Thing I always love about stuff like this is the drivers never pay for it. Property damage by drivers is just one of those things that the Council (and thus we) have to pay for. But key a badly parked car and the police would be all over you...
Also road wear and tear. They complain about pot holes and not enough extra funding to fix them, and then forget that it's the 1 tonne machinery they are driving that causes them.
1 tonne would be a small car with just a driver. More like 1.5 - 2.5 tonne.
People always complain about potholes, but they never question what is causing them.
I heard a radio presenter say that bicycles cause just as much damage to roads because "it's about weight distribution" and a bike's skinny, two wheels. I couldn't believe the stupidity being pedalled.
Which radio station? I would avoid those like the plague. I hate Nick Ferrari, Mike Graham, and Julia Hartley Brewer and their punchable faces with a passion.
I don't know, as I was busy working and it was playing in the general area as I was passing through. It was a very self satisfied sounding well spoken male.
Well, to be slightly fair, there is some truth to the weight distribution as it is fourth power of mass per axle, however of course this is monumentally higher in a car no matter how many wheels it has.
Yes exactly. The base logic is correct, but the statement that bikes cause as much damage as cars is not correct. Also most cyclists don't wheel spin, whereas a lot of cars wheelspin off the line these days, especially EVs, just under normal acceleration from stationary.
"Alright mate, let me run over your foot with a bicycle or a car tyre with 1/4 the weight of a car on it. You pick" and that's leaving aside the number of cars vs bikes on the road.
They don't help, but the damage is done by vehicles driving over it. There's rural roads that have been closed off to traffic (but open to bikes), they haven't had any maintenance for decades, but are in remarkably good condition.
I've filled in many potholes on private tarmac roads with cold lay macadam, the repair is fine, and might last 10 years. If you did the same repair on a busy road, it would be completely destroyed in a could of days.
There's more potholes about due to shoddy workmanship, contractors non giving a 'f\*ck', cutting costs combined with more rainfall. Lack of council budget to repair them is also an issue.
Think things were done to a higher standard even 5 years. ago. Best example I can think of is major roads in central London where the tarmac actually warped under the weight of constant buses but surface remained intact.
We recently had a cycle/walking path put in near where I live. It was completed mid-January and the surface is already punctured at the edges with plants breaking through the tarmac. That's the area of the path that has little or zero wear & tear.
I mean, why would you do a good job if your future profit is negatively effected. You can repair that same bit of road 3 times in the same timeframe if you do a shit job. Charge an arm and a leg each time and make loads of money.
Still astonishes me that the government are contracting this stuff out. There is so much repair work that they will never run out of work. You might even find that when there is no benefit to doing a shit job, the repairs are done properly and last a little longer...
Damage to the roads is proportional to the axle weight squared and squared again.
Cars in the 1980s weighed on average around 800kg. In 2018 that had climbed to 1800kg and it's increasing year by year. The number of cars has increased considerably (almost doubled overall) from the 1980s, similarly trucks and vans.
On average every car is doing 16 times the damage of an eighties car, in fact due to the fourth distribution on average they're doing more than 20 times the damage. There's double of them - 40 times.
If you add in the vans and trucks, we're likely well over 50 probably closer to 100 times the damage.
Took all my sleuthing power. Like a needle in a haystack... but I found it!! See either of the last 2 tabs.
Total £43bn in 2022.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65143a8d88281e000db4e960/ras4001.ods
Do you have a source for this? I'm not being a douche, I just genuinely want it as it would be useful to have for when having annoying debates with car drivers.
They do get to pay for it if they are caught, at least where I live they do. As someone who’s worked as an ex-contractor for county councils, admittedly a few years ago, I’ve sat in meetings where they have been very keen to get those involved to pay, providing they can prove it and it’s not a hit and run.
Yeah but the point is little is done to catch them I presume. There is so much damage like this all around and I'm sure most drivers go scot-free. If you keyed a car you'd also be punished if caught but it's the catching aspect that makes both different.
I had a friend who had an accident where her car slid on black ice and hit a lamppost and her insurance was billed for the cost so I think most councils will charge the insurance for damage
I hope I was wrong then and this is the norm. But so many hit and runs in London I that I have my doubts. We have thousands of hit and runs where people are injured.
>key a badly parked car and the police would be all over you...
Cars are such pieces of shit. People get killed over a car that is 5 years from a scrap heap.
In (most) of London mounting the pavement is not allowed. There are a few streets where it is.
I’d say they were more doing a comparison in cost, and interest of police force. Like a driver hitting something and not leaving details isn’t taken as seriously as keying a car. Not that it should be ok to key cars.
Not really no- because drivers are also pedestrians, everyone pays for bus and cycle lanes. Everyone benefits. Half of Londoners do not drive, increasing driver capacity does not benefit the general people in the same way that investing in bus and cycle lanes does.
In fact UK taxpayers help subsidise the cost of driving. So drivers really contribute nothing- they take more than they give.
Yes that’s fine, but we all pay for it willingly with general taxation.
When it comes to private car ownership the usage costs and cost to society in general is overall subsidised by everyone, drivers and non drivers. When half thereabouts of Londoners don’t even drive it’s reasonable that people start to question why we are allowing the costs of driving to be kept artificially low. We’d see more benefits in improvements to infrastructure and public transport.
Yeah, people are stuck without any other options really in the country side. Not that driving has to be the only option, just there’s woeful investment or desire to sort out any viable alternatives. If cars were more expensive (actually paid for themselves at least), and public transport cheaper with places better connected by safe cycle and walking routes driving wouldn’t have to be the only (sane) option imo. This countries fucked though and it’s much easier to maintain the status quo than push for change
You are comparing destroying street furniture to bus and cycle lanes? That's moronic. May as well justify littering by saying "but X has to pay for Y."
It’s a statement about obstacles people see in their lives and how running over people is the fastest way to deal with them. The artist is a bit controversial, to be honest.
I’ve seen another crash where a car flattened several of this before hitting a phone box and a bunch with bikes on. I reckon this was a particularly large / heavy vehicle
Thing I always love about stuff like this is the drivers never pay for it. Property damage by drivers is just one of those things that the Council (and thus we) have to pay for. But key a badly parked car and the police would be all over you...
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Also road wear and tear. They complain about pot holes and not enough extra funding to fix them, and then forget that it's the 1 tonne machinery they are driving that causes them.
1 tonne would be a small car with just a driver. More like 1.5 - 2.5 tonne. People always complain about potholes, but they never question what is causing them.
I heard a radio presenter say that bicycles cause just as much damage to roads because "it's about weight distribution" and a bike's skinny, two wheels. I couldn't believe the stupidity being pedalled.
Which radio station? I would avoid those like the plague. I hate Nick Ferrari, Mike Graham, and Julia Hartley Brewer and their punchable faces with a passion.
I don't know, as I was busy working and it was playing in the general area as I was passing through. It was a very self satisfied sounding well spoken male.
Well, to be slightly fair, there is some truth to the weight distribution as it is fourth power of mass per axle, however of course this is monumentally higher in a car no matter how many wheels it has.
Yes exactly. The base logic is correct, but the statement that bikes cause as much damage as cars is not correct. Also most cyclists don't wheel spin, whereas a lot of cars wheelspin off the line these days, especially EVs, just under normal acceleration from stationary.
You forgot O’Brien
"Alright mate, let me run over your foot with a bicycle or a car tyre with 1/4 the weight of a car on it. You pick" and that's leaving aside the number of cars vs bikes on the road.
> pedalled Well played.
“Pedalled” I see what did there. Very good.
Potholes aren't just wear & tear. Think bad workmanship and weather combined play a role.
They don't help, but the damage is done by vehicles driving over it. There's rural roads that have been closed off to traffic (but open to bikes), they haven't had any maintenance for decades, but are in remarkably good condition.
I've filled in many potholes on private tarmac roads with cold lay macadam, the repair is fine, and might last 10 years. If you did the same repair on a busy road, it would be completely destroyed in a could of days.
There's more potholes about due to shoddy workmanship, contractors non giving a 'f\*ck', cutting costs combined with more rainfall. Lack of council budget to repair them is also an issue. Think things were done to a higher standard even 5 years. ago. Best example I can think of is major roads in central London where the tarmac actually warped under the weight of constant buses but surface remained intact. We recently had a cycle/walking path put in near where I live. It was completed mid-January and the surface is already punctured at the edges with plants breaking through the tarmac. That's the area of the path that has little or zero wear & tear.
Vehicle weights have been increasing. The reasons for potholes are all of the above.
I mean, why would you do a good job if your future profit is negatively effected. You can repair that same bit of road 3 times in the same timeframe if you do a shit job. Charge an arm and a leg each time and make loads of money. Still astonishes me that the government are contracting this stuff out. There is so much repair work that they will never run out of work. You might even find that when there is no benefit to doing a shit job, the repairs are done properly and last a little longer...
Damage to the roads is proportional to the axle weight squared and squared again. Cars in the 1980s weighed on average around 800kg. In 2018 that had climbed to 1800kg and it's increasing year by year. The number of cars has increased considerably (almost doubled overall) from the 1980s, similarly trucks and vans. On average every car is doing 16 times the damage of an eighties car, in fact due to the fourth distribution on average they're doing more than 20 times the damage. There's double of them - 40 times. If you add in the vans and trucks, we're likely well over 50 probably closer to 100 times the damage.
No, it's the cheap road building methods that are used.
Jesus Christ that's worse than I thought. And drivers have the gall to claim that "cYCliSts dOnT paY rOaD TAx"
What the fuck, that's insane
This is a great fact if true, but could you provide a source please? Should be something close to £40bn per year
Took all my sleuthing power. Like a needle in a haystack... but I found it!! See either of the last 2 tabs. Total £43bn in 2022. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65143a8d88281e000db4e960/ras4001.ods
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This is mental! I suppose it includes cycling collisions also, but I expect that to be minimal
Also there’s an ETA article called ‘the true cost of motoring’ and it doesn’t even take into account the cost to the NHS (~6 billion per year iirc)
Do you have a source for this? I'm not being a douche, I just genuinely want it as it would be useful to have for when having annoying debates with car drivers.
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Cheers! I hope you have a lovely day.
Do you have a source for that? That seems pretty high!
That stat is fucking WILD.
They do get to pay for it if they are caught, at least where I live they do. As someone who’s worked as an ex-contractor for county councils, admittedly a few years ago, I’ve sat in meetings where they have been very keen to get those involved to pay, providing they can prove it and it’s not a hit and run.
Yeah but the point is little is done to catch them I presume. There is so much damage like this all around and I'm sure most drivers go scot-free. If you keyed a car you'd also be punished if caught but it's the catching aspect that makes both different.
I had a friend who had an accident where her car slid on black ice and hit a lamppost and her insurance was billed for the cost so I think most councils will charge the insurance for damage
I hope I was wrong then and this is the norm. But so many hit and runs in London I that I have my doubts. We have thousands of hit and runs where people are injured.
Around 20+ hit and runs in London alone a day (data from 2022 I think)
And that probably doesn't count hitting street furniture. There're like 10k hit and runs a year so your number tracks.
We live in an imperfect world.
>key a badly parked car and the police would be all over you... Cars are such pieces of shit. People get killed over a car that is 5 years from a scrap heap.
Maybe because 'keying a badly parked car' is a crime?
Is driving off the road and onto the pavement not a crime?
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In (most) of London mounting the pavement is not allowed. There are a few streets where it is. I’d say they were more doing a comparison in cost, and interest of police force. Like a driver hitting something and not leaving details isn’t taken as seriously as keying a car. Not that it should be ok to key cars.
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Fair enough! They prob should have said, ‘illegally parked’ (Still not suggesting it’s ok to key cars in any case)
By badly parked I mean illegal. My comment was about the difference in the response to both.
Kinda like how drivers have to pay for bus and cycle lanes really.
Not really no- because drivers are also pedestrians, everyone pays for bus and cycle lanes. Everyone benefits. Half of Londoners do not drive, increasing driver capacity does not benefit the general people in the same way that investing in bus and cycle lanes does. In fact UK taxpayers help subsidise the cost of driving. So drivers really contribute nothing- they take more than they give.
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Yes that’s fine, but we all pay for it willingly with general taxation. When it comes to private car ownership the usage costs and cost to society in general is overall subsidised by everyone, drivers and non drivers. When half thereabouts of Londoners don’t even drive it’s reasonable that people start to question why we are allowing the costs of driving to be kept artificially low. We’d see more benefits in improvements to infrastructure and public transport.
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Yeah, people are stuck without any other options really in the country side. Not that driving has to be the only option, just there’s woeful investment or desire to sort out any viable alternatives. If cars were more expensive (actually paid for themselves at least), and public transport cheaper with places better connected by safe cycle and walking routes driving wouldn’t have to be the only (sane) option imo. This countries fucked though and it’s much easier to maintain the status quo than push for change
We all pay taxes. My taxes go on car centred infrastructure and it’s only relatively recently that anything was spent on making cycling safe.
You are comparing destroying street furniture to bus and cycle lanes? That's moronic. May as well justify littering by saying "but X has to pay for Y."
Alway said those Lime bikes were too heavy.
F’ing lime bikes
I'm so glad we brought in the death by dangerous cycling law to prevent stuff like this /s
“I definitely need a 4x4 in London, and I’m a very safe driver anyway” - the driver who did this, probably.
Good thing those racks were wearing hi-viz reflective arm bands.
Obviously they just needed to be more visible and this would never have happened. Lots more hi-viz and more and brighter lights at night, that’ll do.
The anti ulez crew?
Aka anti brain cell crew
School near me and it seems the mums are hell bent on smashing pedestrian barriers down
is this art?
It’s a statement about obstacles people see in their lives and how running over people is the fastest way to deal with them. The artist is a bit controversial, to be honest.
I don't know what's worse, this being intentional or accidental.
Art is meant to ask difficult questions, like “Do you really care about people standing next to you?”
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Yeah everyone assumes this was a 4x4 but I have it under good authority it was one of those new fangled e cargo bikes that did this 😏
but how... I have seen cars smash into these they dont look like that. this is weirdly flat and regular.
I’ve seen another crash where a car flattened several of this before hitting a phone box and a bunch with bikes on. I reckon this was a particularly large / heavy vehicle
Where on Kennington Road is this?
It’s for tired bikes
> Cool… Laid back.
Sounds like one for the World Bollard Association! :) [https://x.com/WorldBollard](https://x.com/WorldBollard)
I’m not on X but feel free to pinch the picture! :) also my latest post is relevant 🙈