Our streets should belong to people first, vehicles second
Jenny has worked to make safe space for walking and cycling, to improve public transport and to reduce traffic levels
Read on for her latest posts on this topic
RoadPeace Lawless Roads Report 2017
Today’s report by RoadPeace shows the urgent need to reverse the cuts to traffic police, enforce the rules of the road and provide genuine justice for the victims of dangerous and careless driving. Continue reading “Cuts in traffic police cost lives”
I was involved in taking evidence and drawing up the recommendations in the new report from the Parliamentary cycling group. Many of the stories I heard were of injustice, as the rules of the road are either unenforced by overstretched police or sidestepped through the use of legal loopholes.
For example, does anyone seriously think that the number of driving bans has fallen by 62% over the last 10 years because the quality of our driving has improved? The rules on claiming ‘hardship’ to avoid a driving ban haven’t changed, but the inclination of Magistrates to let people off has. When the ‘exception’ becomes the norm, then the law has to be changed to close the loophole and ensure that dangerous drivers are taken off the road and restricted to using buses/taxis.
The Guardian has a good summary of the report here
London has suffered two major air pollution episodes so far this winter and the Government appears to have ignored both. I have written a series of questions asking about health warnings to the public and advising people to avoid driving in polluted areas. Also, why they haven’t released the figures from a study into deaths related directly to the air pollution episode in 2012. Continue reading “Government ignores London’s pollution cloud”
Drivers who cause death by dangerous or careless driving could get life in prison under new government proposals, but it won’t be enough to bring down casualties.
Continue reading “Driving should be a privilege you can lose”
The NICE guidance could have been written at any point during the last sixteen years, from any number of organisations putting the case for incremental change. It is sensible stuff and yet completely inadequate as a road map for local authorities acting belatedly to deal with a huge public health scandal. It is a set of good ideas without any sense of priority for cash-strapped councils. For example, driver training to reduce fuel use and emissions is equivalent to congestion charging for congested areas, while planting vegetation in open areas is alongside parking controls, or creating the infrastructure for zero emission vehicles. All very sensible. Continue reading “Creating NICE pollution free towns”
I joined Matt Newell from the London Cab Drivers Club (LCDC) on a tour of London’s pollution hotspots today, using a Chinese made handheld pollution monitor (measuring PM2.5). I wanted to get a realistic picture of what pollution is like for the people who have to put up with air pollution in order to make a living. The taxi trade has become increasingly concerned about the impacts of air pollution in recent years on the health of drivers, their passengers, and the Londoners they serve. Continue reading “Green Baroness on pollution monitoring tour”
“The Chancellor’s decision to freeze fuel duty for the seventh year running is bad news for climate change, air pollution and public health. Our country has returned to the bad old days of rising traffic growth and the main political parties are competing over who will build more roads. It’s like the anti-roads campaigns of the early 1990s never happened and our pollution crisis doesn’t exist. Continue reading “Budget fuel duty freeze is bad for climate change and air pollution”
“I don’t understand why England and Wales have one of the highest drink drive limits in Europe and I’ve asked the Transport Minister in the Lords to explain exactly how this doesn’t make our roads more dangerous than other people’s?
Continue reading “Drink driving limit- another sensible bit of law reform”
The Green Baroness welcomed Client Earth’s latest legal victory over the government regarding its inadequate plans to protect human health by reducing air pollution. Continue reading “‘Brilliant’ Client Earth victory on air pollution”
The severe injuries inflicted on a woman police officer and her colleague on Sunday night, by someone driving a car are terrible and awful, but not exceptional. In the last seventeen years, seven police officers on foot have been killed while doing their duty and the drivers jailed. A further two officers died horribly when their car was deliberately rammed by a drunk driver. I am excluding all the deaths in road traffic incidents that come from misjudgments and have been classed as so-called ‘accidents’. The nine deaths were the result of officers trying to stop criminals who used half a ton of metal as a weapon.
Continue reading “Police officers, like the rest of us, deserve more legal protection from drivers”
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb 