The latest call by the RAC to reinstate emergency lanes should be listened to and acted upon

Ten years ago this week on the M25, Britain’s first stretch of all-lane running (ALR) “smart” motorway was introduced , with more to follow. Envisaged as a way to ease congestion without spending money on widening roads, ALR motorways function without a hard shoulder for drivers in difficulty. As they were rolled out, motorists were assured that the emergency lane would not be missed, as new technologies would be able to respond to breakdowns, and control traffic flow.

The public was understandably sceptical about how smart this idea was, and it turned out the public was right. Smart motorways without a hard shoulder have been found to be three times more dangerous than ones where drivers have that option. Behind the data lie horrific incidents, in which stationary vehicles have been ploughed into from behind with fatal consequences. In one tragic case , a passenger in a car which stopped to lend assistance to another vehicle was killed when a lorry crashed into it.

Continue reading...

Plea from RAC comes a year after plans for new smart motorway projects were cancelled amid longstanding safety concerns

Ministers are being urged to reinstate the hard shoulder on smart motorways.

The RAC issued the plea exactly a year after Rishi Sunak cancelled plans for new smart motorway projects , citing financial pressures and a lack of public confidence in the roads.

Continue reading...

My first rideout back in 2011 was liberating – and this Sunday, the monthly demonstration celebrates a big milestone

Thirteen years ago, riding through central London on my way to meet a friend one evening, I found myself surrounded by hundreds of cyclists, some blaring horns, one popping wheelies, and even someone covered in lights, thundering out drum’n’bass from a mobile sound system.

In spite of being overdressed in a shirt and my best trousers, I was taken by the spontaneous solidarity of this diverse group, who I later found was mostly made up of strangers.

Continue reading...

Shortage of drivers in Great Britain prompts moves to lower minimum age requirements for bus and coach drivers

It’s not just policemen: bus drivers will be officially getting younger under government plans to relax laws on 18-year-olds behind the wheel.

A shortage of drivers across the transport industry has prompted moves to lower minimum age requirements for bus and coach drivers in Great Britain, as well as speeding up training for bus, coach and lorry drivers.

Continue reading...

Campaigners welcome move as survey suggests they have become too bright and risk causing accidents

Campaigners have hailed the government’s announcement of independent research into headlight glare, which comes as a survey suggests many drivers believe they have become too bright and risk causing accidents.

The RAC, which has been highlighting the problem in recent years, said it was a key concern among motorists and welcomed the move as an opportunity to fix it.

Continue reading...

Five reported killed and numerous others injured after FlixBus carrying 55 people overturned on A9 motorway

Multiple people were killed and more injured in a coach crash on a motorway near the eastern German city of Leipzig on Wednesday, police said.

“Several people were fatally injured in the serious accident on the A9 motorway. There are numerous casualties,” said Saxony police in a statement on X.

Continue reading...

Riding a bike is not a political act, yet cyclists have become the bete noire for the anti-woke, anti-green, anti-liberal crowd

Getting my bike nicked was like losing a pet. I didn’t want a new one; I wanted to go back in time and not lose my old one. But, in the end, an inanimate object is not infinitely grievable and I need wheels. This is how I fetched up with a Liv bike , my precious first born putting the seat up for me. I said how proud and heart-filled I was, watching him do a little job that I didn’t want to do myself for the first time, and he said: “I’ve been showing you how to use a remote control since I was six years old,” and I thought: OK, fair, but, more to the point, look at my lovely bike.

Freshly re-enamoured of the world of two wheels, I have plunged straight back into the cycling discourse, the perfect microcosm of the wokeness split in all its forms. Take the ex-footballer Joey Barton, who is being sued by Jeremy Vine for calling the broadcaster a “ bike nonce ”. Meanwhile, the socials are full of people furiously agreeing that aggressive cyclists pose more danger to them than articulated lorries. The fervent attacks on low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) and low-emission zones such as Ulez in London are really just a full-throttle loathing of people on bikes, aggrandised by acronyms and libertarian bat signals.

Continue reading...

Victoria Lebrec forgave the driver who almost killed her. Nine years on, she is happy, active, at peace with her changed body. But she is still fighting to make the roads safer

Victoria Lebrec can’t be sure if what she knows about 8 December 2014 is from her own memory, or the BBC video cameras that captured her bleeding heavily at the side of the road, tyre marks visible across her crushed pelvis from the lorry that knocked her from her bicycle. Or maybe what she knows is from the CCTV footage that was reviewed first as evidence in a criminal case and then in a gruelling, victim-blaming struggle for the compensation she urgently needed. How else would she buy the £70,000 prosthetic leg her injuries required? And how else could she find closure and move on in her changed reality and changed body?

It was a Monday morning. Lebrec – now 33, then 24 – was cycling to work in London on a busy stretch of road that she knew well. “I was next to a skip lorry and he only indicated as he was turning, so I didn’t see that he was about to turn. The police investigation concluded that he hadn’t looked in his mirrors for 13 seconds leading up to the crash. He would’ve seen me had he looked,” she says.

Continue reading...

Research looked at three London boroughs to value overall health benefits of active travel over 20 years at up to £4,800 per head

Policies to help people walk and cycle such as low-traffic neighbourhoods can create public health benefits as much as 100 times greater than the cost of the schemes, a long-term study of active travel measures has concluded.

The research , based on six years of surveys among thousands of people living in three outer London boroughs that introduced LTNs or similar schemes, found they tended to prompt people to switch some trips from cars to active travel, although the effects were varied.

Continue reading...