[sustran] Driving the argument home (BBC News reports that Carlessa is still alive and well, and apparently has a sister witch!) )

[Eric Britton]

Editor's note: This is from our every-trick-in-the-book dept. You'll find
the original of this with illustrations at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4459056.stm.  (And kind thanks to Robert
Moskowitz for the heads-up).  For my part I am glad to see the Road Witch is
still alive and well in Oz. We took her there a few years ago in our
cooperative UNCFD project in Fremantle in 2002, where she was actually out
on the street and doing her wacky stuff with the help of a band of carousing
children during the city's . Her name is Carlessa and she is, as it happens
a very good witch indeed. She lives in the virtual sky at
<http://www.carlessa.com/> www.carlessa.com, but at the moment she is moving
to a new house so you will have to wait until she settles down.) 

 

Ted Deman's 'folk traffic-calming' Road-Witch has a life all of her own and
can be visited at  <http://www.wormworks.com/roadwitch/index.html>
http://www.wormworks.com/roadwitch/index.html. (Moral of the story: You can
never have too many good witches.)

 

Driving the argument home (BBC News )

 

By Sean Coughlan, BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4459056.stm

A campaign is under way to lower speed limits to 20mph in urban areas, but
what's going to make drivers slow down? A bossy road sign, a hump in the
road or a three-piece suite parked in the road? 

There's no reason that traffic calming should be boring or without a sense
of humour, says children's author and traffic campaigner, Ted Dewan. 

And using his Oxford residential street as a test laboratory, Mr Dewan has
been working on more creative ways to reduce traffic speed. 

"People are too used to being scolded by warning signs telling them about
lethal speed and driving. It's like 'tell me something new'. But they're not
used to having their wit engaged," he says. 

So in a spirit that combines a sense of entertainment with a serious intent,
he has come up with the idea of "folk traffic calming". 

This is where art installations meet road safety, a kind of sleeping
policeman that's been influenced by Damien Hirst. 

'We live here' 

These type of "DIY traffic-calming happenings" are described by their
creator as "roadwitches" and have included an 11-feet high rabbit, a big bed
(for a sleeping policeman), a Casualty-style fake crash scene for Halloween
and the setting up of a living room in the middle of the road. 

"There's an element of fun and mischief, but underneath is the ambition to
encourage people to re-examine how roads are used," says Mr Dewan. 

"With the living room, it was the most direct way of saying 'We live here.
This is our living space.'" 

And he says that residents really enjoyed the strangeness of being able to
relax outside in their own street, rather than feel it was a place only
belonging to the cars that race up and down it. 

Residents had forgotten what it was like to have a street without the usual
high-volume and low-courtesy of passing traffic. 

Initially the street was legally closed, to allow the setting up of this
outdoor living room, including such middle-England touches as a standard
lamp. 

It was then re-arranged to allow traffic to pass through, but Mr Dewan says
the reactions of motorists showed how motorists expect nothing to stand in
their way. 

'Psychotic' 

"A driver of a 4x4 didn't so much disapprove - he was too crazed and violent
for that. He seemed to be made psychotic by the idea that roads could exist
for anything other than him to drive on," he says. 

This motorist deliberately drove into pieces of the living room furniture
and then called the council to demand that they shift whatever was left
lying in the road. 

There were gender differences too, says Mr Dewan. Male drivers didn't seem
to like the idea of driving across the carpet. But female drivers were less
sympathetic and more aggressive, with a stronger "get out of my way
attitude". 

It's this sense of entitlement that he says he wants to challenge - leaving
a 4x4 blocking half the street is called parking but a couple of chairs and
a magazine rack put in the same place is seen as a senseless provocation. 

"My daughter isn't allowed to throw snowballs at school, because it's
considered too dangerous. But it's meant to be acceptable that she can walk
home only inches away from cars driving at lethal speeds. There is something
weird about this, a deep cultural bias." 

'Selfish' 

As the owner of two cars, Mr Dewan says he's far from being anti-motorist,
but he wants "mutual respect" between drivers and pedestrians and to stop
the "deluded, selfish" way that traffic has come to dominate urban spaces. 

Mr Dewan has plans to extend the roadwitch concept, sending the message that
there are "creative, non-confrontational" ways that residents can control
what's going on in their own roads - and to assert that roads do not only
belong to drivers. 

And Tuesday also marks a national day of campaigning by Transport 2000 to
support a lower speed limit for residential areas. The "20's Plenty"
campaign says a 20mph limit on residential streets would mean a two-thirds
reduction in the number of children killed or injured by cars. 

Linda Beard, Transport 2000's streets and traffic campaigner, says that "at
the moment, we're failing to protect people, especially children, from
traffic". 

Road mosaic 

The use of such lower speed limits in some residential areas is supported by
the RAC Foundation, but executive director Edmund King says it has to be
part of a balance - with sufficient through-routes to prevent traffic
grinding to a halt. 

"We support well-planned home zones, but mobility is also important and
there have to be streets for movement, where people can go about their
business," he says. 

Mr King is also sympathetic to more imaginative approaches to traffic
calming, and he points to street designs constructed to show drivers that
they are entering a residential area. 

This might be different coloured road surfaces, or a mosaic embedded in the
road showing the street name or a gateway giving the impression that you are
about to drive through a place where people are living. 

"There needs to be something more creative than just a bump in the road," he
says

 

 

 


From:

Ted Dewan <ted.dewan at wormworks.com>


To:

headwitch at roadwitch.org.uk


Subject:   

Roadwitch on bbc online today

Dear neighbours and interested folks,
 
The Roadwitch Trial campaign is on the front page of BBC news online. I dont
know how long it will be there, but it's there today, 22  November, aka
National '20 is Plenty' campaign day.
 
Roadwitch website numbers are hitting the roof and it's only been online for
a few hours.
 
If you miss the piece, I'm archiving it and will post it on
roadwitch.org.uk  <http://roadwitch.org.uk> if I can get permission from the
BBC.
 
See it on http://news.bbc.co.uk/  (it's bottom left) or if you want to go
directly to the article, it's on http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4459056.stm
 
 
Ted Dewan
 
ted.dewan at wormworks.com

 





 

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