horns of wilmington's cow

By anth

Dirty Chainring

Bargain of the century that chainring was. 99p via eBay, for a Sugino BMX chainring. Trust me, that's a superb deal, and the perfect 'ring for a fixed wheel bike. The proof? That chainring is now 4,500-5,000 miles old. And still going bloody strong.

Just a brief detour in the blip here, I seem to be overhearing single-sides of mobile phone conversations on the street these days that make me wonder if I'm in the middle of some sort of action movie... It started with, "... and what about your friendship? After the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of..." culminating this morning in a garbled, "... No! No! No! Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu..." bellowed at full volume without the hint of a laugh.

In both cases the person speaking was travelling in the opposite direction, so turning round to follow might have been a bit obvious. And, if they are in some sort of real-life action movie it was probably safer to maintain a distance.

Anyway, nothing to shoot today for Unstaged - and I'm not sure if I'm going to keep last night's image in. I'm aiming for a relaxed night away from the computer after getting the website online last night, so a bike light and the bike become inspiration, since my only other shot today was this bit of creative parking.

Seriously, just because the double yellows are underneath your car, and not under the wheels, it doesn't render them ineffective. The chap behind decided to park just as I was walking along, with some other pedestrians coming the other way. All of us had to move over for him (I 'aint arguing with a tonne of car, I'm squishy skin and bones). And so there he stopped. Did you know every year around 75(ish) pedestrians are killed a year by motorised vehicles on the pavement?

In the last ten years 1 pedestrian has been killed on the pavement by a cyclist. One too many, granted. But compared to 75 every year? In total cyclists kill roughly 2 people every 3 years in the UK (so the majority actually out in the road). Two too many. Needs cracked down on. Questions asked in parliament. Vitriol spouted in the press. Radio phone-in shows declaring cyclists a menace. 3,000 people killed by motorised vehicles a year. Three thousand. Every year. 4,500 times as many as killed by bikes. The injury stats are a starkly weighted in that direction as well.

I think it bears reiterating every now and then. 3,000 every year, 75 on the pavement. Two every 3 years, 1 on the pavement in 10 years. We accept the car and bus and lorry deaths as something which is inevitable in our car culture. We're stupid. Utterly utterly stupid. We talk about cancer deaths and so on being preventable. No cause of death, absolutely NONE, is as preventable as people getting killed by motorised traffic.

Which might seem a step from a complaint about people parking on the pavements, but it's a marker, a representation of how much we hand over our lives and our cities to the internal combustion engine. Anyone who has read my blips for any length of time will know I love my car, and I love driving. I'm not some rabid environmentalist. Well. Not in the 'save the planet' kind of way.

But sometimes the 'environment' is about more than polar ice caps and changing weather. Sometimes it's just about the place you live in being a nicer place to be. A more pleasant place to stroll. A quieter environment. A cleaner one, and a safer one. Corralling pedestrians with barriers; shunting cyclists into lanes; handing over acreage to parking, doesn't do that.

And get this, proper peer-reviewed experience-based research shows that pedestrians and cyclists buy more in shops. All of this guff about 'if people can't park they won't shop' is just that. Guff. Because a pedestrian or cyclist moves more slowly, so browses. Is enticed by shop windows. Given the space in which to walk quietly and safely and untroubled by engine noise and the smell of petrol people will spend more time in any given place, and the more time they spend somewhere the more likely they are going to spend money there.

Seriously, this is proven stuff. But in this country we're scared of giving it a go. Of wondering just how good life would be. You get labelled a tofu-knitting hippy for even daring to think that life can actually carry on without a city centre full of cars. But I own no sandles. I've never eaten a nut roast. And I have a shower every day.

Will you believe me if I stand beside my car while telling you all of this?

(Honestly, I don't know where this stuff comes from more often than not. I need to work out how to stop myself!)

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