Election: Politicians Should Listen to Stop Killing Cyclists

Stop Killing Cyclists is a grassroots pressure group which holds vigils at sites where cyclists have been killed on London’s roads to highlight the danger faced by cyclists.

The group will protest outside Labour HQ on May19 and the Conservative Party’s offices a week later to try to inject the issue into the General Election campaign, when parties are looking for vote-winning issues. According to the group’s Facebook event page the vigil “will demand that the Labour/Conservative Party commit to increase investment in clean-air protected cycling infrastructure to 10% of the transport budget by 2020.”

However, what follows this reasonable statement reads more like the hysteria of a student protest’s call to arms. While clearly well-intended, the campaign risks gaining little by trying to piggy-back on issues not directly related to cycling.

Stop air pollution and obesity too?

The Stop Killing Cyclists concerns stretch from traffic accidents to air pollution and the more speculative estimates of how many lives could be saved by making cycling easier and encouraging more active lifestyles.

Co-organiser Alex Raha argues that air pollution is poisoning millions of people in the UK while traffic carbon emissions are contributing to the climate emergency. “Road danger means most people do not feel safe cycling on UK roads, which means they lack life-saving physical exercise,” he says.

This sounds like a lot of issues for one event. Raha vaguely refers to “an urgent health crisis which is costing the NHS billions” as if improving cycling facilities will wipe out obesity as well.

The Demands

The group’s demands range from the moderately achievable to the very ambitious, such as banning all fossil-fuelled vehicles in city centres in 10 years. Electric cars are forecast to be more economical than fossil-fuelled cars by 2022 but there is no guarantee.

One demand is to make up for 40 years of “failure to invest” by spending £15 billion on a segregated cycle network. The target sum is based on the Dutch model of £24 per citizen multiplied by the whole UK population. But why should today’s taxpayers cover the cost of measures their parents should have apparently paid for?

The demand for banning diesel-powered vehicles from city centres within five years is more realistic and is already being widely advocated as part of an expansion of “Clean Air Zones” around the country.

The “Die in”

As well as being asked to bring candles and gas masks, protestors are requested to “lie down on the road outside the Party HQs and represent the tens of thousands of people who have died from the lack of government investment in safe cycle lanes and clean air.”

A 2013 “die in” outside TFL’s headquarters (left) was extremely successful with 1000 protestors taking part and memorial vigils to killed cyclist have also made powerful visual statements.

Nevertheless, the current demands from the election protests are not so much a pro-cycling campaign as an anti-vehicle and anti-government exercise focussing more on venting anger than pursuing clear goals. The group clearly has power and influence but why spread that so thinly?

A Tighter Focus?

The Guardian’s environment editor Damian Carrington recently wrote that the Government is reversing clean air policy to avoid angering drivers before the election. “The only sure way to bring the toxic nitrogen dioxide spewed out by dirty diesel vehicles down to legal levels is to keep them out of cities and towns… But backing new taxes on drivers in the heat of an election campaign promises a political car crash, so ministers have simply swerved and crashed into the nation’s health instead.”

This is where we need such pressure groups like Stop Killing Cyclists to focus their efforts on seeing the existing commitments of politicians through to completion rather than trying to force new measures. Focussing on former Chancellor George Osborne’s massive reduction of spending on cycling would give the campoaign group a simple and powerful argument.

By all means join the Stop Killing Cyclists protests to help press the issues of cycle safety and air pollution. But if it doesn’t want to be dismissed as the work of “whiny Millennials” and hippies, the campaign needs to concentrate on a cohesive argument for real policies and quick implementation.

by Stewart Vickers @VickHellfire

 

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