Rockets

Yup it's about as "fairly balanced" as you're going to get from the Guardian....but in typical Guardian style the headline is hyperbole not actually born out in the rest of the article 😉 It was clear from my posts that I was questioning the timing of it - why did Peter Walker suddenly decide to write about it now - one wonders what the trigger for it was given the same story was extensively covered some months ago in other media?

Of course its good news but why did Peter Walker decide to write about it now - it's really old news? And it's a classic Walker article in that the headline makes a definitive statement: Wales 20mph limit has cut road deaths. Why is there still even a debate? .....and yet his opening paragraph contradicts his headline by referring to the caveats that the Welsh government has applied to pause jumping to the conclusion of his headline. This is cub reporter stuff. Here is how the BBC dealt with those caveats: Government officials have urged caution in attributing the fall in casualties to the 20mph limit. The Welsh government's chief statistician said in a blog last year that at least three year's worth of collision data would be required for a meaningful comparison to be made. Casualty figures have also been on a downward trend for sometime - the Welsh government said they have "declined steadily over the last decade". So why did Peter decide to write that article now and gloss over the cabeats part? What do you think? I did. See post above yours.

There is a lot of hyperbole over SUVs, granted, if you get hit by one you are far more likely to suffer terrible injuries, in fact I read that the Ford F150 and Chevy Silverado are the most dangerous cars on the roads in the US and that's not surprising as they are huge and also a lot of American roads are 6 lane motorways (ostensibly) through residential areas and everyone seems to own a monster truck. In the UK by comparison I keep seeing research (that claims to come from DfT STATS19 data) that says the car involved in most accidents that lead to injury in the UK: Toyota Prius, followed by Vauxhall Corsas and Astras and Volkswagen Golf. Range Rovers are the only one on the list that falls into the SUV category. One thing worth considering as well is that due to the high value margins involved many of the newest and most expensive SUVs are some of the most advanced cars on the roads and come with significant accident avoidance technology, often long before smaller, less expensive, cars do.

I saw Peter Walker's article in the Guardian and thought, hang on this is old news and lo, the BBC wrote about it in January which then made me wonder why Peter Walker decided to write about it now. It's not news, so why now? Anyone have any clue, is he using it as part of a lobbying effort? Normally, now that he is acting political editor, his forays into his old patch of transport are usually built around "exclusives" most often fed to him by his pals in the cycle/active travel lobby because they know he will treat their narrative sympathetically and he will not ask any probing questions. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c78w1891z03o

What work are they doing outside ED station? Another route in and out of Dulwich disrupted...it's becoming a badly organised joke.

I agree it would be good if the council did the exercise again to see how much has changed. It was research done over two days in February in 2015 so repeating it wouldn't cost the earth.

In the last Lordship Lane footfall analysis (I believe the last) done by the council in 2015 their research suggested that: 29% of visitors (and by far the largest group) were from SE22 17% of visitors were from SE15 11% of visitors were from SE12 5% of visitors were from SE5 4% of visitors were from SE23 The rest were spread across a lot of London postcodes further afield but a lot from the wider South London area 37% of visitors had walked 21% had got the bus 22% of visitors had driven

Earl, for the benefit of everyone else I don't want to get drawn into one of the cycles that bore the pants off everyone else and yes you are right this has nothing to do with Peckham, but: STATS Under-reporting is an issue that the government is trying to address because the police reports that form STATS have not necessarily correlated to other forms of reporting (hospital, insurance claims etc) In fact the latest review (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reported-road-casualty-statistics-background-quality-report/reported-road-casualty-statistics-background-quality-report) the government cites this very example in bold: For example the STATS19 definition of a collision will include single-vehicle pedal cycle collisions, if the rider (or a pedestrian in collision with the cycle) is injured. In practice, only a small proportion of these types of collision are reported to the police. This is a serious issue concerning the quality of the road casualty data. If under-reporting remains unrecognised, then the true magnitude of any road safety problems cannot be known, or could be underestimated. This could in turn lead to incorrect prioritising of policy measures to improve road safety, or could lead to less efficient or inappropriate countermeasures. These issues also affect the ‘coherence’ strand of quality. STATS is slow to adapt to new transport usage types it only started monitoring for Powered Personal Transporters (e-scooters) from November 2024 and I very much suspect PPTs were added to the data collection mechanism because other sources (hospitals maybe) were seeing an increase in issues that were not being reflected in STATS. So, what I was saying remains true that STATS data should not be used for comparisons of road user type X vs road user type Y in terms of numbers of injury inducing accidents - any database to which you refer that uses STATS as the basis for their data needs to be approached with that mindset.

Be careful @Earl Aelfheah you're taking this into personal jibe territory - keep it nice - the forum rules demand it. P.S. I don't have an X feed.

Only if the person reporting it has filled in the STATS19 form. No I was challenging you on your use of the data as a like-for-like comparison. It cannot, and should not be used for that. Yes but it's important to correct misleading use of a dataset that does not have the granularity required for the purpose it was being used.

Reported incidents via police using the STATS19 form, the vast majority of which are from police attending the scene of an accident and all of the accident/crash stats you cite (CrashMap, Microsoft whatever it is, TFL) come from the very same source - STATS19. So those are not all accidents - only those to which police attend or a member of the public filled out at STATS19 form. Only if the police attended and filled out a STATS19 form. Or if a member of the public went to a police and filled out/submitted a STATS19 form. So if, for example, an ambulance attended and police did not the police would not report it.

I actually thought this thread was an early April Fool's joke!

I presume it depends how you categorise local doesn't it - and that is where the question about Malumbu's response is important because where do you think that is categorised - in the Lewisham responses or in the "Not resident of Sydenham Hill or surrounding road"? Ok so does time heal all ills? But do you agree or not that consultations are open to manipulation? I mean do you agree or disagree that the Railton Road LTN consultation was manipulated?

No I was talking about Malumbu's registering of his support of the works suggested in the consultation.... But they did not overwhelming support the council's consultation did they. In fact, the largest response of the three offered to local residents was "do not support". And that is an undeniable fact.

I am not sure I have and even if I have the Malumbu question validates my position surely? No there was not - you're combining two very separate categories - "support" but "support with changes" are two very distinct categories and, as I said before, a free pass for the council to say "well we made a change so that satiates that group of people so we must have their support now". As I have said a lot of times before - potential manipulation of council consultation processes where people who do not have to live with the impact of an intervention can influence the decision-making process based on nothing more than their own ideology or because a lobby group told them to. Surely that is something we all think needs to be eliminated?

But by default East Dulwich residents are also Southwark residents are they not? So, let's take the case of @malumbu and their response to the consultation - they are a self-professed Lewisham resident, clearly don't live close enough to have got a flyer so where do you think their response went? It is an odd distribution because the other category responses are spread more evenly - the overwhelming support for the changes from that group is a statistical anomaly - it was exactly that, on a larger scale, that was the catalyst for the Lambeth cull of responses ion the Railton Road consultation - an odd grouping of responses.. You say "only" 26 people living on the road objected but "only" 23 supported it and "only" 24 supported it with changes. So, as I have said before, and for fear of having to repeat myself, the objections were the highest response of any of the 3 categories from those who lived closest to the road - that is undeniable.

As a cyclist I think it is a number of things: 1) not losing forward momentum 2) trying to get ahead of traffic before the lights go green for other vehicles 3) an ignorance that the red lights don't/should not apply to cyclists. It's interesting because back in 2007 (and I can't determine if they have done one since) TFL did a cyclist red-light jumping survey of a number of sites across London and found that 1 in 6 cyclists were jumping red lights and concluded then that it was not "endemic" but that "at this level may encourage more to do so in the future". I do wonder what the level is now and from unscientific observations I would say it is a lot higher than that now - I have actually been chastised by other cyclists for stopping at/waiting at red lights.

Police do seem to be taking a more proactive approach to enforcing rules for cyclists. I know City of London police have been doing it a lot but I saw a load of PCSOs lingering around the junction of Chelsea Embankment and Albert Bridge last week and saw that they were jumping out and grabbing cyclists who were jumping the red lights - I couldn't see if they were issuing PCNs or just giving warnings.

You'd better take that up with @malumbu as he was the one who made that claim. No point going over and over the point of the thread as that is clear for anyone who cares to read it and the data is there in black and white - the very odd distribution of positive responses of those not resident of Southwark or Lewisham. Perhaps it is a statistical anomaly or perhaps LCC and Southwark Cyclist lobbying efforts swung it in the council's favour - I mean the thread also acknowledges that people on both sides have been trying to manipulate the process - and I though we had all agreed there needs to be a more grown-up approach taken to consultations. My personal feeling is that councils were happy to turn a blind eye to interference when it suited their agenda but keen to police when it didn't. Also, on the subject of whether the cycle lane was a good investment still waiting for someone with the Strava data to share it because apparently it's perfectly reasonable to make a claim that the cycle route is well used because "a quick look on Strava shows tens of thousands of rides along there" and then when challenged to share the data suddenly Strava is "not representative" even though we were asking for comparative data with a cycle lane/route where we all can acknowledge has decent usage.

And the utterly ludicrous thing is the majority of people on both Calton and Townley voted against the CPZs during the consultation and both roads are probably two of the least densely populated roads in the borough and many houses have off-street parking. The council has clearly dropped a CPZ displacement bomb there to create problems elsewhere or as I like to refer to it CIPP (Council Initiated Parking Pressure)! It's utterly shameless - lose an area-wide consultation and come back straight away with a devious plan to roll it out anyway propped up by a few council-friendly lobby groups and locals.

@malumbu is the displaced traffic using Honor Oak Road? It makes sense it would be. Can anyone remember when the no right turn was implemented? I dont remember it being anything but.

@malumbu are you really advocating for the removal of what is, ostensibly, an LTN? And are you going to lobby for this based on the displacement caused by said "LTN"? Did I wake up in some sort of parallel universe where everyone changes side....? 😉

@march46 given 71% of Dovercourt Road respondents said no to the CPZ in the council consultation then it looks far more likely that my summation is for closer to reality than yours.... Its so transparent what the council are doing and it's scandalous. CPZ displacement and expansion of double yellow lines to force CPZs on residents. Someone should remind them they are here to represent their constituents not resent them. One day the electorate will get wise to it and punish them in the polls. Given that 66% and 74% of respondents on Calton and Townley also said no how on earth did the council gerrymander that decision? Given the weight of feeling against CPZs across the area this is a massive political gamble by Southwark Labour.

Well I think we can point the council to what has happened on the roads surrounding Calton and Townley since their CPZ went in - utter chaos and misery from those now having to live with the displacement. A lot of residents have emailed Margy and Richard and the response is along the lines of: "Yes we are aware of the increased parking problems as a result. Would you like a CPZ as well?" The fact they are doing this after they failed to get the area-wide CPZ plans in place shows what a bunch of untrustworthy charlatans they are - never ever trust a politician. One day I do hope constituents hold them accountable - next local elections may be interesting especially if they become victims rather than victors of a central government protest vote - and the way the Labour govenernment is going that could well be a stark reality for them - could well be a double whammy.

@geh they are clearly making things up as they go along. Not consulting businesses on the Eastern side of Lordship Lane is unforgiveable and clearly done to manipulate the process. This council is out of control and has to be held accountable - they repeatedly lie and mislead constituents. Can anyone trust anything the council says anymore?