Plymouth, England – If you perused the UK’s, alleged, largest circulation motorcycle newspaper this week you may have seen the item on the European Union SafeRider Project. So what is going on here is it rider safety improvement or the EU apparatchiks beating the last bit of fun out of biking.
So what’s SafeRider? The aim of SafeRider is to study the potential of Advanced Rider Assistance Systems (ARAS) and On Bike Information Systems (OBIS).
For the uninitiated ARAS applications are, Speed Alerts, Curve Speed Warning, Frontal Collision Warning, Intersection Support. While OBIS applications are eCall, Telediagnostic Service, Navigation and Route Guidance, Weather, Traffic and Black Spot Warning. In short technology capable of warning motorcycle riders when they’re speeding, cornering too fast, too close to the vehicle in front or likely to be collision involved. Not to mention ring up the dealer and book a service appointment, call the emergency services when you fall off and flash everything you ever wanted to know to a head-up display projected on to your visor.
The stuff of science fiction, afraid not, for SafeRider is costing 5.3million €uros has twenty European partners some of best automotive engineers in the world and is part of the Seventh EU Framework Programme (FP7). Framework Programmes are major milestones in EU policies they define priorities in research which is later used to achieve objectives in EU policies. In this case improving rider safety.
A SafeRider prototype system which will include satellite navigation, speed limit mapping and warning, curve speed warning and collision detection is to be fitted to nine motorcycles/scooters and trial tested in the UK this June. Public demonstrations, in this case public means a few journalists and motorcycle worthies, will be held at the Motor Industry Research Association (MIRA) test track in Nuneaton in early November.
Good stuff, except for one minor point err the European Commission would like SafeRider to become mandatory on all new road bikes within five or six years.
Ok who asked us? Well not worry the Federation of European Motorcyclists Associations (FEMA) is looking after our interests, in fact they being paid to do some of the work on SafeRider. Then there have been a number of briefings and seminars attended by the Motorcycle Action Group and other European rider representative groups. So all the lobbyists know about SafeRider, question is do you.
Can we be sure that questions like – How much will it cost? Who pays? What about information overload? How about risk compensation? Will it be mandatory? What are the alternatives? Why? – have been, are being and will be asked.
Can we be sure that a group of people, most of whom are not road safety professionals, will not consign us to a technology overloaded future? Just because we can do it does not mean we have too. The last word in the bottom line after ‘safety’ is ‘common sense’.
More on SafeRider here…..
Last week the good folk at the Motorcycle Industry Association (MCIA) chugged off to see Ian Lucas MP, Minister for Business and Regulatory Reform, at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The BRR news hound has obtained a copy of the official communiqué issued after the meeting. You can read it here…..
Have fun!
© Back Roads Rider 2009
Land’s End, England – United Kingdom devolved government is turning out to be very handy for trying out ‘things’ on a small proportion of the population before inflicting ‘it’ on the rest.
Remember the idea of making motorists responsible for any accident involving cyclists, regardless of who is to blame, as discussed by BRR in ‘Presumably Innocent or Presumed Guilty?’, well ‘it’ has not gone away just moved.
Obviously the mandarins at the Department for Transport, in wintery London’s Marsham Street, have recovered from the ear hair singeing response from the last attempt to float this idea. In civil servant speak (CSS) they have, following a comprehensive blue skies review, drilled down into the issue bottomed it out and come up with a new initiative i.e. lets try it out in Scotland.
Yes the Scottish Government (SG) are considering plans to make motorists responsible for any accident involving cyclists. The measure aims to encourage more people to cycle. The SG rhetoric on this seems oddly familiar, ‘the policy has been adopted in Germany and Holland where campaigners say it has had a great influence in improving attitudes to cycling and cyclists’.
So perhaps both Germany and Holland are home for the worlds touchy feely cyclists. But over here there’s a tendency for cyclists to blame every other mode for their road safety problems. So all the SG are doing is handing cyclists an axe to grind at the expense of the rest of the rest.
All this could be solved if cyclists had to have compulsory insurance but that won’t happen as it could act as a barrier to the UK Governments cycling strategy. Compulsory insurance would remove the sunny day cyclist and the OMG the cars broken down options from the cycle use equation.
Playing devils advocate, who me, lets ask should UK motorcycle and scooter users be interested in the proposal to make car drivers responsible for all collisions with vulnerable modes.
My answer an emphatic yes. Including all vulnerable road users pedestrians’ cyclists, motorcyclists, scooterists and even mobility scooter users would have, I believe, a significant influence in changing attitudes towards these modes from a road safety perspective. Bringing much needed personal responsibility back into the equation. Motorcyclists and scooter riders, particularly those riding low powered machines, are the victims of irresponsible drivers who typically give the ‘sorry mate I didn’t see you’ defence. If such drivers were hit financial or even, via the courts, criminally perhaps their powers of observation would have a sudden and dramatic improvement.
You see it could avoid newspaper reports like this:-
A St Helens man who killed a motorcyclist from through a careless right turn wept in court this morning as he learned he would be spared prison.
Smith, 25, was on his way home from work on the afternoon of July 29 last year when he turned right into Park Lane from the A1001 Mandela Road, hitting Eric Jones, 37, coming the other way.
The victim was flown by air ambulance to Brookes Hospital in Chester, where he died 17 days later without regaining consciousness.
Prosecutor David Wickwell said there was no explanation for Smiths’s failure to see the motorcycle. He told the Crown Court: “The Honda motorcycle was bright yellow. “It was in full view and was displaying dipped headlights. “It was a bright sunny day.”
Defending, James Thomas said: “Mr Smith shows remorse. This has had an extremely bad affect on him and his family.”
Judge Jenifer Slade said: “It was the result of a momentary lack of attention of a kind which anyone who drives knows he or she is capable of.”
She ordered Smith to do 150 hours of unpaid work, pay £300 costs and serve a year’s driving ban.
Mr Jones family did not want to talk to reporters after the hearing.
That’s fiction, a made up report, but it happens in real life and only to often. The question is should we let it.
Moving on.
Some good news from the Motorcycle Industry Association (MCI) HQ at Rye Hill, Coventry; better know to BRR followers as Camp Bastion. No it’s not that MCI have solved the problem of imminent european directives b*******g up our riding its news that ‘Get On’ has appointed Miles Taylor as Campaign Director.
Miles has worked for Suzuki, Yamaha and Aprilla and now runs his own company, Perspective Marketing, through which he has been retained by ‘Get On’. I’m told he’s commercially aware, results driven, creative, media savvy and an inspirational team leader in short just the type of guy to build on ‘Get On’s’ already excellent track record.
Don’t forget. Next Friday, 5th February, is the deadline for consultation responses to be made on the proposed Third Driving Licence Directive.
Details here….
BTW if you don’t know what a UK Department for Transport Consultation actually is here’s a briefing:-
The Department has already decided what it’s going to do. The document will contain one policy dressed up to look like several options, to give the impression that the Department is open to suggestions. It will also have a few ridiculous ideas, so officials can claim to be “thinking outside the box”.
© Back Roads Rider 2009
Note: In relation to the newspaper report all characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Western-Super-Mare, England – The European Commission has made public its plans to clampdown on air pollution and climate warming emissions from motorcycles and scooters.
Speaking at the Association des Constructeurs Européens de Motocycles (ACEM) Annual Conference, held in Brussels last Thursday, Giacomo Mattino, a senior official in the EU Directorate for Enterprise and Industry, outlined proposals that will oblige motorcycle manufacturers to label new models with the amount of carbon dioxide they emit. This will be followed by legislation to limit other pollutants in motorcycle and scooter exhaust gases.
What does this mean? Motorcycle and scooters manufactures will have to label new models with details of their CO2 output using fuel consumption as a basis for that calculation. This will be followed by carbon caps limiting the CO2 output by engine size. Motorcycles and scooters currently lag 7 years behind cars in terms of emissions with new models having to meet Euro 3 standards. EU regulators are looking at curbing particulate matter, nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons even further by bringing forward proposals for Euro 4 and 5 standards to be introduced as early as 2015-16. This will effectively give motorcycles and scooters parity with cars.
What is the upside/downside for riders? With the CO2 information riders will, should they decide to, be able to choose a machine that best fulfil their needs based on mpg and CO2 outputs. If Euro 5 is achieved motorcycles and scooters will be among the least polluting carbon based fuel powered transport modes, achieving the same levels of emissions as hybrid cars. This will at last silence the anti’s allegations that our mode is a gross polluter.
Downsides! The price on machines will not doubt rise as manufactures seek to recover the costs of developing technology. It is extremely likely that a CO2 based road tax system will be introduced, as has recently happened in Spain. As is the case with cars in the UK bikes will be tax banded according to there CO2 emissions. This will certainly mean that larger engined machines will pay more, although smaller engines bikes may pay nothing.
Its is worth noting comment from Jacques Campagne, the Secretary General of ACEM. Up to this point ACEM had opposed the introduction of CO2 labelling on the basis that national governments could take advantage of the information in order to impose new taxes on buyers. However Campagne is reported as saying in Brussels that the industry would not oppose any new rules on labelling. To say the least a climb down.
Could it be that during all the bargaining and horse trading that surrounds European legislation ACEM has agreed to CO2 labelling and emission controls in exchange for financial assistance for an ailing industry. Not to mention that a faster tightening of Euro emission standards will have a controlling effect on motorcycle and scooter imports from the Far East, in particular China.
Oh and the back story. All this ‘sudden’ movement on emissions is part a new EU framework regulation for motorcycles and scooters to regulate emissions and the safety of motorcycles. The regulations on emissions will almost certainly include stringent anti-tampering measures. Anti-tampering measures cover the motorcycle power train i.e. engine, transmits drive shaft / belt drive / chain drive, differentials, the final drive, the driven wheel tyre (radius) and of course the exhaust system. Not forgetting on-board diagnostic systems, access to repair and maintenance information and pan European standards for MoT type tests. In short legislation that will deny bikers the traditional right to fettle up and personalise their machines.
ACEM supports many of the anti-tampering proposals. Considering the huge profits manufactures and dealers make from after market modifications and shiny add-ons this seems bizarre. But then we can only guess what goes on behind those closed doors in the way of Euro Machiavellian deals!!
Not to worry the Federation of European Motorcyclists Associations (FEMA) is looking after our interests. Well err actually they are not. Hanging around the edge of meetings suggesting things like a test every time a new or modified part is fitted is not really looking after our rights is it. But building a caucus of MEP’s prepared to speak up for us and vote out parts of Directives we cannot support is. So why doesn’t FEMA do it. If you can’t get in on the horse trading get in on the politics and influence things there.
Make ACEM and the EU posse remember that the customer is always right, and we are the customers, it’s our democracy. It’s the industry fools who have peddled sports bikes for the last thirty years that have caused us to be burdened with totally excessive road safety legislation and un passable tests.
Oh and please Mr Industry don’t bleat out the usual excuse: ‘well you brought them’ we had to, you didn’t sell anything else.
© Back Roads Rider 2010
Cardiff, Wales – Room 101? The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world. Room 131? Curious?……..
Room 131 does it exist or is it merely a figment of an author’s imagination, like Platform Nine and Three-Quarters at London’s Kings Cross Station. Room 131, is it secreted in some dingy metropolitan tower block? The one with twenty floors but only nineteen buttons on the lift, only very ‘special’ people visit the thirteenth floor and have the security code for meeting room one.
Room 131. It’s the place ‘they’ meet. It is the place ‘those people’ go to consider any, anti-democratic, anti-libertarian, authoritarian idea that ‘normal’ people dream about in their worst worst nightmares. In Room 131 these ideas become strangely reasonable, acceptable, in the public interest, election winning, spinnable.
Ideas like: The UK Police using unmanned spy drones, currently deployed in Afghanistan, for the monitoring of antisocial motorists and motorcyclists, protesters, agricultural thieves, fly-tippers and anything else that my get up the Chief Constables cleft.
Ideas like: The Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), recommendation that average speed cameras be installed on all UK motorways to cut CO2 emissions and err bump up income from speeding fines.
Ideas like: Enabling the widespread introduction of Intelligent Speed Adaptation technology, setting out a clear timetable for implementation of the recommendations made in the joint Commission for Integrated Transport / Motorists’ Forum report. Who?
Even ideas like: Research to see if sat navs cause car crashes.
Not to mention ideas like: Banning drivers over the age of 70 years from motorways.
Oh and ideas like: Licensing mobility scooters and there riders.
Also ideas like: Monitoring ‘traffic movements’ via driver’s mobile phones, to calculate vehicle numbers and speeds, and to spot congestion. No security service feed of course!!
Room 131. The place where everything is feasible, anything is possible and where no one takes notice of YOU!
© Back Roads Rider 2010
Cardigan, Wales – That very deep hole that the UK Defence Secretary, Bob Ainswoth, has dug himself over the Afghan War got considerably deeper today.
During another of his red-faced sweating interviews on Sky News Bob, either by accident or design, leaked the date of the next UK general election, indicating that those of us eligible to vote may well be doing so on May 6.
So biking girls and boys its time to consider exactly which party will best serve motorcycling and the interests of motorcyclists for the next five years. I simple cannot wait to get hold of the party manifestos and play my favourite quinquennial game, ‘spot the biker’.
Back in 2005, the year of the last UK general election, the results were grim, I seem to recall that only one of the parties mentioned motorcycling. Considering all the puff coming from the Motorcycle Industry Association (MCI), the British Motorcyclists Federation (BMF) and the Motorcycle Action Group (MAG) about ‘mainstreaming motorcycling’ we should expect better this time around. The question is will we get it?
Are we, as some are commenting to BRR, not in the ‘mainstream’ but up the creek run aground on a sandbank of rhetoric captained there by the self-interest of the rider ‘representative’ groups. Which brings me to the point, exactly who is representing you? Well if a recent comment left on BRR is anything to go by the “London Mafia” are. In my benign innocence I assume this is a reference to a small clique who believe they know what is best for bikers and consider they have a modicum of influence in the ‘corridors of power’ As Oliver Cromwell said “not what they want but what is good for them” In this case ‘them’ being us.
There are of course some bright spots of biking democracy where positive action is being taken. I refer, of course, to the No to Bike Parking Tax Campaign in Westminster and Write to Ride in Northern Ireland. Both ‘groups’ have listened to motorcycle and scooter users and are responding by enabling people, by getting on message.
Yes simple enabling, no we think you should, no subscription, no special deals, no endless committees, no student rhetoric, and no self-interest. Just enabling those who want to do ‘something’ to do ‘it’.
Simples!!
© Back Roads Rider 2010
Caernarfon, Wales – Its only taken 13 years to get there but there are strong indications that the vehicle tax statutory off-road notification, SORN, legislative package will be completed in 2011 when Continuous Insurance Enforcement is finally introduced into the UK.
Nineteen ninety-eight halcyon days, no safety cameras, you could smoke in pubs and petrol was only £2.76 a gallon. Then, OMG, SORN was introduced. What a kerfuffle with thousands of old geezers with boxes of bezzers moaning that they would have to road tax a wooden box of bike bits. Well of course they didn’t have to and statutory off-road notification, SORN, has now become another fact of biking life.
SORN has been quite effective in reducing vehicle tax evasion, although arguable it causes the honest citizen more hassle than those who chose to live on the other side of the vehicle taxation tracks. The real teeth of the package of legislation, which SORN is part of, is of course Continuous Insurance Enforcement (CIE).
CIE will mean it will be an offence simply to be the registered keeper of an uninsured vehicle, the police will not have to prove it was in use. CIE will replace existing laws, whereby a prosecution can take place only if an uninsured rider/driver is caught in the act. An initial penalty of £100 will be applied, followed by further fines of up to £1,000 levied by a magistrate’s court.
Implementation of the new rules in 2011 will allow those riders/drivers who are not using their vehicles, and have left them uninsured for one year, to seek exemption by sorting out off-road storage and making a ’statutory off-road notification’ (SORN). They will, as is now the case, be exempted from vehicle tax. Vehicles already SORNed will automatically be insurance exempt.
Over 2 million people a year are driving or riding without insurance. If you are a rider and have been hit by an uninsured driver you will know what grief this can cause. Your only recourse is to the Motor Insurers’ Bureau, which compensates up to 30,000 people a year who have been in accidents with uninsured vehicle users.
Will CIE be effective? It will almost certainly cut the numbers using a vehicle while uninsured but will, in my view, not attack the core issue of ‘community vehicles’. These vehicles are simple brought from scrap yards and used with no register owner, MoT, road tax and insurance with users, sometimes unlicensed, simple seeing fines incurred as a ‘transport cost’.
Moreover, what about those without off-street parking, for them it is impossible to SORN a vehicle, they could fall victim to the new legislation. The Department for Transport’s own figures estimate that 43% of households in Britain have neither a garage nor a driveway, forcing vehicle owners to park on the street.
Will CIE simple be another tranche of legislation that affects those with the honesty to register a vehicle?
Discuss……….
© Back Roads Rider 2010
Blackpool, England – I’ve received a considerable number of e-mails accusing me of having a downer on Harriet Harman MP.
I make the presumption that this is because, in a recent post, I took Ms Harman to task over her driving abilities, ‘Anyone Seen the Road Safety Zealots’. As BRR readers may recall Ms Harman, a former solicitor, is Member of Parliament for Camberwell and Peckham. Ms Harman who is also Cabinet Minister for Women and Equality, Party Chair of the UK Labour Party, Lord Privy Seal, Leader of the House of Commons and formerly Solicitor General, was alleged to have crashed her car into another vehicle while talking on her mobile phone in Dulwich, London, on 3 July 2009.
10 days ago Miss Harman’s case came up at Westminster Magistrates’ Court. She was unable to attend, writing the Labour Party Manifesto perhaps or even snowed in, and was represented by a lawyer. Ms Harman pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention in relation to the incident in July. She had previously “strongly refuted” the allegations and had claimed she would “deny the charges”. Harman was fined £350, ordered to pay £70 costs, a £15 victim surcharge and had three points added to her licence.
Interestingly the Crown Prosecution Service dropped a second charge of driving whilst using a mobile phone and no action was taken over claims Ms Harman had left the scene without exchanging registration and insurance details. According to BRR’s legal adviser either of these charges could have led to Ms Harman, if found guilty, having them recorded on the police national computer, not a criminal record, but pretty near it.
Did Ms Harman ‘get off light’. I’m a bit biased to offer an opinion on that but Nick Freeman, the lawyer nicknamed “Mr Loophole” for his ability to secure reduced penalties for clients, said: “She has been treated incredibly leniently. If she was my client, I would consider it a fantastic result.”
Ms Harman has previous driving convictions. In January 2003 she was banned from driving for seven days and fined £400 after admitting speeding at 99mph on the M4 near Swindon, Wiltshire. In April 2007 she was fined £60 and given three penalty points for exceeding a temporary speed limit while driving on the A14 near Ipswich, Suffolk. In April 2008 Ms Harman was again caught breaking the speed limit, this time in a 30 mph zone, and of course in Jan 210 Ms Harman was fined £350, ordered to pay £70 costs, a £15 victim surcharge and had three points added to her licence.
Does any of this matter? I belive it does. I’m not attempting to hold the moral high ground here, but it seems we have a considerable number of politicians who are only to willing to ignore what they see as petty misdemeanours. The MP’s expenses issue raised public awareness of this. Apparently it is ok to claim for porn, Tampax and duck houses because the rules say it’s ok. ‘I was just following the rules’, that’s really not so far from the Nuremberg defence i.e. ‘I was just following orders’. Newsflash – just because the rules say I can does not mean I have too. Public position, elected, moral judgment, think!
It appears, unfortunately for me, that I have been programmed to hold the view that people in authority, particularly in elected posts, conducted themselves in a manner appropriate to that post, in short set an example. I simply do not accept that Ms Harman’s is doing that. It’s the wrong message.
Anyway Harriet could always consider some advanced driving lessons, on expenses perhaps!!
Bit of a buzz on the news wires today as the Motorcycle Industry Association (MCI) call for a motorbike scrappage scheme again.
In advance of the MCI and its posse trundling off to see, well hopefully, Business Secretary Lord Mandelson in February, the mighty MCI PR machine is turning up the heat on the scrappage scheme idea.
With 2009 sales down 20% scrappage inducements for bikes seems a good idea and with an election looming the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform may just come up with the goods.
Err don’t forget to mention at the meeting that 1.5 million bikers are eligible to vote.
Tip of the week – Do not flog that 10-year-old bike yet!
© Back Roads Rider 2010
Carlisle, England – Don’t give up! Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war. That’s a message to the Westminster No To Bike Parking Tax campaigners following Westminster City Councils approval of a permanent central London motorcycle and scooter parking charge.
From Monday 25 January Westminster City Council (WCC) will charge motorcycle and scooter users £1 a day for on-street parking, it is the first London authority to do so. WCC’s decision to make the charge permanent has been taken despite huge demonstrations, petitions, face-to-face representations and responses to officially consultations from the London biking community and local residents.
Its simple motorcycle and scooter users believe that their mode is part of the solution to transport problems in London, and Westminster City Council does not agree. Well lets say that those who make up WCC and support the views of fellow Councillor, Cabinet Member and Chair of the Board of Partners in Parking Organisation Danny Chalkley do not agree. Chalkley has led WCC by the nose into its decision to charge, hence the Chalkley charge tag, yet in debates he is unable to offer any sensible thought through transport planning arguments as to why it should be imposed.
Be it demand management, a simple method of raising cash to prop up WCC or, as has been alleged, self-interest on the part of Danny Chalkley there are two victims of the WCC decision to charge. One the motorcycle and scooter users the other local democracy.
What of the ‘industry’. Unsurprisingly motorcycle and scooter dealers in London strongly support the Westminster No To Bike Parking Tax (NTBPT) campaign. A fantastic selling point ‘you can park for free’. Not so easy for the Motorcycle Industry Association (MCI). The letter from Steve Kenward, MCI Chief Executive, which blatantly fails to press any of the support buttons that NTBPT might have expected, is now an internet must see. As a dealer friend said; ‘how to kick your customer base in the teeth in one easy lesson, not exactly a good move in a recession’. Then there are the allegations of meetings between industry lobbyists and WCC. Did they take place? Why did they take place?. What was said?
As for Transport for London (TfL). In public they remain tight-lipped on the parking charge issue. With no effective overall strategy for motorcycle and scooter use and no powers over the London Boroughs TfL is in a difficult situation. However, that does not stop TfL punting membership of the European Safer Urban Motorcycling project (eSUM) at every opportunity. Surely the provision of free parking is a safety benefit, or is it TfL’s agenda to support parking charges thus reducing overall motorcycle and scooter numbers, demand management, and by default casualties. London Boroughs charging for bikers to park would be useful precedent for TfL to revisit the ‘shelved’ proposals to include motorcycles and scooters in the congestion-charging scheme.
More info on the No To Bike Parking Tax campaign here….
© Back Roads Rider 2010
Glasgow, Scotland – The recriminations over the lack of road salt have started. Not only do the UK’s roads lack grit it seems that some on the people managing them do too.
Considering how the British lambast the French over their top down centralised system of Government it’s always surprised me that at whiff of a national emergency we, the British, introduce a well umm top down Government system, as is the case with our road salt/grit crisis.
In an effort to look like it’s doing something positive the Labour Government has activated ‘Salt Cell’, its committee to manage road salt stocks . UK Local Authorities with enough stocks to keep their network of roads snow and ice-free are being instructed to pass road salt to Authorities whose stocks are low, or non-existent. In another dictate ‘Salt Cell’ has issued an instruction to reduce overall salt consumption, i.e. road mileage covered, by 25%.
This top down crisis management has met with an unsurprisingly vociferous response from the elected leaders of those Local Authorities who have made adequate provision, salt stocks wise, to keep their road networks open. They are carrying the can for inadequacies in other Authorities and Central Government while having to explain to their electorates why the roads are not open. Time perhaps to deploy some ‘jeopardy’ management techniques i.e. get this mess sorted or your jobs in jeopardy, your sacked bro.
However, help is at hand. The Transport Minister has announced that emergency supplies of road salt are on their way from the USA. The downside being it could be as much as two weeks before they arrive. Two weeks!! So what about the ‘special relationship’, remember the Marshall Plan? Look we have gas, we have oil, somewhere under 15 metres of snow we have a uranium enrichment plant, if recent US foreign policy is anything to go by surely we can get a ‘visit’ sooner!
This snow, ice and salt thingy has it’s humorous side. A number of Local Authorities have been forced to move their salt stockpiles into secure areas to avoid theft and then resale back to Local Authorities via brokers. In one case it is alleged salt was moved with police escort. The police have also publicised the fact that taking salt from roadside bins is an offence, i.e. theft. Apparently it is ok the spread the stuff near the bin, but you cannot take up the road and spread it outside your house. Meantime in Scotland thieves have made off with a salt bin and contents weighing over three tonnes, obviously, the police are looking into it!
Then of course there are the problems in Essex with ‘anti social snowballing’, bit of a struggle with getting the evidence into court I hear. It seems that the rumour that ‘Salt Cell’ have demanded that salt stocks be protected by banning salt application to take away fish and chips is just that, a rumour. Then we have a new formula from the Health and Safety Executive i.e. Health and Safety + Snow = No Fun.
All good fun and we have the road pothole crisis coming next. England I love you!!
The picture – nothing to do with the post subject but I thought it a great shot.
© Back Roads Rider 2010
Oban, Scotland – 13 days ago the UK Department of Transport, the Highways Agency and the Local Government Association gave assurances that the UK had stocks of road salt large enough to allow the roads network to remain open during the continuing cold spell.
The road anarchy the UK is currently ‘enjoying’ really does show up the fact that the ‘large enough’ stocks statement was simple PR spin. A country that prides itself on high standards of delivery for emergency services and road safety has descended into chaos following a snowfall considered light by European standards.
Still today the Government has convened ‘Salt Cell’ bringing together The Department for Transport, the Local Government Association, the Highways Agency, the devolved administrations and the Scottish Trunk Road agency – Transport for Scotland. Not to mention of course the Regional Resilience Teams (RRTs) who are coordinating a twice-weekly audit of salt stocks, held at Local Authority depots, and reporting levels to ‘Salt Cell’. Salt Cell then reallocates stocks to Authorities with little or none left.
On the face of things this seems a pretty good idea, but in good old British ‘if in doubt form a committee’ style it simple means that Authorities who have efficiently organised themselves, with high salt stock levels, have to turn over salt to Authorities who have err ballsed things up. Meaning? We get the M and A road network openish but the B and C roads, that were receiving attention in a lot of areas, are left snowbound as the salt meant for them has now been moved to another area to err well keep the M and A roads open!!
A similar mess occurred in February 2009 and we were promised changes, can’t say I’ve noticed. No excuses, it’s the worst snow for thirty years etc etc. Someone needs to take responsibility for this farce, people need sacking, money needs spending. It’s reckoned to be costing an economy in recession a loss of £600 million a day. Then there is the human cost no doubt people are dying because of the road chaos.
Oh and our politicians. Posturing on the up coming general election, safe in the knowledge that snow melts and people have short memories. Until the next time that is.
On biking……..
Well done the BMF. Angered that under the Chancellor’s recent pre-budget report, road tax rates for motorcycles are set to increase this year, the British Motorcyclists Federation have set up a petition on the No 10 website asking the Prime Minister to intervene and stop the increases.
The petition can be found here…
© Back Roads Rider 2010
