Posts by Sacha
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Australian study verifies that driver attention is a major problem
(h/t Lance Wiggs).Drivers were at fault in 87 per cent of incidents with cyclists and most did not realise they had behaved in a reckless or unsafe manner, according to the Monash University Accident Research Centre and The Amy Gillett Foundation.
The three-year study into cyclist safety on the roads used mounted video camera footage, as well as helmet-mounted cameras worn by cyclists, to determine the main causes of road accidents between cyclists and motorists.
Fifty-four events were recorded; including two collisions, six near-collisions and 46 other incidents.
The helmet camera study found that of the 54 incidents recorded, more than 88 per cent of cyclists travelled in a safe and legal way.
Conversely, drivers changing lanes and turning left without indicating or looking were the cause of more than 70 per cent of the incidents, Amy Gillett Foundation chief executive officer Tracey Gaudry said.
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Hard News: Where nature may win, in reply to Michael Hills,
Don't know about the Stuff story but the Herald one still has this snippet:
In the nearby township of Runanga, the partner of 60-year-old Alan Dixon says she received a call from the phone in the mine, after the explosion.
"It was quite fuzzy," says Dixon's son, Joel.
Police are dubious - but they have confirmed the one call after the blast.
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Zoink and the Doughty Hypotheticals - zither rockabilly for the new millenium
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Hard News: I'm not a "f***ing cyclist".…, in reply to Angus Robertson,
Angus, certainly representative of classic thinking for that particular community - that the only way to get somewhere is to drive one's car and demand a park for it only a very short walk from one's objective. Else social order and the economy would surely collapse.. :)
Local knowledge is valuable for some decisions but to ensure fairness and respect for evidence, some policy and standards do need to be set at a broader level and implemented consistently and sensitively across the region. That tension seems likely to continue when you look at the pressure to delegate substantive decisions to the new council's local boards but their lack of leverage over Auckland Transport and the Auckland Council.
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More on the Puhoi to Wellsford folly – Auckland Transport Blog quotes Rod Oram’s analysis in today’s Sunday Star-Times. He offers another angle on why we’d be better investing the money in public transport and urban cycle lanes (which these days in other countries tend to be more than a painted line on the footpath).
The motorway will significantly distort development patterns, thereby blighting the region. It will help push urban development out to 85km north of Auckland’s CBD over coming decades.
This will exacerbate Auckland’s weakness as a sprawling city, with dire economic consequences. Worldwide evidence shows lower density means higher infrastructure costs, favouring private over public transport and a weaker network effect. People living and working closely together generate greater wealth than those spread out.
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Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch are trying to cope with growth. They have just elected mayors and councils who believe some of the solutions are more public transport and more compact urban forms.
In contrast, the government has said bluntly it believes the opposite is true. It sees the future as a continuation of the past – more roads, more sprawl. And it is investing $11b to deliver that, not only straining government finances to do so, particularly between 2013 and 2018, but also grabbing funding from local roads and other forms of transport and skewing the analysis against them.
Thanks to the Waikato Expressway and Puhoi to Wellsford motorway, urban and peri-urban Auckland will spread 150km from north to south in coming decades. Yet, there is no room to build any more roads through the Auckland isthmus. Thus the region has to have more public transport, particularly rail. But lower density induced by $3b of uneconomic road building makes the case for it even harder.
The full Oram article delves futher into the spinning of the economic cases.
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Hard News: I'm not a "f***ing cyclist".…, in reply to Sacha,
Politics is resolution of competing influence and needs to allocate resources and attention. Sure, media helps.
But goodness knows how keeping a solid median strip and 4 roadside carparks was regarded as more important than addressing repeated injuries to legitimate road users since 2006. Wonder what Kelly Tarlton’s were asked to contribute to the demand their (profitable) nearby business created?
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More politics. Our current Minister of Transport and his colleagues also de-prioritised and de-funded safety programmes in general, along with maintanance of both local roads and existing highways (noticed more potholes?) and of public transport investment to match demand and population growth.
Why? To provide budget for their beefy highways of National Party significance, so lucrative for construction companies and trucking firms. Let’s hope at least some voters think about that next year.
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Hard News: I'm not a "f***ing cyclist".…, in reply to Lisa Black,
City of Sydney research showed a 388% return on investment for transport-cycling infrastructure.
Compares quite well with a benefit-cost ratio as low as 20% for Joyce’s new $1,700,000,000 highway from Puhoi to Wellsford alongside the existing one.
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this most recent road death was caused by driver error
And by poor road layout design, fixable within a day but not attended to for 4 years. That’s a political problem.
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If we are looking to increase education, it’s pretty clear to me which party it should be aimed at first - in the absence of unlimited resources. Same with enforcement and any other activities that can reduce death and injury and improve attitudes about sharing public space.