Smart cars are cool. We like them because they're easy to park, and only take up half the space of the Bristol Traffic White Van. So why is WK62BFP being ticketed, we asked ourselves?
It appears that it's indulging in a little pavement parking, half way up Jacobs Well Road. We're not objecting to this, as if it had been parked fully on the road it would have stuck out, and caused a problem for fellow motorists.
What's wrong here, though, is that this isn't a parking ticket. It's some wag protesting at the parking position, by leaving a post-it note on the windscreen. Directing the driver to go to a non-existent website.
If only these annoying japers had any intelligence, they would have asked the driver to visit this website instead.
Very often people who park their vehicles in mandatory bike lanes are accused of being lazy, selfish and of endangering and inconveniencing cyclists. This may be the case sometimes, but it is not always true, as shown here in Grove Road, Redland
As you can see, it is possible to safely negotiate the junction
the cyclist may be left facing oncoming traffic where they appear to have just popped out from behind a van, but as this is part of the Sustrans NCN4 route, who doesn't want a frisson of excitement before the dullness of the Railway Path?
Up at the top of St Michael's Hill, the BRI Physio department now has a stock plastic covered warning note to put in car windscreens -here AP03AVB.
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This is a polite notice to make you aware that you are parking on the pavement. You are obstructing the pavement. A member of the public has complained as there is not enough access for pedestrians and especially wheelchair users. Where you are a member of staff at Hampton House or a member of the public, it is in your interest to move the car as soon as possible and not to park here again, otherwise you will be fined either by a Traffic Warden or Security.
All this, because "a member of the public has complained"? One person? Why should the wants and needs of one person outweigh the needs of the many who need somewhere by their hospital or place of work? And look, there's plenty enough room for someone on foot to squeeze by.
we're also going to pick up on the "fined by Security". It's a public pavement. BRI security have no right to fine anyone for parking on public pavement. Private pavement, maybe. But not the public highway -or the designated parking areas alongside
Some of the Easter preparations of the city can be seen by this man walking down Tyndall Avenue with a cruicifix.
You can just make out at the base of the cross a wheel, so that when this man walks around the city, it isn't so much hard work.
What kind of penance and suffering is that if you are going to pull a wheeled cross round the city?
At least this believer has recognised that as soon as you start to travel round the city with any form of human powered wheeled device, you are at risk of being run over by people who have paid for the right to be there. This is why he is wearing a bright hi-viz top to walk around our city's streets
Not in Bristol, where the council still pretends to be cycle friendly, but by Surrey County Council, who take driving very seriously... especially the school run...
"Following a parent-governor meeting at North Downs Primary School last Thursday, headteacher Angela Ewing said its Betchworth and Leigh bases would be "driving only" from September."
We admire this school. Pro car, anti-cycling or walking. THIS IS THE FUTURE! And all because they took notice of Bristol Traffic. Also we salute the fact that, across the country, Councils pay £700 million each year to pay for Taxis to take children to and from School. This is a fantastic introduction to Public Transport, and whilst taxis are only for poor people, at least they look like cars, not those hideous buses that get in our way.
Some militant cyclist, bristolcyclista, sticks up a video of a journey so uneventful it doesn't merit a mention:
Except, by putting up the video of the car F54NWG, the driver has found a photograph of themselves swearing at the tax-dodger.
Needless to say, this persecuted driver has reacted in the only way left: to complain that placing the video up is a privacy violation, to which youtube react by blocking the video. There's now an updated one with the face blurred out.
The cyclist claims as now that you can only hear the abusive shouting from the passing vehicle, it is hard to identify the driver. Consider this. How does "bristolcyclista" know that the driver doesn't shout and swear like that to everyone? His family? His friends? Anyone he works with? Now anyone in the area of Parry's Lane -that's Stoke Bishop, an "under-documented" region- who has someone walk up to them and shout abuse will know "hey, that's the man in the F54NWG youtube video".
This is persecution.
We know that he's been persecuted by the way that he found and complained about the first video. Perhaps he's felt it necessary -as we have been- to create a google alert with our registration number in, sending us an email when yet another video of our driving appears on line. Alternatively, someone who knew him saw the car, heard the shouting and thought "I know of only one person who swears at people like that as they drive a silver car" -and broke the news. At which point the driver and his acquaintance now know what his driving standard is.
Of course that's an invasion of privacy!
Google's paper, Building High-level Features Using Large Scale Unsupervised Learning, [Le 2012], showed how they ran an image-feature identification program through still images, each of which was taken from a different youtube video. At the end of the exercise, the computer could take any image and categorise it into "face","body part", "cat" or "other". We suspect that before long, that program would start to recognise from-bicycle driving videos. If that's the case, youtube could just use it as part of its upload process: to identify all cycling-troublemaker videos and then refuse to accept them.
It's only through the application of such technology that our right to drive how we want can be preserved.
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