A wee snippet from the times, makes for interesting reading.
RJ
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh
Meanwhile in London......
(9 posts)-
Posted 11 years ago #
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“All, can you please cascade this onto your troops,” the e-mail from Inspector Colin Davies of the Metropolitan Police’s South East Area Traffic Garage, began. “Officers have four months to do 40 cycle tickets. Ten per month, 2.5 a week. Most officers are nearing or have even achieved their other targets. This will give them a renewed focus for a while.”
Modern policing at its very best. Senior officers like this are part of the problem, not the solution. They have no real interest in the actual problem or the root causes, but in chasing targets and being "seen to be doing something", regardless of how ineffective it will be. I'd like to see him busted down to the cyclepolis section and sent out on the road.
Posted 11 years ago # -
"Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said last week that he would not cycle in London but understood why some people might if they could not afford to take public transport."
Aye, people only cycle because they are poor.
Posted 11 years ago # -
The objectionable part of this is not so much the setting of targets - who doesn't have targets as part of their job? - but the obvious lack of evidence-driven enforcement.
The deaths of cyclists are very rarely associated with lack of lights or jumping red lights if you look at the police stats. Those things are just politically easy for the police to target.
In London large vehicles make up 5% of traffic movements but are involved in over 50% of killings. An amazing 7 out of every 9 HGVs that go over a cyclist are construction related, a massive over-representation relative to other large vehicles.
You'd think that would be a pretty huge flashing neon arrow to indicate what enforcement needs to target, wouldn't you?
Posted 11 years ago # -
You'd think that would be a pretty huge flashing neon arrow to indicate what enforcement needs to target, wouldn't you?
Especially given the proportion of HGVs that failed spot checks and received penalty notices last Monday (15 out of 70).
Posted 11 years ago # -
If police officers need to be issued with a numerical target to attain, I would suggest they are either lacking motivation or focus. The only target they should have is to uphold the law.
Imagine the situation where an officer has 10 minutes of his or her shift in which to make the month's quota of cycling tickets. I'd hate to think they might feel pressured into ticketing a cyclist for riding on the pavement whilst allowing an HGV to run a red light.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Posted 11 years ago #
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The cycle counter on CS3 at Embankment in London has recorded 2397180 cyclists in the last year.
Assuming that's counting both directions, and also assuming they were all in a 12h period during each day, that's roughly averaging one cyclist in each direction every 13s. At commuting times, I'm guessing the flow might be 3 or 4 times the average, which would be one cyclist every 4s or so (still in each direction).
For comparison, the maximum flow of cars in a traffic lane with occasional signalised junctions will be (by my rough estimate*) one every 6s.
And obviously the bidirectional Embankment cycleway is roughly the same width as a unidirectional traffic lane.
*Assume one car every 2s, then multiply by three to account for two traffic phases and a pedestrian phase at a normal signalised junction. This is very rough, obviously.
Posted 4 years ago #
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