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Road Haulage Association & chair of Parliamentary Freight Transport Group to attend Isle of Wight Cycling FestivalMcGee truck

Road Haulage Association & chair of Parliamentary Freight Transport Group to attend Isle of Wight Cycling Festival

Attempt to "make the roads safer for every user"...
by John Stevenson
Fri, Sep 13, 2013 16:09
4

Representatives of the Road Haulage Associaiton, and Robert Flello MP, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Freight Transport will be at the Isle of Wight Cycling Festival this weekend to try and foster greater understanding between cyclists and freight companies and their drivers.

Mr Fello told fleetdirectory.co.uk that greater understanding and dialogue between cyclists and drivers is the only way to tackle the number of cyclists killed on UK roads.

He said: “I am really pleased to be at the opening of this two week-long festival which celebrates all aspects of cycling, where I will have the opportunity to discuss road safety issues with cyclists.

“I hope that by coming together cyclists and hauliers will be able to find solutions which will make the roads safer for every user. I am calling on the industry to examine its work practices and vehicle safety features with cyclist safety in mind.”

More than a quarter of cyclists killed on Britain’s roads in 2012 died as a result of being hit by  van or HGV. In big cities, the story is even worse. Between 2008 and 2012, HGVs were involved in 53 per cent of London cyclist deaths despite making up only 4 per cent of the traffic.

The Road Haulage Association will also attend the Isle of Wight cycling festival to promote dialogue between the two groups and try and improve the poor relationship between cyclists and haulage drivers and companies.

No doubt many of those attending the festival will take the opportunity to tell Mr Flello and the RHA that the best way for their members to improve their image among cyclists would be to stop killing them.

collisions with HGVs
HGVs
John Stevenson

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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4 comments

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Colin Peyresourde | 11 years ago
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I don't think there is a lorry driver out there that wants to kill a pedestrian, cyclist or another motorist willingly. But the road is there workplace and there are always frustrations associated with work. That's not a justification for poor driving, but an explanation for the reasons why poor actions are taken. We all know we can be guilty of that.

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A V Lowe | 11 years ago
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There is a mutual interest in actually removing drivers like Denis Putz, Darren Foster, and Joao Lopes from behind the wheel of a large truck, and study of the cyclist deaths in London will reveal that a disturbingly large number of those crashes involve a driver with 'form'. Few I guess could match Putz with a string of 20 or more traffic offences, including driving while disqualified on several occasions.

There is also the degree to which poor repute of the drivers can reflect back on the repute of the operator, and the potential for licences to drive and operate could be revoked for those who inhabit the murkier areas of the road haulage industry, those which RHA I'd guess would happily see removed from the road, as much as the cyclists would like it.

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neilmitchuk | 11 years ago
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I think this is a really positive move.

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Bez | 11 years ago
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To be fair to the RHA their response to Hammond and Johnson's recent statements was quite positive (in contrast to that of the FTA).

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