Field repairs

Can we observe that this is least competent bit of wingmirror taping we have ever encountered in the city.



It's barely held on with sellotape, they haven't even bothered to rotate the mirror for better aerodynamics. This mirror doesn't stand a chance of surviving motorway speeds. Which means first trip up the M5 & they'll be in Michaelwood service station buying some emergency insulating tape and some scissors. Do you know how much insulating tape costs on service stations? Do you know how much insulating tape it needs to hold the driver side window up after a failure of the electric window mechanism? Too much. And yet its not easy to drive to Birmingham "gateway to the middle" while holding the window up with your hand. That's why you should always fix up your vehicle parts with insulating tape *before* you set off, and keep some spare in the back of the car as the long-journey kit, along with the WD-40 and the hammer.

This car and its field repairs? Not a chance. You'd be embarrassed to drive round the core inner city with mirror repairs that bad. It says "we care enough out our mirrors to want to preserve them" (weakness) and it says "we're not competent enough to tape them down". That is, unless the real issue was they got fed up with the noise it made swinging into the dorr, and did just enough to shut it up.

Ripping the thing off completely would have been the better option : "where we're going, we won't need wing-mirrors!". But no: the owner of this vehicle tried, just failed.

We should really have a ranking scheme for wing mirror repairs. We'll give this one; 1 out 5

Governments have the most interesting data. Today: MOTs

There's a new web site. mot-history.net, which lets you type in any registration and make of a car and get its entire MOT history. Excluding cars < 3 years old, this means you can get the effective history of a vehicle.

This is fascinating, especially when you use it to look up the history of a vehicle you've sold on (*).


What is equally fascinating, is what is shows about things you can get away with. In particular, holding wing mirrors on with masking tape is not an MoT failure.

You can also get away with: tyres nearly worn down, steering in trouble (wheel balance?), suspension in trouble, exhaust corroded, small damage to your windscreen.

You actually have to wait a year, get those front tyres below the 1.6mm limit as it rubs slightly against the wing of the car before they say "no, time to fix the toy"

By May 2015, this car (WP53JVM, for curious), fails because bolts are missing on the wheels.

Now, you can argue about wing mirrors, suspension, etc. But driving around with bolts missing from your wheels? That's not just cause for keeping the car in the garage, that should be cause for arresting the driver for some offence related to driving in a way to endanger everyone nearby.

Anyway, it's interesting data, and you can get it for any car.

Which means you can now do some interesting data-science projects —including some which would be something schoolkids to do as "maths in the real world" projects.

1. Look at all your friends' and neigbours' car histories and see whose is the one most likely to cause a crash. Then make a note of who never to accept a lift from, especially at night, in the rain or winter conditions.
2. Do a census of the entire history of all cars in your road over 3 years old, counting the pass/fail ratio as well as numbers of advisory issues. Then repeat this for other parts of the city, to determine the different vehicle quality statuses of the region.
3. We've always asserted that cars in montpelier only need wing-mirrors for the MoT. Does the data imply this?
4. Use the historical mileage data of cars over four years old and use this to determine the average annual mileage of cars in the same streets. Is the MOT failure rate proportional to the miles across all parts of the city, or are some cars continually failing even with short mileage? Those are potentially the vehicles driven more around the city.
5. Using that historical data, have the miles driven by residents increased or decreased after the RPZs were rolled out? What about people who don't live in an RPZ yet have jobs in the city centre or nearby?
6. When buying a car, look up its history. It is a sign of a car that is maintained, or one neglected?
7. Look at some lorries. Is their failure rate better or worse than other vehicles? What about vans?

The scariest thing to consider is this: the MOT certifies that a vehicle was considered safe by MOT standards for one single day. The car above could have been driving around with broken windscreen wipers, failing suspension and missing wheel bolts for 364 days before it failed its test. After being fixed, it now has another 364 days for its brake pads to finally wear too thin, tyres to wear out, those coil springs to finally corrode through.

Drivers like these are potentially some of those who complain about cyclists "not having MOTs on their bicycles". Well, with drivers like that, who cares about the state of the cyclists' bikes, other than whether or not both their brakes work? Because they aren't what you have to worry about, whether walking, cycling or driving. It's the people driving round the city in a VW golf with underbolted wheels, worn brake pads, failing suspension and defective windscreen and wipers.

To close, then: a competition for the weekend. Pick a car you see ~ 10 years old, put in its history and find out exactly what it's been failing MOTs for. We want the most dramatic reasons -and so far "missing wheel bolts on two wheels" is it.

(*) Actually it wasn't that vehicle, which was WP53JVO. Getting the last digit wrong turned up what must been another of the last batch of MkIV Golfs to leave the VW dealer.

Bristol vs Self driving cars

One little sighting over by our strategic PCSO-state partners, Google, are their self driving cars.

They are utterly not-ready for Bristol. You can see this at a glance

Not only is there a bollard on the roof, there appear to be sensors coming out of every corner.

Here in the city centre we have a word to describe vehicles with wing mirrors attached: visitors.

While having wingmirrors helps you in certain out of town operations, primarily changing lanes on the M4, in town it actually hurts you: it makes your car about 30 cm wider so significantly reduces your choices as to where to drive. And, as their presence broadcasts that you are not a local —but instead have a vehicle you care for— you lose every negotiation that takes place, be it a junction or a "who will give way first" interaction. And, when parked, you don't have to bother looking out the window when you hear the sound of a car-on-parked-car interaction, unless it is so loud that you fear it may be some damage needing bodywork repairs.

Now put something on every corner of the vehicle whose presence is actually critical for the self-driving feature to work. Sensors attempting to detect what is too close, so the multi-layer neural network that is is google self-drive program can make a decision as to what to do next.

It's doomed.

That's before even looking at what complexity of road the cars are exposed to. This road, "Castro", is a complex environment on the basis that it actually has people walking. Yet it is wide-enough for oncoming vehicles to pass each other, all junctions are nice simple right-angled crossings, and visibility is reasonable.  Now imagine taking a car trained here and trying to drive down Clifton Vale, the one with the blind z-bend you have to share with oncoming traffic. The car would just give up. And it would share the experience with every other google car, saying "avoid this road". Before long whole swathes of the city would be blacklisted by Google cars, cars who give up on account of their paintwork and external mounts being valued.

Which, when you think about it, could be no bad thing

Wingmirror Tax payment issues

One of our vast fleet of vehicles has become eligible for paying the wingmirror tax

 
Which raises a question: when?

Not having a wingmirror

1. gives you a tactical advantage in negotations with oncoming traffic when that oncoming vehicle still retains theirs.
2. lets you drive through monty at least 3 mph faster.
3. stops you having to worry about cars driving past when you are parked in those same montpelier streets.
4. ensures that you aren't elegible to pay the tax a second time.

Any disadvantages?

1. unless the mirror is blatantly hanging off, held on only by duct tape, oncoming vehicles may not realise that you don't care about your wingmirrors; you really need to communicate your status and intent to achieve the best outcome in the negotiation over who goes first.
2. being passenger side, you have to park your car on the wrong side of the road to gain immunity to the passing-car problem.
3. Pulling out from parked is slightly harder. You may even now want to consider indicating.
4. it's not great changing lanes on the M4
5. Bicycles coming up the inside of you on a bus lane have to look out for you switching into their lane before a junction -but they had to do that anyway.
6. Kills that conversation starter in the evening post "a cyclist smashed my wing mirror and cycled off -and do you think they were insured". 

Apart from the motorway lane changing problem, all of these are manageable, and the key advantage "you know you won't break it again" gives tangible tax-payment reductions.

The only time you need a functional wingmirror is the day of the MoT.

Which raises an interesting idea for a new business: wingmirrors to rent by the day.

1. Survey the streets of monty and the taxis of the city, build up some stats of vehicle brands & types in the target market. (example above; VW)
2. Identify those mirrors in the market where the cost of replacement is significant: (example above; VW). 
3. Build up a stock of the main mirror types from some of the discount online wingmirror retailers (yes, they exist).
4. Discreetly let it be known that you can rent mirrors at a rate of £5/mirror/day.
5. Rent them

The need for building up the portfolio of mirrors could be avoided if you start by requiring a weeks notice "to put you in the calendar". You can then buy the mirrors on demand online, building up the set of mirrors you need driven directly by customer demand.

Yes: this could work.

The main competition is actually going to be mirror theft: you need to price your daily rate low enough that it's not worth stealing mirrors off other vehicles

Other than that though: "wingmirrors to rent" could be the new business to transform the city.

Paying the Wingmirror and Bodywork taxes in one go.

Field Operative "TH" emails this photo of trouble on Bond Street South, outside the new Future Inns Hotel/Phoenix Court BCC Offices heading towards the Underpass in Temple Way at 5:00pm 10th May.

Delivery driver in the Mercedes Van ends up with a Peugot 207 cutting across him. The 207 lost his passenger mirror in the process.

Just to add to the situation, the Bus Driver thinks he can follow other cars by mounting the Central Reservation kerb to pass...

Not enough room - One sandwiched 207!

We express our sympathies to WN60ZXD, and welcome them to now owning a Montpelier-style vehicle. We must remind FirstBus drivers, especially that of WX05RVK that their vehicles are wider than cars, and when they go up on raised pavements and reservations, the vehicle tilts a bit too.

To stop this problem in future, we propose an awareness course for car drivers, teaching them that vans have a tendency to pull out without warning, and that buses not only have blind spots, they may not be fully aware of the width of their vehicle. Just as London has a "don't undertake lorries that come up behind you at ASLs" campaign for cyclists, we propose a "don't get stuck where a FirstBus bus tries to drive over a central reservation to get past your collision with a van". We believe that such an awareness program would be more cost-effective and beneficial than a "how wide your bus is" course to FirstBus drivers. 

Roundabout work #3: WR08ADK pays the wing mirror tax

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

Found: one van wing mirror

A wing mirror was spotted in Fairfield Road last week. It's probably gone now as anyone else whose van needs an MOT soon will have picked it up and duct-taped it together enough to get through the "has two wing mirrors" part of the test.

This is why it's always so traumatic when the DVLA hits Montpelier. A lot of people run untaxed vehicles not because the tax and insurance costs have to come after the RAC home recovery breakdown cover in terms of priority, but because the MOT has rules about the number of wing mirrors and the state of bodywork of vehicles, and it is impossible to meet those requirements and keep a car in Montpelier.

The War on Motorists will not be over until the government rolls out specific MOT requirements for different parts of Britain, of Bristol. In Stoke Bishop, for example, you'd fail the test for having an old car, anything less than Group G, and 2 wheel drive would only be permitted on two seater sports toys. In Montpelier, the wingmirror rule would be waived as unrealistic.Taxis would have a special "fail if the indicators and more than one brake light work" clause.

Adam Eff pays the wingmirror tax

There's a fancy new bicycle magazine out, Boneshaker, full of lovely photographs, very well printed, by some people affiliated with the Bristol Bike Project.

Those things show something worrying: we are losing the battle of hearts and minds. It's all very well getting AA and RAC press releases into the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph papers, it's all very well having Jeremy Clarkson on TV, but people are starting to suspect that Top Gear is made up, and it's all a bit 1980s in the not-very-cool-1980s way. Not so much Audi Quattro as Bryan Adams. What do we get as car books and magazines for example? Hayes manuals. Not very compelling.

No, we need a  way to win. But it shouldn't need violence: that rarely solves problems, just makes viewpoints less flexible. Which is why we are sad to hear that someone in a van clipped one of the Boneshaker Magazine's photographers, Adam Eff, while cycling along the St Marks contraflow.

In his own words:

From: Adam
Date: Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 10:40 PM
Subject: Van caused me pain on St Marks contra-flow

I am in pain. Apologies if this message is overly long.

A few hours ago I was heading to Sweet Mart on St Marks road in Easton using the contra-flow down St Marks road when a large van came towards me at considerable speed (too fast in my opinion but maybe 20mph or under... either way too fast for this narrow stretch of road being crossed by pedestrians shopping etc). He didn't slow, continued to accelerate towards me to the point where I braked hard (actually only going slow as I was already slowing to stop outside Sweet Mart) and had no choice but to pull in hard to the edge of the road or go under him. I tried to hold my position out from the kerb (as taught during the level 3 lesson last year) but had to make to choice to try and stay alive at the last second. He must have assumed he was allowing me a foot or two to get around the edge of him, but his large wing mirror that adds an extra foot or two onto the width of his van clipped me, and this combined with the swerve caused me to end up upside down in a heap on the pavement. I have a very sore swollen and cut knee (gradually getting worse as the evening goes on). Also have bruises and scrapes to elbows and arms and inner thigh and back of left knee. The adrenalin has now truly worn off and I feel knackered, sick, shaky and slightly pissed off to put it mildly.

His first comment on getting out of his van was that I was "going the wrong way down a one way road". I pointed out that it is a contra-flow and not the wrong way for cyclists and then went to point out the bicycle markings and lines on the road at the point where it happened. This is where it all started to turn into a bit of a farce as of course the markings have all but worn away, and I have to say I could understand why he wasn't expecting anyone to come the other way. I can imagine anyone would find it hard to understand what the last few remaining blotches of surviving white paint mean. He also said if it was a cycle lane it should be painted a different colour. Interesting to think that is what people expect to see. He also expressed his opinion that the road is not wide enough for bicycles to be coming through the other way (maybe more true for large vans than for general car traffic).

Looking at Googlemaps street view it's clear to see that the white blotches on the floor were once an arrow and a bicycle symbol and that the arrow for the traffic traveling the opposite way seems to indicate that they should be traveling under the parked cars.




At this moment in time the bicycle symbol currently looks like this ...


or a wider view with what is left of the arrow....



We both exchanged details and debated it in a friendly enough manner for as long as we could before traffic behind him started beeping him to move. We didn't involve the Police.

A friend of mine also recently had someone in a van drive aggressively towards her on this stretch and then shout that she was "going the wrong way"

It appears that the signs slightly before this point for motorised traffic coming the other way do not get any message across to anyone and do not get noticed. They are there though...

I've noticed the markings here have been unclear for some time now.

I come across similar conflict regularly on Cobden Street coming up from Church Road as the markings are also worn enough to no longer really exist there either (also been unclear for considerable time too). Also on Victoria Avenue vehicles still do not seem to expect bicycles to be coming from the Contra-Flow direction, even though cars can and do travel in that direction too here as it's actually a two way road with a plug point with no entry for motorised traffic. Both are assumed to be one way by drivers. I've been shouted at in both places that I'm going the wrong way, had people speed up towards me, or just be caught out by surprise and brake suddenly at the last minute. People are obviously not expecting bicycles to be coming the other way and are not seeing the signs or markings ( if they are there). Often there is no way to go to get out of their way if I wanted to. in the case of St Marks road today my only option (if it hadn't happened so quickly and there had been time to think it through) would have been to get up onto the pavement. Not much chance of that in the space of one second on road tyres, although I guess that's actually what happened in the end, but not out of my choice or within my control.

Often the problem is with vans and commercial vehicles. This is becoming more obvious on Cobden Street as the larger commercial traffic is increasingly coming from Feeder road using Barton Hill as a cut through.

I still feel that there needs to be a better way to mark contra-flows with more definite and on-road markings to properly inform people to expect bicycles.

This is the third time that I've been hit by a large vehicle this year. It's now beyond a joke and I've had enough. My partner is also reaching the point where she no longer wants me on a bike on the roads as it is causing her a lot of worry.

What can be done? Who should I be talking to about this? If the markings are eroded or unclear who is responsible for that situation still being the case and currently partially for my pain, injuries and damages to my bike (ripped bar tape, buckled front wheel etc)? The driver felt that the road markings were impossible to recognise and I have to agree with him.

I have photos of his vehicle in position, of the worn away road markings and of the general scene. Also a few to show cars coming through and the position they use.

This has happened on the day that I tried to persuade my neighbour to not drive from Redfield to his work next to Temple Meades every day (a journey of less than one mile) and to cycle instead. His answer was that it's too dangerous and he'd have to cycle on the pavement, so won't do it. I'm trying to work out the irony of me reassuring him that it's not dangerous, before setting out and getting knocked off, yet again.

Thanks if you've taken the time to read all of this. Any replies, thoughts and possible solutions appreciated. I'm off now to soak my cuts and bruises before my knee seizes up completely.

Adam

Obviously, we do extend our sympathies, and not just in "look what you did to my wing mirror" kind of way. Adam may be working for "the other side", but -and this is a secret- we have used some of his videos. Also, it's good to see that at least one person never seems to be enjoying cycling in Bristol, as when he was caught suffering up Bridge Valley Road



One thing to consider here is why did the markings on St Marks Road get worn away? It can't be from bicycles, far more likely to be cars and vans. Which shows that there isn't really room to have a bike contraflow here. We don't actually propose banning bicycles from one single street (it's not our grand vision which covers a wider area of the city and a bigger ban), but why not open it up to two-traffic entirely. One way streets just create unrealistic expectations of speed in a city, whereas the two-way streets of Montpelier are self-traffic-calming, usually.  The alternative: remove the parking outside the (excellent) supermarket, Bristol Sweet-Mart simply wouldn't work as everyone is used to short stay parking there.

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.