Traffic Jams are caused by texting drivers

With the proposal to expand penalties for drivers using phones, there have been lots of claims that the number of people texting has increased. That's something always worth validating with real datasets.

Back in September 2013, we observed that one driver in three on Arley Hill was texting.

Fast forward to 2016 and what do we see?

On a single pedal-up-the-contraflow, we didn't see more than 30% texting, we'd actually consider it to be less. L008HUJ/LD08HUJ (not found in DVLA DB), CN02JKO, VN11OYA (taxi?), BG62YGA, BD65WXL, CE53GMG. Six cars out of thirty one; approximately 1 in 5. Less than before.

What you can see though is that some drivers are so engrossed in their texting that gaps are building up in the queue.



That's the BMW BD65WXL and the Zafira BG62YGA

The Zafira's MOT expired on 7th Sept: that vehicle is not legal. And look at the gap the driver has let develop.

You have to be utterly oblivious to your environment to not notice that there as was a gap of 5+ vehicle lengths in front of you. Five vehicle lengths! You don't normally get that in the city, or the motorways nearby, at least not during daylight hours. Yet she's happily looking down, oblivious to the world. And she wasn't happy when this was pointed out to her. Now, it may seem irrelevant, these drivers are all in the same queue. But anyone wanting to turn up Nugent Hill (as opposed to illegally contraflow down), is having that opportunity denied to them, so creating needless congestion. Equally seriously, once the queue gets all the way to the roundabout on Cotham Brow, it has the risk of getting someone stuck in the roundabout, so blocking cross traffic. And all because they're curious what their friends are up to on Facebook.

There we have it. If people say "why has congestion got worse?", we will respond "our data implies that while the number of people texting hasn't increased, the time those drivers spend on their phone has —so making congestion worse".

Finally, at 1:11, the driver of CA09AKF is reading a kids picture book. Now, there did appear to be a child on the back, so this could be the way of keeping a bored child happy. Except: how do you read a picture book out loud? Do you turn it over going "tree!" "fish!", or what? Because the whole point of kids picture books is that you give them to the child to stare at the pictures while you do important things like check facebook for updates. If find yourself wanting to grab the picture book from the child in the back seat and read it yourself, well, life is bleak. Make sure your phone is charged up next time.

Bristol's 20 mph zones: it's the hot cars that lose

The 20 mph zone has been up for a year now, so it's time to review it as drivers

1. It doesn't make things slower. Really. It's the delays at junctions & in queues that increase journey time.
2. It makes things calmer. There's less pressure to put your foot down when you do clear a junction.
3. Similarly, as you approach a junction, you can coast down more gently. 
4. As you are going a bit slower, you can take time to look around, which gives you a better view of pedestrians. This is tangibly better at night.
5. It actually helps you pulling out from side roads to main roads. Why? As everyone is moving slower, the time window for you to do things like pull a right turn with cars approaching from both directions is larger.
6. Fuel economy? No obvious difference. The engine may be less efficient in 3rd than 4th, but you don't have to accelerate so hard, and can coast down. Of course, anyone in a hybrid car is laughing as their petrol engine can work even less, and gain more regenerative braking from the gentle slow down.
7. Keeping track of your speed? Third gear low RPM seems to work. If you feel the need to go to 4th, you are going too fast. 
8. Does everyone follow 20 mph? 22-25 is more realistic daytime speed; at night the speed goes up to 30 until the minicabs come out, when it ramps up 40 mph just when the drunk people start walking home.
9. Increased road rage? No obvious difference. As the average commute speed is < 20 mph in Bristol (TomTom's unverified data, not ours), it's hard to see how it could be made worse.
10. Collapse of businesses due to increased white van journey time. Not obvious. Congestion is the limiting factor, not maximum speed.
11. Passing Bicycles? No harder or easier. It's still irritating to be behind someone going along at 12 mph. But the speed limit doesn't make passing harder. We just want fitter cyclists out there.
12. Then there's the "two shopping trolley" man wandering round the streets these days. We have no idea why he has two shopping trollies full of his entire belongings, but he does, he goes down the roads (not the pavements) at about 4 mph. Again, 20 mph doesn't make a difference.

So who loses? People who spent money on fast cars. You shell out all that cash for a nimble toy, for an extra digit or two at the end of your car brand logo —"i", "GT", etc—, tinted windows and some wheels that just scrape easily.  The key "performance" benefits are tighter suspension, and most of all the ability to accelerate better. 

Which is now utterly wasted, as most vehicle's 0-20 numbers are relatively similar. And pootling around at 20 mph means no need for suspension that lets you do 90 degree turns at 35 mph.

That's enough to drive you to road rage: not the fact that you are doing 20 mph, but the fact you spent a lot of money on your status toy and are doing 20 mph.  Even if you want to go faster, there'll be someone in front who doesn't, who appears to drive at exactly 20 mph on a fast ratrun road  like Ashley Down, Pembroke Road or Filton Ave. It's almost as if some people, on noticing an important person driving a high-end Audi or BMW SUV actually take their foot off the accelerator, dropping from 24 mph to 20. Which we consider unacceptable and strongly condemn anyone doing this.

For those people who have spent the money, they expect something in return.

Fortunately, every so often the opportunity arises. Here is one our instrumented tax-dodgers going down Nugent Hill, Cotham, using the bike contraflow to get to the Arley Hill evening traffic jam, and so on to Stokes Croft. As they join the Arley Hill queue, you can see a green light allowing some traffic to slowly get out to places more interesting.

And here you can see the BMW 3 series YF57KTE getting some return on investment. First they can come off the speed bump while accelerating (suspension), then put their foot down to catch up with the cars in front. Those cars in front who are going through on orange we note.  But as the BMW is now almost joined up with them, it can do the "part of the same group" gambit and carry on through on the red light.

That tactic has given them a bit more speed than the vehicles in front, forcing them to negotiate what is effectively a chicaned right turn fairly aggressively: that suspension at work again.

They then need to put their brakes on, not because of the speed limit but because they've caught up with the car in front.

There: 15 seconds of real driving, out of probably 30 minutes of suffering. Not much —but that's all a 20 mph zone offers, at least during the early evening commute.

Tablets in the car are the new status symbol

Anyone can text and drive; here on Arley Hill on a weekday you see about 1 car in 4 texting.

What do you do if you want to show that you are really important?

Step 1 is the expensive car, like the BMW

That's good, but it's not enough, now that phones have become the new status device. What else can you do?

That's right: a tablet, here put away when they noticed someone taking photos of them.

They shouldn't be self-conscious! They should be proud! Tablets are something to show off!

Anything Clifton can do, Stokes Croft can do better

Our Whiteladies road texting coverage shows that 1 car per traffic light cycle is on the phone. Well, if that's clifton and the commuters from the ""20 mph means road rage" suburbs over the downs, Stokes Croft will have to do better -won't it.

Here then is a video at about 16:50 on a weekday evening. The tax dodger is cycling up Nugent Hill, while some children are returning home in the other direction. Given the 15% gradient, that family is earning its school dinners.

Then, down to Arley Hill to count the no. of vehicles phoning or texting in the traffic jam. Arley Hill cuts through from Cotham to Cheltenham Road, where, if you tuck into the bus lane and then go up to turn left towards Ashley Road, gets you to the M32 at the St Pauls Roundabout -without having to go to the bearpit roundabout or nearby. This makes it a nice little route from Redland and Clifton to the M32 at peak hours -too nice, and too widely known.



If you look, there are a set of different actions taking place in the vehicles

1. despair. driver holding onto the handle above the door, disbelieving that it can take so long. Tourist?
2. phone: talk, text or facebook.
3. eat.  Not just junk food either -a couple of people are eating prepared meals from plastic containers. These are locals who know it takes 10-15 minutes to traverse Arley hill at peak hours.
4. enjoy the music. Only a couple of people are doing this -but they seem happy.

It comes out to seven vehicles: P217UWS, HG10AKP, KM59KML, FA04VZL, G869UAM, KF54EHH, BF08DJP.

Fluke! the Cliftonians cry! Pure Chance!

Possibly. Lets try that again, shall we?

Heres the next video, from the bottom and back up again.

There's been enough of an interval that the cars at the tail of the previous survey are now at the front: KF54EHH, texting at the end of the last video, is now the second car in line, still texting happily. Now the car behind, MF56VJC, has joined in.

Carrying on up, we encounter the van BF05VZT, gsfcarparts.com, a large grey van WV13YHA on the phone, and then the white BMW WN13CCE with the driver texting.

The driver in the "don't cook just eat" car is hand-rolling a cigarette -false alarm.

After the speed bump comes the renault megane HV03WNR, then, after a small gap, the Honda Civic WJ06ZBN with its driver speaking on his phone. Finally, just after the RAC van comes white van W9MWM. At this point the vehicles are moving, so the driver here is left with a problem: how to text while driving over a speed bump.

The solution is obvious, put the phone onto the steering wheel and hold the wheel while you text with your thumbs.

After that: no more. Note that the normal scapegoats -taxis and minicabs- are not joining in. They work in the car, there's no need for them to text ahead saying "I am stuck in the traffic jam that stretches from Arley Hill to M32 and which appears here every evening".


Looking at the numbers from that last video and comparing with Clifton, in that initial stretch from Nugent Hill to the lights, there are 13 cars, of which five are on the phone: one speaking, four texting.

Thats 38% of our sample set. Discount the speaking and focus on texting: 30%.

Those are numbers clifton doesn't even come close to. Here we have a line of traffic and over one driver in three is on the phone.

Clifton? DNC: Did Not Compete.

The Arley Hill Contraflow

In our coverage of Cotham Brow yesterday, one Colin Hounslow, ‏@crusherdrive, who appears to be an HGV driver

@bristoltraffic noticed the foul language and the cyclist riding the wrong way up a one way street #urbanterrorists

We did note the foul language, and did complain that it was needless of abuse of a car that left at least ten centimetres of gap between the cyclist and their car as they squeezed through the pinch point.

The thing we do want to pick up on is the claim that the #urbanterrorists were cycling the wrong way up the hill.

Arley Hill is a contraflow to bicycles. And we have a dataset going back years documenting this.

The entrance is behind the AA van blocking the hatched junction

it goes under where the Bristol Council traffic survey car WV09NYO is blocking it
.
 It goes under where Brittania Movers international WA58BVD are parked -,because coning off some of the parking bays with the dustbins that are on the street would have required forward planning


You can actually see the bicycle logo pointing up hill just before the Ford Ka Y873LCY blocks it.

And proceeds up the hill to where the the Peugeot P817OVV is blocking it.

The cyclists aren't, therefore, illegally contraflowing.

Where there is a contraflow opportunity, it is that the Nugent Hill to Arley Hill cut through is bicycles only, yet it provides such an invaluable rat run that it is popular with people who don't want to get stuck in the Arley Hill traffic jam, such as WN08EZX


And R968NKX

Yet again, we see abusive cyclists giving cars a hard time, such as here where one stops in the middle of the road and so block a car from using this secret route.



As proof that Bristol council is anti-car, they eventually added a traffic island to prevent a right turn here by cars

this now forcing drivers to swerve left -uphill, then swing round, such as the one in R214RVN.


this car was following the transit van YR51XJX, which must have an even harder time executing the contraflow.



Colin, we could carry on, but instead would point  you at our complete datasets on Nugent Hill and Arley Hil.

While you do that, consider that Bristol Traffic -while mistaken for some kind of subversive satire, is -as discussed in the context of Arley Hill itself, a collaborative project with our strategic partners google, facebook, and apparently the NSA, to build a crowd-sourced mass surveillance state for the City of Bristol.

Which brings us to the main reply to your tweet.

You can say what you want about #urbanterrorists, but as soon as you make a claim about a cyclist going the wrong way up a one-way street, provide the data to back up your claim -or shut the fuck up.

Bristol Traffic. Datamining you for your own good since 2008.

Cotham Brow Row XM08XMJ

The tax-dodger's rights group, Bristol Cycling Campaign, are campaigning against pinch points.

We actually agree with them. Yes, we do love to see new junction improvements adding gratuitous pinch points, such as on the top of Jacob's Wells Road -because that stops the cyclists sneaking up the inside and avoiding in queueing.

But at the same time, we suffer when we have to wait behind a cyclist that is blocking the way. Or, if we go past when there is plenty of room, we still have to deal with abuse.

Look at this video of Cotham Brow. It's a quieter Cotham Brow than normal -roadworks have isolated it from Gloucester Road at the bottom. Having less traffic, it should be better to drive up, as you don't have to negotiate a narrow route with oncoming vehicles. Yet all it takes is one selfish cyclist to get in the way and you are stuck going up a hill at under 10 mph.

Pinch points make this worse, by removing opportunities to pass.

Here in the video, one of the cyclists has dismounted and is pushing their bike up the 8-9% gradient hill, so allowing important people past. Yet the one with the camera does not -and they have the audacity to be abusive (swearing!) at the important people in the volvo XM08XMJ. Do you think the woman in the passenger seat wants to hear language like that? To see her face on you tube? We think not.



What is annoying is that the pinch point is entirely gratuitous. It's on a zebra crossing. They could take away the island and it would still be a zebra crossing. Even if in theory the island would let two-way traffic have to stop less often, it's too narrow a road for two-way traffic further down the hill, so entirely moot.

All this traffic island does is introduce conflict at a point where it is not needed. Removing it would not only benefit pedestrians and cyclists, it would help us driving by stopping us being held up by tax-dodging and abusive troublemakers.

In this video, the tax-dodging and abusive troublemaker actually adds insult to insult, by turning left down Freemantle Road, then left again to descent Nugent Hill at speed, then joining Arley Hill to get to Montpelier.

That means that they had no justification for going up the hill and getting in the way of the Volvo, they climbed up Cotham Brow at 8-9 mph purely to aggravate people in a hurry. Then, by bypassing the cars in the Arley Hill queue, they go on to aggravate people who have been waiting patiently.

Finally, they descended Nugent Hill at about 28 mph -even though you can clearly see lots of schoolchildren walking to school -families forced to walk as an anti-car council blocked up all the secret routes from Cheltenham Road to Kingsdown. The fact that they can get up to such dangerous speeds on a weekday morning shows how the removal of commuter parking actually endangers schoolchildren. Before the RPZ rollout, every road would have someone driving around looking for a space to park, every junction have someone pulling out as they went round the block again. These people performed the valuable role of traffic calming cyclists, who couldn't descend a hill like this without worrying about vehicles coming out of side roads. Now, with the exception of the one at the bottom, they don't have to do that.
Whereas before the cyclist was selfish by going up a hill at under 10 mph, now they are being selfish and dangerous by descending above 20 mph. There is no speed on our streets where they are safe -they are unwelcome at any speed!

More RLJ work on Cheltenham Road

We're going to credit this cyclist coming up Bath buildings and crossing Cheltenham Road for actually looking and only going out when it is clear to do so, and waiting at the traffic island for a gap in the other lane.

Again, being a bit fitter and climbing up the mild incline on Bath Buildings would have saved time, and if you can't climb that when what faces you straight ahead, Arley Hill, is going to hurt. Looks more like this RLJ-er is going to right turn onto the Gloucester Road bus lane though.

Not so suicidal to be called a ghost-rider, just, well, pointless. The taxi in the ASL isn't going to run him over when the lights change as the cars blocking the hatched junction remove the option to pull out fast. Why then?

Now some Geister Fahrading on Cheltenham Road

Another RLJ-ing cyclist, here on Cheltenham Road


0:01 cars coming from Bath Buildings get to go left or right onto Cheltenham Road; cyclists can also go straight on for a contraflow.

0:12 Arley Hill gets green, cars and cyclists set off

0:14, A woman on a bicycle goes straight past the camera.

We are sure the tax dodging online press will be pleased at the gender balance of our RLJ footage, but can they at least tell the cyclists to look both ways when they run a red light? If your light is red, there are two meanings

1. Everyone has red, it's pedestrians you are going to hit and other cyclists that will hit you.
2. One or more lanes are green and you will become the statistic. 

Hypothesis #2 is the one they should worry about.  If our van had been in the Arley Hill ASL, our "launch on warning" system would have kicked in and we'd have pulled our foot off the clutch while texting the final message to our next delivery. Anyone cycling directly across our way, 14 seconds into her red light period is someone that the post mortem would say "she chose to die".

In Germany they have the phrase "Geister Fahrer" -Ghost Driver- to describe someone who chooses to commit suicide by driving the wrong way up an Autobahn. Here in Bristol we have the less well-off doing the same, the Geister Fahrader.

No eye contact - even if they insult you for RLJ-ing

The rule of junctions is that if you don't acknowledge the other people on the road, they aren't there, so you have done nothing wrong.

Usually its done when you block a junction or a roundabout. Today, something different: a cyclist RLJ-ing the Cheltenham Road/Bath Buildings Junction.

For some reason, the camera crew aren't impressed by this and not only shout to get their attention, they are mildly abusive -which the tax dodger in the viewfinder ignores. 

Next they will be writing in to the Evening Post to complain.

As to why the cyclist jumped the red light, some possibilities spring to mind:

• they were in too much of a hurry.
• their visibility of Arley Hill was restricted due to the large lorry blocking the pedestrian crossing.
• their life is empty and meaningless and a bit of danger makes it more precious.
• their brakes don't work and the way they came off the pavement forced them into this action.
• they're an idiot
• all of the above.

Well, they are now famous. Purple-topped mountain bike rider: welcome to Bristol Traffic!

(08:44 correct video embedded)

Britannia Movers International: Try the lanes of Cornwall instead

There's a lovely piece of advice for anyone naive enough to believe that they'd be welcome cycling up the dedicated contraflow cycle lane or Arley Hill. It says "try the lanes of corwall"

What WA58BVD really means is "dont' try these bike lanes". We thought it was funny.

If there is one criticism -a minor one- the lorry is making it hard to get down the road and hence to the M32 for those of us who have paid for the privilege. A bit of forward planning, like, say, coning/dustbinnining off the front of the house would have let the removals van load up without taking any road space away from us.

More coverage of WA58BVD elsewhere.

Tesco's plans to Walthamize the cycling city in the back.

We are impressed. Every day that one of the team members has been down to Cheltenham Road this week, there's been a vehicle or two outside Tesco. What was once one of the showcase "cycle city" and "Greater Bristol Bus Network" routes has been returned to the tax paying driver -and as vans and lorries pay more road tax, they deserve to use it first.

"Slug" sends a couple of Pics from 09:15 on Friday 17 June showing a security van outside tesco,

And right outside the credit union, another lorry, MX07GJV

As slug says " It can be very dangerous for a cyclist to cycle in the cycle lane because it is to the left of traffic turning left. So the lorry driver out of concern for the potential danger that inexperienced cyclists are putting themselves in, decided to park on the double yellow lines ... ignoring the no unloading sign.

Behind the vehicle you can see all the way to the security van that is also parked on the cycle lane -and in between the lane is completely empty! Mission accomplished! no cyclists Left Hooked at Ashley junction this morning.

Interestingly, we have a different video of the same stretch of road from someone else taken about ten minutes later. This video is interesting because it is from the perspective of one of the tax-dodgers, someone who is trying to get across the city "after 9am because the roads are quieter." See that? These people have deliberately chosen to commute outside "the rush hour" because they prefer it. But that reduction in road traffic creates an illusion of safety -and encourages more of such behaviour.

At 0:03 there's another cyclist on Freemantle Road -heading towards the university or Clifton, then our underemployed camera-enabled tax-avoider descends Nugent Hill, an option forbidden to cars, especially since they put that island in at the bottom to stop right turns, a feature few motorists have managed to deal with. Our troublemaker negotiates that island by abusing the contraflow bike lane on Arley Hill, then flips into the left lane to undertake the stationary traffic to wait for a green light.

While waiting we see important people in cars and taxis, some public transport users, and unimportant pedestrians, and another cyclist at 1:58 crossing over to the contraflow. Because The A38 here, it could unify or divide the city. The council wanted to make it a showcase for the cycle city program, encouraging people from Bishopston (out of town; to the left) to head into the city centre, down this very road!

That is something we need to stop, which is why we are grateful for Tesco and its support. Because as well as unifying the cyclists, it could divide them. It and Muller road are the two roads that anyone cycling around north Bristol has to encounter, and if we can only roll back any pro-cycling "enhancements" there, then we can discourage anyone not just from cycling on these main roads, but even get across them.

That is why it is so essential to fight them on the streets, and why the Tesco delivery process is helping transform this road, and hence the whole of north Bristol.

At 2:14 you can see the bicycle head in to town. Although they think they have a lane to themselves, at 2:22 you can see their mistake -the security van has moved on since 09:15, but another delivery van has taken its place. Then at 2:34, a car half on the pavement, half on the bike lane. That bike lane is considered unsafe anyway, which is why they and the next lorry are blocking it. What's changed since the photos earlier is that the lorry seems to be deciding to pull out now; it's flipped its indicators on. The tax dodger goes past, and at 2:47 you can see another paveparked van; a 2:49 a similar car. All it takes is one or two vehicles doing this, all the time, every day, and people will be discouraged not just from commuting along this road by bicycle, but across it.

At 3:04 our troublemaker does a U-turn and heads out of town, showing that the bike lane there is in its usual state: short stay parking for shop customers and staff. This bike lane has been reclaimed!

At 3:36, they are now waiting to turn right towards montpelier, where you can see that the row of vehicles blocking the left lane do actually turn it into a bikes-only lane, albeit because nobody actually wants to turn left. Anyone turning left will have to swing over from the right hand lane, which might be a surprise to anyone cycling down it, of which we can see a couple at 3:50.

Then, finally, at 3:54, our errant tax dodger turns right, and then left into Montpelier, where they can feel slightly safer.

You see that? How the quiet bits of the city, Cotham and Montpelier, can be made cycling unfriendly not by adding any anti-cycling infrastructure, but by making it unpleasant to cross the roads between them. We don't need to ask the council for special anti-bicycle features, the way they do in Waltham Forest, all we need to do is park our delivery vans where we want on the roads the cyclist have to cross. It only takes a couple of HGVs to set an example, and once it's begun, every else will copy. What was a bike lane has become a parking area, not just to achieve the tactical goal: park outside our destination, but to achieve a strategic one: to knife the cycling city dream in the back.

Whose streets? Ours! For parking in whenever we want!

Tesco Stokes Croft: did FirstBus torch it?

There are lots of theories about who torched the new Stokes Croft Tesco

1. Some squatters made petrol bombs and tried to torch the mini-mart in a protest against supermarkets.
2. Lots of drunk people reacting to the police blocking their road home.
3. A group of hardend "black hat" anarchists secretly infiltrated the city, created a riot and then retreated to a nearby pub, returning two weeks later to the Anarchist Bookfair to buy the Banksy memorial posters and then resell them on eBay.
4. An active service unit of Stokes Croft street food vendors torched it as any supermarket outlet selling chicken only five days past its best-before date would raise expectations excessively amongst their existing customer base.

We have a new one: Firstbus did it. Watch this video, taken before 18:00 on a weekday, to see why.

See how the vehicles coming from Bath Buildings only have time for the front two to pull out on red before the cars coming down from Arley Hill get out and block the junction. Then Cheltenham Road gets the green light, and all vehicles heading into the city get held up -including two FirstBus buses. What is happening?

The answer is, out of camera, a parked car is blocking the bus lane. This stops buses from getting through, and it stops any car coming off Arley Hill and heading left towards Ashley Road and the M32 nipping in to it and heading off to the motorway without being blocked in the tailback stemming from the bearpit.

This holds up cars, but for the buses it is worse: it holds up the entire schedule, on which they can pay financial penalties.

This then, is who has the most to lose from a Tesco on Cheltenham Road: FirstBus management, whose company will pay fines caused by short-stay shoppers parking in their bus lane, and whose bonuses and stock options will be threatened. These people had far more to lose than Slix or Ritas, far more to gain than the anarchists could make from reselling Banksy prints. This is why we believe that the police should study their CCTV camera footage for the signs of any FirstBus bus going down this road after 11pm. Normally all FirstBus buses would be in bed by then, so any bus going down the road is clearly full of FirstBus operatives, planning to create a riot, destroy a supermarket, and so avoid penalties for late bus schedules.

AA supporting driver safety

There is lots of coverage today in the cycling world that the AA is giving out free helmets and hi-viz tops, to reduce the risk of them being run over as they ride their Boris Bikes around.

Some people are dismissive of this, implying that the AA is doing a publicity stunt that is really a form of blaming-the-victim. Not at all.

The AA is equally concerned about the safety of motorists. Look here, in the junction of Cheltenham Road and Arley Hill at 18:11 on a weekday evening. This van OU10FYG is stationary in the middle of the junction, held up by the vehicles in front; the cars coming up from Bath Buildings or Arley Hill are at risk of running into the van, given that they have both had green lights while this van is busy blocking the junction.

The hi-viz top the driver is wearing will reduce this risk, as it will be easier for cars crossing the junction to see the vehicle blocking the do-not-enter junction, so the driver will be safer. And presumably the AA's insurance costs will be reduced accordingly.

Waste

Advance Stop Lanes, or ASLs, are a waste of space.

They are a sop to cyclists, who, we read, are an articulate and vociferous minority.

To the general motoring public, however, they are a waste of good road space. They increase the length of our traffic jams, and contribute substantially to our waiting times at traffic lights. They lessen the length of our 'platoons' that can get through on a green, yellow or red light. They are rubbish.

Which is why we're heartened to see that the two major providers of rubbish disposal in our great city are fiercely competing to get rid of this wasted space.

SITA have the inside, VIRIDOR have the outside. Between them they have the wasted space covered.

And look, not a tax-doging cyclist in sight.

So much for re-cycling.

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.

Heisenberg at Work

"You can't measure the mass of a particle without changing its velocity". Heisenberg said that. Early last century.

Here we see it on Arley Hill, the council traffic monitoring car WV09NYO, parking across a bike lane.

Yes, its the only way to collect data by hand, but you have to realise: your very presence alters the data itself. Move to the 21st century: track the phones.

Out of control on Nugent Hill

We have some back catalogue of vehicles getting into trouble on ice on Nugent Hill

It doesn't come out that well in the pics, but here these vehicles on Nugent Hill drivers must have had a bit of a fright.

This one is wedged in on a corner where it must have been skidding down the road until they got to veer toward somethign that would halt it. 

This next one got a fair bit further down the road before they managed to bring it to a halt. It's entered the contraflow , but they managed to get it to halt without causing any damage, and its been left until the snow goes away.

This last car WN08EZX ended up going all the way down the contraflow, executing a right turn despite the "no right turn" feature on Arley Hill, and managed to come to a halt just before the traffic lights with Cheltenham Road. The driver must have been pretty shaken up. We are glad they made it down the hill safely!

On a normal evening you'd think "Oh, this car is running the one-way stretch to bypass congestion on Cotham Brow and put in on the Arley Hill traffic jam". But this wasn't a normal evening. No road traffic, no traffic jams, and both Cotham Brow and Arley Hill were gritted. There was no rational reason to deliberately drive the wrong way down the Nugent Hill contraflow -an ungritted road on a steep hill, when the legal option was in fact safer.

That leaves

• They loved danger
• They were stuck in this ungritted part of the city and the only way out was down the hill

For these reasons we will not be passing the photograph of this vehicle on to the local Kingsdown police, the way we normally do to help our city's drivers resistance to the oppressive anti-car one-way infrastructure get more widely recognised. We in Bristol Traffic celebrate your bravery!

G827YLA: redland mum

Hello, this is a note to the man driving the car G827YLA down Cotham Road at 08:48 on Monday December 14.

I don't think you read this blog. In fact, I don't think you pay any attention to anything other than the little bluetooth headset you had in your ear as you sat at the zebra crossing at the bottom, trying hard not to to make contact with a cyclist. Me.

However, at some point in the future, unless they destroy that car under the scrappage scheme, you are going to try selling that vehicle, and when it happens, whoever is thinking of buying it is going to type in the registration number into google, possibly with spaces, "G827 YLA" . And you know what's going to turn up? This article. The one that accuses you of being a redland mum.

As background, here is our definition of a redland mum: a parent who is in such a hurry to get their children to school that the lives of of any person on the road are unimportant. If there is a choice between the death of a pedestrian or a cyclist and pulling up on the "school no parking" area after 09:00, then somebody has to die.

I know this, because I am the cyclist you nearly ran over, the one who had stopped to let a mother and two children cross the road. I'm sorry I had to slow you down to let a family get to school, but since they were walking, they rely on generosity to get to school on time, and I was feeling generous. This area, outside Cotham Grammar, is a marked "please drive at 20" area, and those buildouts are to make it slightly easier to cross, to avoid having to run through parked cars. But the pedestrians still have to rely on vehicles stopping to let them across. Back when the build-outs were put in some people did ask for a zebra crossing, but it was turned down "nobody has died here yet". Well, you almost managed to get the criteria met today, didn't you, my little redland mum, the man driving the 1989 Toyota G827YLA.

I guess you were a bit surprised that after swerving round to overtake all us (without signalling, we note) and sprinting off down the hill, I did actually catch up with you. For some reason you didn't want to wind down the window, you just sat their looking surprised, muttering something into your phone, and unhappy at having to stop for all the students. No need to fear - we Bristol Cyclists don't believe in violence. It doesn't fix problems, it only creates more animosity. And we come out worse. I was just planning to get a video of you to stick up on the web site for what we do instead: public humiliation. But you got away, even as you went down Cotham Brow, trying to work out where you could go that the cyclist wouldn't catch up with you. To let you into a secret, I'd memorised your number at that point, there was nothing else to do. I let you go down Arley Hill. There you are, thinking "Oooh I got away from the angry cyclist", when in fact my goal had been achieved: you were now heading away from whichever school you were trying to get to, you would be stuck in the 9am Arley Hill traffic queue, and your children would be late. Your initial goal: get to school on time at the expense of a family and a cyclist would not be met.

Oh, and you are in the database. Forever. That's Google's BigTable, which, as they say themselves "is a distributed storage system for managing structured data that is designed to scale to a very large size: petabytes of data across thousands of commodity servers." By replicating facts "G827YLA is driven by a redland mum" across multiple datacentres, each with thousands of "commodity" x86 servers with IDE or SATA hard drives, BigTable's storage capacity is bigger than any database ever built before. By distributing those datacentres round the world: Mountain View, California, The Dalles, Oregon, Dublin, Singapore, BigTable won't just cope with an earthquake scale disaster, they'd even cope with something more dramatic, like a small Tunguska-class asteroid. It would take something big like another K/T Boundary Event or an accidental or intentional exchange of strategic armaments to take your registration number offline.

Which means when someone looks up the car registration, this article pops up. It could be you, it could be a friend, it could even be one of the kids you had in the back of the car who will then start snickering and call you a "redland mum" behind your back. It could maybe be the police if you try something like this again and it goes wrong, someone does end up injured, and they decide to do a checkup to see what anyone knows about the vehicle. Which means that this posting, accusing you of dangerous driving -not just to cyclists, but to pedestrians- will show up. You now, as they say "have a history."

Goodbye, or is it just au-revoir?

I blames the tennis

July 3rd, 18:18. Tennis still on. Tennis lovers in a rush to get home. Which means "bending the rules". The little ones. Like one way streets, and which direction you are allowed down them

First the van YR51XJX sprints down Nugent Hill and, showing the agility that modern ford transit vans have, swings right onto Arley Hill.

Then while taking that photo, this other car R214RVN popped down the nugent hill contraflow, swerved round the bit of pavement put in to stop cars turning right, and carried on down Arley Hill. But they at least waved at the camera.

Given that this junction has been fairly peaceful since the "feature" was added, what could bring two cars to do this within 30s, given there isn't even a traffic jam up Arley Hill? The only possible explanation: tennis lovers in a rush home.

Very Direct to you Cleaning Services on Nugent Hill direct

Since the island went in at the bottom of Nugent hill, we have had no submissions of photos of any cars driving the wrong way down the one-way section. Since we were getting one a week and the island has been up for four weeks, that was quite an improvement. Has it stopped cars trying to avoid Cotham Brow and most of the Arley Hill traffic jam? Yes -most cars.

But not, apparently, "Direct to you Cleaning Services", and their van VA06DDN

This is the first vehicle encountered doing the contraflow with the island in place. Interestingly, it does make it harder to pull out, because cars in the Arley Hill traffic jam can ignore you more easily -the contraflowing vehicle can't edge out and force its way in to the line of traffic. Now it has to rely on a vehicle coming down the hill to be generous.

If we have a reduction of one vehicle report every four weeks compared with one a week, that's a reasonable success, possibly a 25% reduction in the number of cars or vans completely ignoring no entry signs in this stretch of road. Progress!

Oddly enough, the driver of this vehicle, was not at all excited to be the first person to enter our database for this action since the road was changed. After congratulating him, instead of him saying "Thank you", he said "Fuck off and get a life". Which is a shame, as he has shown such dedication to shaving 30s off his journey that he really needs to be recognised, and he should be proud of the recognition.

We shall forward his photograph to the local PACT group in order for him to be more formally recognised.