One Way Streets, Traffic Lights and The Law

It was reported a couple of days ago that the government are planning on bringing in a system allowing cyclists to legally go the wrong way down one-way streets, even when there aren’t contraflow lanes. This is going to be trialled in Kensington and Chelsea – ironically the home-borough of David Cameron. Of course, I thoroughly approve of this – lots of one-way streets will have no entry “except for cycles” signs on them.

I do think, though, they will have to be careful where they allow this. On some roads it could lead to chaos – particularly given how London’s streets are often insanely narrow to start with.

But reading the article on this, it seems to have come from realising that contraflow bike lanes were massively increasing the uptake of cycling, and they were trying to work out how to improve it further without – this is, after all, the UK government – actually spending any money or taking road space away from cars or anything. So, why not actually not build segregated bike lanes, and just put a little notice on the no-entry sign instead. Anyway – I was going to say that there are some bike lanes round here which not only make no sense, but actually make things more dangerous.

There’s one two-way bike lane, in particular, which goes along the side of a two-way street. As you might imagine, drivers don’t instinctively look across the road and behind them to see if bikes are coming and frequently pull straight across the lane putting everyone in peril. It is a bit of specially British genius to be able to build a segregated bike lane and still make it more menacing than cycling on London’s streets unprotected.

There’s also, whilst I’m on the tirade, a fairly new, and very stupid, bike-only traffic light around here, too. Clearly, some bikes were a bit threatened by cars turning right on a one-way street, across the bike-lane. That’s fair enough. But the solution, surely, isn’t to put in a traffic-light that holds cyclists up for ages when the cars are turning, and then manages to piss off the car drivers, too, by holding them up. Even worse, this light sometimes just doesn’t change for the cyclists at all, so you could sit there for hours waiting if you were polite.

Now, most London cyclists aren’t that polite, and will eventually jump a light when it makes sense. So, in the end, that problem is overcome.

At other times, though, like yesterday morning cycling into work, cyclists jump lights when it makes no sense at all – I was up near Oxford Street, at rush hour, in heavy traffic, which was moving slowly along but completely solid. What on earth possessed the moron to my left to just decide to pull out into the middle of that stream of traffic (slowly, too, no acceleration, probably on a fixie) on a red light, causing everyone to slam on their brakes so as not to kill him. At other times I’ve nearly been killed trying to avoid the muppets pulling into my line, so I have a choice of ploughing through them or pulling out, and hoping cars behind me have seen what’s going on and can take appropriate action. I’ve survived so far.

This is all to say that, whilst it may make sense to allow cyclists to not adhere to road-law, and allow them to go the wrong way down the street, you really have to be very careful because you can’t expect them to use common sense.

Meanwhile, I come to thinking about David Cameron. This policy is, apparently being pushed by Labour, although tested in Conservative Kensington and Chelsea. We probably all remember Cameron being photographed cycling the wrong way down a one-way street. Anyway, this is what bugs me here. I don’t mind politicians breaking laws that they consider to be asinine, stupid, pointless, or whatever, provided that they’re campaigning to change those laws. It’s not hypocritical to break a law that you dislike – no matter how much of a frothy hissy-fit the media will have.

But Cameron never did campaign to change that law. And that makes him an arse. This is him saying “That law’s fine for everyone else, but I’m OK ignoring it, because I am superior.”

The other recent case of this, of course, is the far worse, although also far funnier, Baroness Scotland situation. England’s chief law officer, the person who pushed a law through, a stupid law that just increases bureaucracy and makes life harder for business, then goes and ignores that law. This is a law that requires employers to check the employment status of foreign employees, and make sure they’re legally here, and to keep all the documents. Funnily, Baroness Scotland found the task a bit too onerous and claims to have lost the photocopies of the now-shown-to-be-false work permit.

Anyone with an ounce of cynicism might find “I lost the homework down the back of the piano, miss” to be a bit of a bollocks excuse. But even if we take it at face value, then it actually means all the original criticism of the policy was right, and it obviously is actually quite tricky to keep all the paperwork that’s required.

As it is, of course, this is a classic case of a “one law for me, the politician; another law for everyone else”, made worse by the fact that she actually wrote the bloody law. You often see this kind of crap from the “moral majority” idiots, who are actually sneaking around having gay affairs with Satanist Arab drug dealers, or whatever. But it’s interesting to see it in with the anti-immigration mob falling over themselves for once.