Thursday 13 January 2011

Car society

Been reading quite a lot of stuff on road safety (or lack of it), car culture, cycling initiatives and other travesties. This one particularly got to me, hi vis jackets for all, if you get run over chances are it's your fault, stupid kids getting in the way of cars! So as requested I emailed the DfT and I urge everyone else to.
Some good sites about, even if it does get depressing being reminded how Car Is King is so ingrained you'd taken for granted all the little problems it causes, war on motorist is quite funny, crap cycling in waltham sounded a little preachy about segregation at first but he may have a point, scrap half the roads (seriously gimping the full time motorists) give over a lot more space to other forms of transport, walking, cycling (of course), trams and trains etc. Not gonna happen anytime soon tho I fear. I've been trying to come up with reasons against and so far the only one I can come up with is doing the friday big shop with kids, the big shop is the only time I regularly drive, used to do it on my bike but it was a hassle and no chance with a little one on board. But I dunno, a huge change will have to come at some point with oil/petrol running low and it would be depressing if that opportunity was wasted with a simple switch to electric cars. Changing to an entirely new transport infrastructure could bring about a big change to all aspects of our lives.

2 comments:

Julbags said...

Try home delivery of shopping..at least for the bulky stuff. I did this for a while, getting bulky stuff like cat litter/washing powder etc delivered on a monthly basis then trying to use the bike for most of the rest, going to the butchers and farm shop for veg instead of the supermarket. Worked ok but requires a level of organisation I didn't have the motivation to keep up as I have quite a bit of spare time. If my time was more constrained I'd be a bit more motivated to make it work.

Donk said...

Used to just buy a few things regularly from bolton market - when I worked 5mins from there and finished at 4. Later I used a HUUUUUGE rucksack that I'd load up, downhill all the way home from the supermarket so could manage by bike. Nowadays it's car once a week, suppose I should give t'interweb grocerie shopping a go, I buy most other things online.