work, despite evidence to the contrary.
2. Andrew Lansley will be encourage people to pray for their friends and family to get better, and in fact this will become the primary front line medical care. When Britain was a Christian nation -right up until the militant secularists and their so-called Enlightenment brought evidence-driven medicine to the country, prayer was the only medicine people had. The NHS reforms will return Britain to its roots.
3. Eric Pickles will do more to encourage prayer in our cities.

The last is what interests us, as he has come up with a plan to encourage prayer not only in our local councils, but in our city streets. 

In a special over-skype interview with us, Eric Pickles declared

For too long the militants -be they secularists or cyclists- have had free reign of our cities. I propose to correct this by encouraging cyclists to pray regularly. I have come up with a cost-effective plan to achieve this, which I call "doing absolutely nothing". This, combined with cost-cutting measures and the wrapping up of even half-arsed attempts to fund cycling in British cities -a European invention, I hasten to add- will make the cyclists less militant and more religious.

We are glad to agree with him, and include a video Eric was particularly proud of that shows how it only took one HGV at a roundabout to turn a Glaswegian cyclist back into a devout Glasweigan who now knows that cycling is not an acceptable form of transport.

Eric closed:

Having rediscovered God, we expect Magnatom to return to the traditions of this great country --going to Celtic and Rangers matches and paying for right to hate your fellow Christians. 

We hesitated about pointing out to Eric that Rangers FC is currently in administration, as it would have made him appear out of touch. Nor did we raise the fact that here in the south west, we follow Other Gods. While our Queen declared that she is a defender of all faiths, we are not convinced those that involve human sacrifice were on the list of "all faiths" that she imagined.

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.

Reminiscing about the time before the war began

We see this video of Bristol on a weekday last week.

It looks to us like old market to counterslip lane then down to the St Mary Redcliff roundabout, a loop back towards queen's square, along the harbour front then up Prince Street towards Baldwin Street.

Some people say this is an anti-cycling road design, but the reality is this congestion is a result of the war on motoring. Prince Street bridge was made alternating to cars, hence the congestion on Prince Street and nearby. Queen's square was converted from a dual-carriageway to a so-called-public-square a decade ago, and all those people stuck in the Redcliffe roundabout will be reminiscing about the temporary flyover they took down late last century.

The Battle of the Bearpit Continues

We are pleased to have another photo from "TH", who is rapidly becoming out city-centre correspondent, today with another "Bearpit Incident", this one being rated as "minor" in the international Bearpit Incident Scale.

Apparently the Snap-on van was trying to cut into the road running into Park Row, when the car which was following the markings on the road went ahead and followed the markings on the road, forcing the van to cancel its plan. The van driver is apparently making their views known to the driver of the car.

No, this is not the Bristol Traffic van. Furthermore, the tactic of staying the right hand lane all the way from the end of the M32 to this roundabout is effective as it is the least congested, especially at the bearpit roundabout itself. but you should start to cut in earlier, once the lights from newfoundland way go green, then stay in the right of the two lanes past the bus station -so avoiding any waiting buses. You should only swerve into the left hand lane after passing the bus station.

This is one of the problems of driving like a local in Bristol: you have to know the real solutions to every junction, not what is painted on the ground, which are merely hints for tourists.

The Bearpit: the heart of Bristol

Why were down at the Croft for the festival, then, apart from emergency deliveries to the massage parlours? To see the bearpit back in full swing again.

In the nineteenth century, the festivals that used to take place in the area were a subject of national scandal. Since then, it's got quieter.

Yet it remembers. Look at the sign on the exit, pointing visitors to the normal highlights of the area: the sex shops and takeaways of the croft, and the St James Barton Car Park. Nobody else would, normally, visit the bearpit.

Yet on the streetfest day, people are out enjoying themselves in the shadow of the old Avon County Council buildings, tweaked to hide their original 1974-era neo-stalinist glory.

Stalls selling clothes, food, alcohol.

People sitting in the sun, enjoying a beer or four.

Even from the three lane roundabout that surrounds this inner city parkland, you can see the smoke of freshly cooked burgers blowing over the road.

If the St James Barton Roundabout is the centre of Bristol, the one roundabout where you have to drive round, the bearpit is the core of the roundabout; the bit of Bristol around which everything rotates. Yet so few people come out to celebrate it. One a year, the city does!

Respect buses

Contributor "TH" sends their second photo of a car/bus conflict. The car loses. Remember that.

This is St James Barton Roundabout, judging by the Primark in the distance. Apparently the bus was on the way to LHR, hopefully they didn't miss their flight, and DV51YYM didn't sustain too much damage.

Speaking of buses, here's a video from London of someone on a bicycle making a mistake.

Hipster Trash Compactor - East London from jssjmsvckry on Vimeo.

This video is doing the rounds of the international cycling sites, and should be shown to all schoolkids as a "what not to do" video. What they did wrong was not "try and slip between the gap of the car turning right and the bus that was pulling out having just got a green light". No, their mistake was earlier. It was "not slowing down for the junction". Approaching a set of lights, there are three states it can be in: red, green or changing.

Red: cross traffic with RoW at speed. If lucky, survive. Drivers get pissed off.
Green: vehicles pulling out hit you, especially large red ones. Drivers get pissed off.
Changing: either of the above.

There was no good outcome here, once the idiot chose to hit the junction at speed. The only unpredictable outcome was that someone else was videoing it. Speaking of which, isn't it a pity the cameraman didn't pull over and talk to the loser, because if you are going to be filmed doing something that near-suicidal, your face should be immortalised round the world.

Remember, both car drivers and cyclists: larger craft have right of way.

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.

EP concerns: are they becoming pro-cyclist?

We're a bit worried about the Evening Post this week, after they published an article criticising a white van for failing to stop after knocking a cyclist off their bike on the St Pauls roundabout.

All we can say here is that it is fortunate that the E.P. commenting team managed to point out the obvious: that most cyclists are law-breaking criminals, therefore the statement by the cyclist is probably untrue, and even if it is, they deserved it.

What nobody seems to have picked up on, here on the St Pauls roundabout itself, is a new sign that you can just see in the distant verge looking towards the Lawrence Hill roundabout: the speed limit on the dual carriageway has been dropped to 40 mph. This not only adds to our journey time, it will encourage more cyclists to try and use the road, to try and cycle across this junction -which it is clearly not safe to do! Lowering this speed limit on a busy motorway approach route will only encourage non motorised traffic, and so endanger them.

What's even worse, when an article showing how Gary Hopkins, our new council cabinet member for transport had to park at a bus stop to nip into some shops, some of the commenters actually criticised Gary, even though most -rightfully- blamed passing cyclists.

The fact is, if you drive round the city, the only short stay parking places are the ones where it is not technically legal: the double yellows, the bus stops, the school-keep-clear zones, the ambulance-only areas, the zebra crossings. Anyone who drives round the city, who tries to contribute to the local economy by nipping into shops or pubs on the way in or out knows that. Yet the E.P, rather than say Yes! We have a man on the inside! Finally someone who understands our problems! they criticise him, they say this is wrong, he should stop it.

Gary Hopkins is not a criminal. Being Gary Hopkins is not a crime

We just think we should say that. So we can say that we were first when the T-shirts using these slogans appear.

Now, here is where it gets weird. After the denouncement of Gary went up, all the commenters started blaming cyclists or even joining in the denouncement -yet now those comments have gone. All of them. It's as if nobody ever said anything on the topic. They have been uncommented. All that is left is a couple of letters on the letters page, both of which blame Gary, rather than the failure of the city to provide short-stay parking by our cities newsagents, off-licenses and takeaway outlets. What has happened? Why are those people who dare to say the truth being censored by the E.P?

Roundabout work

There's nothing more frustrating than being held up at a roundabout by one of those idiots who doesn't pull out just because there is a bit of oncoming traffic they are required to give way to. This usually happens when there's a police car or an L-plate driver up ahead.

How do you cope in this situation? S937JHY for JGSF removals shows what to do.

You switch into the left lane, go past the right hand lane then pull out in front of them. You mustn't signal when doing this, as it would give the game away.

Now, some troublemaker will say "isn't that lane OK if you are going straight on?", for which the answer is: only if there is a straight on. This is the mini-roundabout at the junction of York Street -where the van is- Sussex Place to the left, and Arley Hill to the right. There is no straight on. What the van has managed to do is sneak past about five or six slow moving cars and pull out aggressively, so coping with the coward at the front who wasn't being aggressive enough. Fast, effective, not that illegal.

Ring Road problems

Anyone who says that a southern ring road will solve traffic problems never goes to the Northern half of the A4174 on a weekday.

This is the MOD car park approach to the A4174, not even the RR proper, yet the road is blocked by cars

Here they are stuck, waiting to get onto the ring road. What is wrong? Don't know. When will it be fixed? Don't know. The BMW to the far right of the pic knows a sneaky solution, an "exit strategy" that works. Too bad the MOD don't have viable exit strategies for other problems, like wars in Afghanistan.

Looking north to the roundabout you can see the BMW way ahead in the left lane. Instead of trying to turn right at the car park exit roundabout, it went left as far as the abbey wood nursery, did a U-turn there where the lane separation goes away, and snuck up the left hand lane for vehicles heading west. The congestion is mostly for vehicles heading east towards the M32.

Whatever happened, it spreads. Here is Muller Road, fifteen minutes later. Same thing: no movement of motors towards the M32.

South Gloucs. council needs to recognise the problem and widen the A4174, while Bristol Council needs to listen to us, and widen Muller Road. Cut down the trees, take away the unused pavement. Job done.

The bicycle death lane of the Bearpit

While looking at the enhanced cycling parking of the Bearpit, we missed out on the cycling opportunities of the area.

Here, then, is the safe cycling option for this multilane roundabout.

1. There is a line of buses waiting in the left hand lane to turn into the bus station.
2. There are two cars who have mistakenly followed the road signs to get stuck in this queue.
3. The correct route in car is to go into the turn-right lane then slide in to the left lane after getting past the bus queue. The lane markings are only there for visitors.
4. Bicycles can go along the pavement, where it is signed with a white blob on the floor.
5. The bike lane ends precisely at this white marking, at which point the bicycle is forced out under the bus.

Nobody uses this path: it has no value whatsoever. It lets you skip past a traffic light, only to die under a bus. The correct way to negotiate this roundabout is to avoid it completely, or to go through underneath, through the Bearpit itself.

On the topic of the Bearpit itself, the People's Republic of Stokes Croft are trying to gentrify it.

Cabot Circus Secret Parking

Another phrase that brings visitors to this site is "secret parking"; people searching the web in the desperate hope that whoever has discovered a secret parking space somewhere in the city is going to write about it, rather than treasure their secret for use in emergencies.

Well, that's going to change. Bristol Traffic is going to document those secret parking spaces. We may charge for sharing our knowledge of special-secret-parking-spaces, in fact our contributors can feel free to charge to delete the photographs, so if you want your secret parking space kept secret, it may cost you.

Here, secret parking for Cabot Circus, just off the St James Barton Roundabout, a roundabout which, if you look at the city's open spaces plan, actually constitutes open space. By parking here, you get a pleasant walk through an open space, then "Discover Broadmead" before arriving at Cabot Circus.

There's plenty of room here, no risk of passing pushchairs scratching your paintwork, whether your car is big or small.

Access looks fairly straight forward: approach the roundabout from the BRI, pop up on the pavement and nip through this gap in the railings.

Exit is, presumably, the same way. This is probably the only tricky part of the operation, especially if you want to head for the furthest lane, then you need to be fairly aggressive in your pull out or roundabout lane changing tactics.

A roundabout failure

Apparently the police were out on Zetland road on Wednesday morning, enforcing traffic rules on cyclists. This means sadly, that nobody was around at the top of the hill, St Michaels Hill mini-roundabout, to enforce traffic rules there. Such as the "do not block a junction" rule.

Roundabouts are probably the ideal junction as far as the Association of British Drivers are concerned. No lights, no pedestrian time to stop cars getting through, cars get right of way over any schoolkids trying to get from one island to another. Sadly, queue theory, one of those pesky little things the ABD don't agree with (along with pollution statistics, finite fuel supplies and global warming), kicks in here. It is impossible for more vehicles to enter a roundabout than leaves it. If the majority of vehicles are heading in the same direction -here down St Michael's Hill and then to the city centre-, then the maximum load of the roundabout is the same vehicles/hour as that single road can sustain. At this point, law abiding cars will stop and wait patiently for the junction to clear before pulling out. Here we some some waiting patiently and only blocking traffic leaving Cotham Road.


Soon they are joined by a car full of school kids, WP05VXC. There is still enough room for cars turning right off St Michael's hill to get through to Cotham Road, though visibility is hampered.

As the traffic crawls forward, a Range Rover pulls out to take up the space. No cars can turn right from Cotham Road to Hampton Road. No bikes can get over to go down Cotham Hill -it's bikes only in that direction. Hampton Road to Cotham Road is the only routing that is still live.

The range rover L12BXF is soon joined by a red Toyota from Cotham Hill. The RR hasn't moved that far forward, so now the line of cars continues across the junction.

A pickup from Cotham Hill now seizes the opportunity. Unfortunately, the Toyota (kids inside again) prevents the pickup behind it from even completing the turn; it has to sit with its indicators on. Blocking the exit for any vehicles heading up Hampton road, such as the two vans behind it.

There we have it. A complete roundabout failure in the space of 30 seconds. The throughput of the roundabout becomes that of the slowest moving road off it: 0 vehicles/hour, so delivering the same throughput to anyone trying to head in any direction off the roundabout.

What could be done to prevent this? Perhaps we could have someone issue spot fines for vehicles blocking a junction? Perhaps a local newspaper could start a campaign against people who seem to be going out of their way to inconvenience cars? Here at Bristol Traffic, we think such persecution is uncalled for, and would be another sign of an anti-car city.

Near Miss

This is the St Michael's roundabout, where religious dissenters were burned alive during Queen Mary's rule. Obviously in those days the mini roundabout was not present, as the dissenters would have been run over before the burning was complete.

On the morning this photo was taken, the ongoing BRI electrical work has resulted in bits of St Michael's Hill being dug up, and single lane access blocked by traffic lights. This has created a traffic jam, which goes across the roundabout; some vehicles are waiting in the roundabout itself, trying to avoid eye contact with everyone else. The Renault Clio, for example, has just come out of Cotham Hill and turned right into the traffic jam, so making it harder for vehicles coming up St Michael's hill to turn right onto Cotham Road.

These two cars, the fiesta and the BMW are both trying to turn down Cotham Road, which isn't actually wide enough for two vehicles. The fiesta was partway through turning left from Hampton Road when the (fast moving) BMW appeared round the parked cars, sounded its horn and forced its way through. I don't think the Fiesta driver was very impressed; there was much sounding of horns and emergency braking by both vehicles.

There's an interesting question here: who is at fault? Is it the Fiesta driver, who didn't give way to the 1-series BMW on the roundabout. Or the latter, which didn't give a car that was midway through a manoeuvre the right of way? Or did they both have unrealistic expectations?