Dear Redland-based driver of Audi YS12ZPX

We've discussed before the concept of a "Redland Mum": a parent who is prepared to injure other road users in order to make sure that they get to school at pickup and dropoff time. It's why the ten minutes before the school gate close and open events are one of the hazardous times.

This video of a driver endangering a cyclist was taken at 15:00, in Redland, so meets many of the checklist items. You'd have to know their final destination to know if this was a genuine "Redland Mum school run", or just a "Redland Audi Driver in a hurry". We've included the letter the owner shall receive.

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Dear Redland-based driver of Audi YS12ZPX

As promised, here's the video of you going by at a distance I didn't consider acceptable. And, as there was nobody oncoming to squeeze past, no justification at all other than selfish indifference.

Just because you are in a hurry does not justify endangering other Bristolians.

• All it would have taken would have been a small wobble on the bike for a collision. Which if it had occurred would have had adequate video recordings for any prosecution.
• The police are now cycling round the city, enforcing the 1.5m distance from the cyclist which they consider safe. "Careless Driving" is what they prosecute on, ~3 points and its impact on insurance premiums.
  
• Your actions reinforce the reputation that Audi drivers have for being selfish and dangerous.

You didn't even get anywhere, did you? You ended up at the traffic queue at the top of Redland hill. That's the one which is there every afternoon, so you should have been able to predict it.
Not only was I able to catch up, I had to wait at the zebra crossing for you to pull out.

Which comes round to the final point. Your actions were actually counterproductive, weren't they? An extra 50cm of clearance and you wouldn't have been held up at the crossing. Instead you were delayed when you clearly didn't want to be, and now have the video of your driving up online for all to see.

Please, give a little bit more clearance when you pass, maybe even be a bit more patient when trying to drive across the city. Dangerously passing someone just to get to the next traffic queue achieves nothing.

Anti-RPZ myth: an RPZ makes the school run harder

With years of data, Bristol Traffic can go back in time and look at problems before the RPZ was rolled out -and compare it with today. This is why when people say "RPZ makes school runs worse", we have to say "you are joking, right?"

The RPZ will make the school run easier, whether it is by car, foot or even bicycle.
Here are some reference points as to the existing problem.

Cotham Road, where the sole drop-off point free on a weekday was a bus-only area where you would sporadically get ticketed.



Parents who drove had no option to park anywhere else -as there wasn't anywhere else. Ticketing was
always a risk -and with only room for four cars, contention with other parents. When the buses turned up -they'd double park, selfishly, not only blocking you in, but creating traffic jams inconveniencing other school runners.

T
Colston Primary School, where the only parking spaces were on the corners -where your car could get scratched by push chairs.


There was that and the yellow "keep free" area. As everyone knows, the keep free area means "keep free for parents", but now the council has a CCTV car doing drivebys, you can't use them for that.

That was before. Now look at exactly the same corner, now that the RPZ has been rolled out


So much space for dropoff and pickup, that those parents who walk or cycle don't give you a hard time for driving to school.

In the mornings, the RPZ restrictions only kick in at 09:00. As residents leave, their spaces where historically taken up by commuters. As that no longer happens, that frees up spaces for parents to park.
When coupled with the fact that there is now parking near their houses, even people who live in the city without a driveway can take their kids to school and get home again. Nobody should have any excuse for not driving their children to school




In the afternoons, those spaces are still there for pickup. Yes, the zone is still live, but you get 15 minutes of free parking (soon to be 30). No doubt somebody will say "only 15 minutes of parking before you get a ticket" -but you never even used to get that 15 minutes, as there was never anywhere to park where you weren't at risk of ticketing. And look at how much space there is -you don't have to worry about not finding a space.

As well as the extra parking spaces, morning and night, here are some other benefits

1. A reduction in commuter traffic will reduce congestion during peak am school run times.
2. The bicyclists can keep out the way when you are in a rush.
3. No double parked parents by other schools you need to get past en route to your children's.
4.  

Together, this should reduce journey times and parental stress, reducing redland-mum incidents,  where a "redland mum" is defined as: anyone who is prepared to kill or inure anyone else in the city if the alternative is to drop their kids off at school late.

Again, then, the fact that the RPZ will improve life for residents trying to drive round the city -here the essential school run- that it is leading us to suspect that the anti-RPZ campaigners are in fact cyclists who are trying to keep driving round the city so miserable that people will want to cycle instead.

We will resist the tyranny of the bike lobby! We need to embrace the Resident Parking Zones for what they really are: Resident Driving Zones.

The Cost of Education

It's expensive, having children. 

Even more so if you send them to Public schools, of course.

State schools, however, can also prove costly. 

Here's the scene just after the 2011 Ski trip to Austria arrived back at Redland Green School (we know this, we asked). A trip that must have cost over £1000 per pupil when spending money is added to the bill. Ouch.

Imagine the added insult, therefore, when you walk out of the school grounds having picked up your child to find Bristol's finest traffic wardens have chosen just this moment to visit Redland and ticket any car blocking a dropped kerb (not a yellow line in sight).

One of Bristol Traffic's many roving reporters managed to get this photo of the ticketing in action, whilst the wailing of the Redland Mum's affected by the outrage could be heard across the neighbourhood. Less off-piste, more piste-off.

   

So now, for at least two families, that'll be £1040 minimum. For a ski trip. Shocking.

Cotham Hill Summit Problems

The final question about the showcase bus route proposals is will the removal of a zebra crossing at the bottom of Cotham Hill and a dedicated turning lane help school run parents turning off at Cotham Hill?

Not if this video of a weekday morning is consistent. There's a jam all the way up the hill from Oakfield Road.

Sometimes there is less of a jam, and then parents can safely pull over onto the bike lane without their fear of their children being hit by a cyclist as they drop them off at one of the local schools (St Peter and Paul's RC is the closest), then carry on to the parent's final destination without any detour.

This is safe, provided the cyclists don't interfere. Today you can see that our secretly-instrumented tax-dodger swerved out of the bike lane, into the tax-payer's lane, forcing the car W153KDA to pull out aggressively to avoid being stuck behind them.

Clifton Mums Hour

This week is what used to be half term, before we had six term school years.

Last week was different, which meant that the chaos that is Clifton Mums Hour reigned, twice a day or more, in the vicinity of Clifton College.

Imagine the scene... a lone cyclist in College Road trying to get to the Downs vs a Clifton Mum in a car. A no-brainer. Cars parked both sides of the road, no space, and at least a 5 second shorter journey by car. If I were a Clifton Mum I certainly wouldn't let a cyclist hold me up. I'd cut right in front of them and slam on my brakes to let another car park. Or, 5 seconds later, I'd pull right in to the kerb and stop at the zebra crossing, blocking the cyclist again. Ha!

Then I'd hack it off up the road before the cyclist catches up - and park up on the yellow zig-zags outside the school to set a good example to my children, which is what the driver of WR57AXW did.

So if you nip down to The Avenue in Clifton at about 15:00 this week, this chaotic scene will not greet you. There will be no cars parked on yellow zig-zags, no cars on the pavements, and nobody daring to park on the double yellow lines. Give it a week or so though, and you too could join in with the fun, like this:

It's important to note that EK59SDX and WR57AXW are very important people, so are allowed to park their cars on the zig-zags, whilst WM09CZA is probably an actual VIP, as shown by the flashing indicators.

Lesser mortals, such as Range Rover LTP321, WU56TZV, MJ55FUV, WR03AUJ, LB55UHH, WR58WSN, MA07HNL, VN02VUL, WJ58YBB, RO51LOD, KN07PID, XHY1 had to park on the double yellow lines and pavements. They were not alone, but our database will explode if we record many more.

Only T59SAE manages allow pedestrians access to the pavement by staying firmly on the double yellows in the road. Kudos.

Our advice: don't have strange haircuts in Clifton during term-time.

The Stepford wives of Clifton really don't like it.

Dads, you can be Redland Mums too

A special callout to CV53EJX, here going down Cotham Brow. Moving too fast for a good photo taken one handed from a moving vehicle, low light conditions..

For some reason the school run went well on the way in. Yes, it was by bike, but since the DVLA sent a note asking for the license back in a pre-paid envelope, driving is not currently an option (*). But when you consider yourself a driver, not a cycling or walking under-person, you retain some of the old habits. You know, you occupy a lane, when an oncoming vehicle stops for you, you wave with your hand, they wave back. Sometimes you pull over for them, they wave at you. A friendly morning. Sprog delivered within a few minutes of the specified delivery time in a state of calmness. Perhaps the week off has left everyone in a good mood, no more Redland Mum "Death before a late dropoff" driving.

Then this, on the way home. Being still in motor-driver mode, after negotiating the buses parked in the downhill lane of Cotham Road, on account of the school parents parked in the coaches-keep-clear-zone, I slowed down to let a car coming off Hartfield Drive pull out. Mistake. Bicycles are not allowed to stop to let cars out, as it gave this CV53EJX a chance to overtake the bike and cut up the car pulling out.

Obviously, I caught up with the driver at the zebra crossing, where those bastard students hold up everyone. "I stopped to let a car out", I said. The driver look over with so much anger, his whole face torn up in rage and frustration "Oh Shut Up", I think mouthed, as he sprinted off to get caught behind the next car. 

Getting kids to school is pretty stressful. There's a hour or so of a parental attempt to impose schedule on small kids that would rather play with lego or read or watch Horrid Henry. But once you are out the door, there is no way to regain lost time. It's the rule of project management: time lost upfront cannot be regained. Trying to drive aggressively round Bristol on the school run doesn't do anything for your journey time, because that is a function of the number of the junctions (a constant) and the traffic load, while variable, is mostly a function of time, t, and whether it is a schoolday or not, also a function of (t). The equation becomes something like

T(journey) = congestion(t)*schoolday_factor(t)*junctions.

There is nothing you can do about this, you may as well mellow out unless you are out the door so early that t is earlier in the morning, and hence congestion lower. But not, clearly, this Redland Dad, who is suffering too stressful a life. We hope that it does not impact on their family life, that his kids and partner do not suffer. If they do, the news outlets inform us that there is a National Bullying Helpline which provides support, though you can't trust them to keep the calls confidential, not if the story is interesting enough.

(*) Details not to be discussed. All those people who pine for "real" police rather than speed cameras should note that they've never experienced being pulled over by armed traffic police on US Interstate 5 between Seattle and Tacoma. Cameras aren't as scary.

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?

Cotham Hill

The bike/lorry collision on Cotham Hill -suspiciously a week after a "ghost bicycle" appeared on that road- has triggered a quick review of our data on the area. Neil Harrison, the local councillor states that there will be changes coming in the next 12-18 months as part of a Showcase Bus Route down Whiteladies Road, which will be interesting to see. Until then, the buildout make a nice parking area for YA55VDY, who is quite a regular visitor.

Cotham Hill is an interesting road: interesting shops, and the primary traffic is foot passengers to and from the University and Cotham Grammar; hence the various shops and cafes. But cars sprint up it to get to St Michael's Hill; it saves you going down to the lights at Tyndall's Park Avenue, and so gains 20-30 seconds. There is a price: you can wait for a while at the mini roundabout at the summit, unless you are extra aggressive there and pull out ahead of vehicles who have the right of way -and not just bicycles!

For cycle traffic, it is two way at the top, which is not something all vehicles expect. Cars sprinting across it are your main threat heading down on a bike, especially at peak redland-mum hours; 08:15-09:00 and 15:00-16:00. Then there is the junction at the bottom. Getting off and walking over the pedestrian crossing is the easiest way of dealing with that. Through some quirk in the software, pedestrians get lots of time on these lights, even during peak car commuter hours.

Cotham Hill is useful for anyone driving to the Clifton Down shopping area as it offers the only free, short-stay parking in the area now that the railway car park is pay-and-display. This means that any car/van traffic that doesn't want to pay to park heads up here, but of course the free parking spaces are gone, nobody wants to turn round so they park on the double yellow stretches instead. This is a classic example of "transitive" free parking: when you set off with the intent to park for free on a road, the absence of any legal parking space does not get in the way of your plans, you just park in the closest area remaining. Adding a nominal fee to the (limited duration) parking on this stretch might have some effect.

The Builder's Merchants adds the hazard of large vehicles entering/exiting, and their customers: van drivers. We have examined our back catalogue of data on this road, and have two videos from November alone

Van Pullout #1 on Cotham Hill

Notice the large domino's pizza lorry parked on single yellow lines and a bit of the zig zags., obscuring all visibility. We have seen them before.

As the bicycle approaches the junction, a white van pulls out in front of them from the builder's merchants. Fortunately, this tax-dodger was not "cycling too fast" so there were no problems.

Van Pullout #2 on Cotham Hill

This van shows the correct way to pull out in front of a bicycle: aggressively. By putting his foot down and going forward before pulling out, the driver of van HN56JYJ manages to get in front of the bicycle even though there wouldn't be room to do this safely if they pulled out directly.

Apparently, the cyclist, at the lights they not only held up the driver, they walked over to express their concerns about the van's lack of indicator use. You can hear the van driver -rightfully- disputing this: there's no need to indicate to non-tax payers; you can also hear his the horn as he is finally allowed to go. Note, sadly, the extremely damaged state of the front of the vehicle; he may have been driving over-aggressively at least once in the past. You have to remember to only run over pedestrians and cyclists, as they do less damage than other motor vehicles.

Becoming a Redland Mum

Everyone was pretty shocked when that Panorama expose of Bristol racism came out. In most of the city, when somebody new moves in, the concern isn't their race, nationality or sexual orientation. It's: how many cars have they brought? Will they bring in enough vehicles to tip this street over the edge? Will one of them start to park in Our Space? That's all that matters.

In this Bristol, egalitarian Bristol, anyone can be a Redland Mum. You don't have to live in Redland, you don't have to be a mum. All it takes is quite simple:

To be a Redland Mum, getting to or from school in your car, on time, is more important than the safety and wellbeing of anyone else in Bristol.

That's all: drive aggressively to school and you too are a Redland Mum.

A video comes anonymously to our inbox proving that a dad driving a Malik's Hair and Beauty van can be as much a Redland Mum as any mother driving her 4x4. Notice how the vehicle comes out the side road without even a hint of attention to the give way sign, to come screaming to a halt at the last bit of build-out before Cotham Grammar, so ensuring their child will make it to school on time. The man driving this -he is proud to be a Redland Mum.

The road he came from at speed is interesting as it's part of the area where residents have been complaining about cycling and skateboarding on the pavement. It's simply not safe to have kids on the pavement, on wheeled toys that could suddenly skid out in front of a parent in a rush to get to school. The sheer presence of children walking, cycling or skateboarding to school will force other parents to drive more cautiously -and so be late for school!

Even if the pedestrians, skateboarders and cyclists are not in front of the car, slowing them down, their very presence in our streets slows us down on the school run and makes us late. We are glad that the police are doing something about the skateboarders and cyclists, and hope that the school can do something about the pedestrians.

Finally, for whichever cyclist took this video, all we can say is: if you felt that this van pulled out in front of you from a side road dangerously, then you were clearly cycling too fast! You should be grateful that we do not report you for cycling fast near a school!

Anger Management

The photos have come back from Jessops at last, and one reveals a pic of the car driven by the Redland Mum that caused me so much vexation last Saturday that I had to have a little lie-down and a strong snifter.

Yes, cyclists should be aware that this black Toyota Avensis FY58PVN, when driven by a woman with "no points after thirty years behind the wheel", may still cut you up to save one second off her drive home to the leafy Victorian suburb of Sustainable Redland.

Cyclists should also be aware, if they swear at this motorist, she may tell you that she "has no time for people like you."

I probably overreacted.

But a different driver in a different car managed to mangle my bike and break my elbow very effectively last year, and I was in such shock that I didn't swear at him.

So I swore at her instead. I have since washed my mouth out with soap.

Sketchy Weekend

Three things this weekend so far:

1. Very sketchy Critical Mass.

Difficult to hold the road (not enough riders, really), but had to make sure my children survived the impatience of certain drivers.

Interestingly though, Friday's ride did prove that even very few road-users can take control of the entire infrastructure. We will be alerting our friends at the Association of British Drivers to see if they can help next month.

2. The students are back.

Careful out there, boy and girls.

Bristol seems to have filled-up this week (and last) with strange new number plates. And although they all have six A* A levels, their driving skills leave something to be desired... But they know how to hoot cyclists. Fantastic.

Maybe they will become educated in the ways of the 'Cycling City' before they leave for top jobs in the (other) City...

3. Redland Mums are out.

Ouch. Or nearly. Be careful, also, for the Redland Mums. They don't say sorry when they cut you up, and they don't like it when you swear at them in front of their children.

I apologise.

Mum Rage

No video this time of the driver of WU57KJF, but you can be assured she gave a good rant about how her overtaking and pulling in while half-way past one on Cotham Road was fine because her husband is a cyclist.

Maybe he is, but we suspect that he waits until his wife has gone off on the school run before venturing out the door.

The fundamental problem here is that Cotham Road is narrower because of the building works, yet the drivers still think it is safe to pass bicycles while there is oncoming traffic. This is not the case. We understand that drivers may have been upset at having to wait 30 seconds for a large lorry delivering building materials, but a moment of patience and even the slow-moving tax-dodger can be passed safely, without them getting annoyed and sticking your photo and registration number up online. She was not happy.

Note in the background the small child on a scooter without any hi-viz clothing, and the teenager walking in on the left on their phone -again, no hi-viz. Without the proper clothing, these schoolchildren will never be safe from parents on the school-run

Steiner School Mum Rage video

Cotham Road. With the school building going on, the trees are missing, its more hazardous to cycle along, but at least the builders are trying to retain safe access for schoolkids from Cotham Grammar to their coaches, by providing somewhere for the coaches to park.

They have sign telling you not to park there.

Today, Bristol Parking Services are out to make sure that the sign is obeyed. That's their car behind the Renault, WP51XXU. Two parking officers, talking to a mum.

Not a Cotham Grammar School mum: one from Steiner School across the road. According to the web site, their slogan is "Where education is a journey, not a race". True, but there is always the parking at the far end. Today, the topic of Steiner School discussion is this: is it acceptable for a parent dropping off their child to stop coaches parking, hence endanger other schoolkids?

Alternatively: is it acceptable for the BPS staff to endanger children being dropped off, by stopping them parking? As you can see from the video, the officers are being given a fairly hard time, and yet taking it quite well.

In the background, one of the officers is saying that this is nothing, if you want to see a road where they get a hard time, go to Guthrie Road. Oh yes -been there.

(update: saw one of the mums in this video on a different day, trying to find somewhere to park her Mercedes R320 family-friendly-not-for-real-offroad SUV. Parking Services should recognise that only important people drive such important cars, and leave them alone)

(update2: patched in the video. Thanks Chris!)