When these photos were taken in October, flags and flowers marked where another Bristolian was killed walking across a road - Ashley Hill -on the border between St Werburgh's and Montpelier. She was killed by someone driving a silver BMW -no further details are public at this point.
There is not even a traffic island on this stretch of road. There's one further up, but not a zebra crossing, even though a lot of schoolkids use it. Here, although it says "20 mph", is a busy and often fast road. Cars heading up the hill are acellerating up something which, by virtue of the walls on either side "feels fast". Certain if you are on a bike, it feels safer to go on the old ashley road, parallel to this. Kate lived on Milverton Gardens -you can see how pedestrian friendly that is. If you live here, there is nowhere you can get to without crossing this road or walking all the way down the hill.
Because this is just within the 20mph zone, the anti-20mph people will cite this as an example of how 20 mph zones don't work. Sadly, in this instance -it wasn't enough.
Aberdeen Road, Cotham. A one way street with the main entrance on Hampton Road, just past the car parked by the dropped-kerb build out with its hazard lights on. A bicycle locked to the road sign. We've covered this road before, mainly on the topic of school runs and parking.
Never looked at the houses much. Student houses. You can tell. The driveway converted into bicycle parking.
But this day: different. A police car with the engine on sits outside one of the houses.
This is where the current suspect in the murder of Joanna Yeates was apparently arrested.
We have nothing to add on this topic; Bristol Culture has done a better local analysis than the rest of the country's press. What we can do is show people what Canynge Road, where Joanna lived, is like. It's never had a mention here before for one simple reason: it's not interesting enough. It's a quiet road between Clifton and the Downs, most notable for providing parking for zoo visitors in summer. Otherwise, sleepy. Or it was.
Now the police stand outside one of the houses; a camera man stands across the road. One person is believed to have been murdered in the house just before Christmas, two other residents have (separately) been arrested and questioned -one of them charged. Whatever the outcome, Canynge Road will be tainted for a long time -like Cut-Throat Lane in St Werburgh's. It has gone from what was a quiet route for cyclists (it's faster to drive on the parallel road as this one is too narrow at the Clifton end), and somewhere for people to live, to a road with a dark history.
In Clifton and nearby, there's now a clear feeling of relief whenever someone who is potentially the murder is being detained by the police: that it is suddenly safer. Because Clifton is a safe part of town, and such things don't happen there, the way they do in Patchway, or down in Somerset, in Cheddar. Things that happen there don't merit national news coverage, despite the grief and suffering the relatives of those people will be going through.
We are pleased to welcome Bristol 24-7's correspondent, Kayla Maratty, who provides a well argued explanation of why cyclists deserve to be run over in her article "My homicidal tendencies towards cyclists".
Kayla manages to completely summarise how it is bicycles on Whiteladies Road and Blackboy hill that bring the city to a halt, as we have discussed previously. She says
"Part of me would take great pleasure in mowing them down when they choose to cycle in the middle of the road or are determined to peddle all the wayup Black Boy Hill. But obviously I would never do that; I can get by just on the thought of it to restrain my road rage."
We find driving really close behind them intimidating enough. Sadly, it is actually legal for them to cycle down the middle of a single lane road, which Whiteladies is. And when they are going over the Downs, they do need to pull to the right of the left turn only lane, so sounding your horn doesn't help.
Still, we are glad to see your fight against university tuition fees continue. Obviously this isn't an issue for you, as not only will the fee rise kick in after you have finished your course, if you can afford to drive and park anywhere near the university, then you are clearly part of that set of students known as "well-funded", and we expect your parents to pay for all your living expenses. We look forward to your complaints about how the rollout of the RPZ is forcing you park and walk further. If you do not write such an article, we shall assume that the fact that Woodland Road and St Michael's Park now offer more short stay paid parking than ever before actually benefits you, as it makes it easier for you drive down to the university for a lecture and latte before heading home again, albeit held up by all the cyclists.
Can we take this opportunity to remind our readers that Bristol Traffic is not some satire or spoof. If it were, you'd have to conclude that the whole of the UK printed and online press is also some kind of spoof. The Daily Mail has been going on for over a hundred years now, so its time to own up to being a wind-up, if it really is.
A new year has arrived; time to sing the songs and remember those who won't be able to celebrate it. The classic is Burn's poem, which people sing without knowing the words or the meanings.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind ? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne, we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne.
And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp ! and surely I’ll be mine ! And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne.
Chris Hutt's death is was sad for all of us, here we see him talking to the recumbent riders at the CTC stall in the car-free Corn Street day on Sept 2009. That should have been a warning sign there and then.
At his funeral, he was pulled by family and friends, while others cycled behind him.
We've covered this already [1, 2, 3] -it was a fitting memorial to the man.
However, it's been quieter since then. Less stroppy emails. Less troublemakers upsetting the establishment. Something needs to be done.
Which is why we suspect that Chris would have been delighted by the new Cycling Embassy of Great Britain, created to bring mainstream european cycling infrastructure to the country. Accordingly, we in the Bristol Traffic Project have contacted the embassy to denounce them, and given them our hotline contact details so if they need to be denounced again, or have their invalid assumptions corrected, we can do it more rapidly and directly.
But Chris was not the only death this year, and one of the saddening things in our server logs is people searching for details abou t the sixteen-year-old Junaid Nazir's death on Fishponds Road; searching for answers. There's no answers we can give them, which saddens us all.
Crap Cycling in Waltham Forest, our London correspondents, celebrated the new year with a posting that includes the Sid Vicious version of My Way -lovely! We're going to mourn the past year with a video tribute to Junaid Nazir. Bleak, but his family and friends will never forget him, neither should the rest of the city.
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne, we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne.
Not a lot, fellow motorists will be pleased to hear.
Kill a cyclist as a professional driver (despite previous convictions for speeding and driving whilst using a mobile phone) and just 200 hours of community service is required thanks to Bristol's finest Judge Neil Ford (I am sure the motoring surname is a coincidence!)
If you kill a colleague by running over him in a lorry that you should not be driving because you are blind in one eye and cheated on your eyesight test to get your licence then that is 150 hours of community service. At least you do not lose your driving licence though! Just 9 points and a restriction to cars rather than HGVs - Thanks again by the way Judge Ford for that one too.
Mind you a word of warning. Make sure you stop if you kill someone because you are too blind to drive. A poor motorist who has glaucoma and cateracts will have to serve 4 months in jail of an 8 month sentence for killing a cyclist, obviously not for taking a life but presumably for failing to stop and only being caught as he returned home having attended the meeting he was driving to in the first place.
But despite the minor risk of a slap on the wrists you still need to be careful. Remember there is a fellow motorist with one eye about in Bristol.
Bristol lost a teenager on Monday: Junaid Nazir age 16, killed on Fishponds Road -in front of his own house. A taxi driver was arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving, then released on bail. We don't know any other details.
One of our contributors went past the site on Tuesday evening -here are their comments:
This was an awful thing to happen, an awful thing to see. Junaid's friends and family were there -all of them utterly devastated. He left to go to school at Filton College, and instead of coming home after another day at school, he never came back. All his dreams are gone, all that is left are memories.
Every time his family leave the house, they are going to pass the place where this child -their son, their brother, their cousin - died.
It was really heartbreaking to be here, I tried really hard to get a photo of the flower and not all the friends and family, -as that wasn't right. They were very welcoming, but it's hard to cover this. No schoolkids should be placing flowers to mourn the needless death of one of their friends.
Afterwards, I went down Fishponds Road -never fun- then turned into Roygate Lane, then onto the railway path. Suddenly I'd gone from the friends and family mourning the death of a sixteen year old to the late summer peace and pleasantness of an almost Dutch walking and cycling route into the city. Yet what point is it in having such a lovely facility if you can't even get across a road 300 metres away alive?
The whole Bristol Traffic team extends our condolences to the family and friends -it will take a long time for everyone to come to terms with this, and -based on personal experience- nobody will ever really get over it. You can never forget.
We'd also like to hint to Evening Post that when they put up articles on tragic events such as Junaid's death, that either they disable comments or they monitor them so all four regular mad commenters don't just repeat their own prejudices -again, and again, and again. This is not the place for them.
Our normal service will be resumed in a few days. In the meantime, there is a growing monument in Fishponds to a failure of the entire "road safety" industry. Consider visiting it.
