In different eras Britain’s roads have been dominated by pedestrians, waggons, bicycles, trams, omnibuses and – latterly – motor vehicles. Researching the past shows us that things change. The hegemony of the car is taken for granted today, but it […]
Continue Reading“If the paths are by any miracle to be made of such width and quality as to be equal to our present road system, it would not be necessary to pass any laws to compel cyclists to use them; the […]
Continue Reading“If a fast motor-car sees a man, woman, or child, a nursemaid with a perambulator, a dog, or a hen in its path, it makes a loud, rude, and alarming noise to tell the man, woman, child, nursemaid, dog, or […]
Continue Reading“A far higher standard of care should be demanded of the motorist by reason of his having brought upon the public roads a lethal instrument of great mobility and power,” a famous judge didn’t say in the 1920s. Didn’t say because […]
Continue ReadingBut there’s no point complaining because the town planner who described cyclists thus is beyond reach – he has been dead since 1978. Britain’s high cycle use in the 1930s and 1940s was not something welcomed by Thomas Sharp, author […]
Continue ReadingSeventy-five percent of my book is now written. A pesky 25 percent is still brewing. The book’s first chapter goes through the copy-editing mill next week, via a copy-editor with an interesting history of his own (more on that later). […]
Continue ReadingOver on BikeHub.co.uk I have released the news that the Bicycle Association is to support the national roll-out of London Cycling Campaign’s #space4cycling. This isn’t the first time the industry association has made such calls. Back in the 1928 a […]
Continue ReadingYou have to love pedestrians. Pedestrians make up the greater part of mankind. Not only that, the finer part. Pedestrians created the world. It was they who built towns, raised skyscrapers, installed drainage and plumbing, paved the streets and lit […]
Continue ReadingJean-Jacques Sempé – France’s most celebrated cartoonist – likes bicycles, perhaps because one of his first jobs was delivering wine by bicycle through the rolling hills of the Gironde. He has drawn them many times, most famously for The New […]
Continue ReadingThe King’s Highway is the common track for all classes of traffic—foot passengers, perambulators, bicycles, milk-carts, farm wagons and cattle—and no person has the right to behave on the common highway in such a manner as to imperil the safety […]
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