Even F1 is adding Bike Lanes now

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3d rendering futuristic Racetrack Circuit. Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Caltrans is Completing their Streets

Bay Area cities, in general, have squandered road safety, Vision Zero, and the call to fight air pollution and GHG emissions. They keep widening highways and increasing regional transportation options instead of completing local streets and solving their ‘last mile‘ conundrum. Now California and Caltrans are claiming they want this fixed. Projects in Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Redwood City might lead to a few miles of much needed bike lanes. Formula One likes that very much and wants in on the topic of Global Road Safety and Sustainability.

Does F1 really care about bike lanes?

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Professor Ian Robert wrote a research paper about how the European Car Racing Industry (FIA) became the leader in Global Road Safety and Sustainability. This surprising move created quite a number of issues, especially in poor countries with little infrastructure and lots of pedestrians. Here is what Prof. Roberts wrote in his research paper:

“The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, better known as the FIA, is the governing body of motor sport. It was set up in 1904 and represents the interests of motoring organizations and car users worldwide. In 2001, it established the FIA Foundation, a charity with the stated aim of ‘promoting road safety, environmental protection and sustainable mobility’. FIA set up a Commission for Global Road Safety [CGRS] with a remit to ‘examine the framework for and level of international cooperation on global road safety and to make policy recommendations.’

On this Commission for Global Road Safety (CGRS) were several famous names from the automobile industry and Formula One Racing (F1) world. With names like GM, Bridgestone, or Michael Schumacher on such a commission, a few question must be asked. Is the outcome of increased ‘Road Safety’ for the commission members best defined by …

Goal A: Reducing the number of pedestrian and cyclist deaths by lowering the speed
Goal B: Increasing vehicle safety so drivers and passengers can survive at higher speed

One can see how these would be two very different, even competing goals. If you work first and foremost on Goal B, you might just increase the number of pedestrian deaths and violate Goal A. But if you wanted to prioritize Goal A and focus on pedestrians and bicycles, then the people on that commission could not be more wrong for the job.

The report goes on with quotes made by Michael Schumacher at the time:

“‘In my racing career, I survived some very high speed impacts. I am still alive because the sport’s governing body designed a system where safety is a prime consideration.’ Schumacher failed to point out a key difference between the grand prix circuit and roads in poor countries — there are no pedestrians, cyclists or children on the track in motor sport.”

So we have our answer: FIA is only interested in Goal B.

Ian Roberts continues:

“Although in poor countries most people will never own a car and most of the victims of traffic crashes are pedestrians, the Commission has worked hard to ensure that the views of the motoring elites dominate transport policy decisions.”

The suggestions the commission published and promoted included Road User Education, Increased Road Building, Private-Public partnerships.

Road User Education

“Road user education is favoured by the car lobby because it places the responsibility for road traffic injury squarely on the victim and has no impact on industry profits. Its primary purpose is ideological. It sends the message that road space belongs to drivers, and that pedestrians and cyclists must look out or die. This also applies to children, who account for 300,000 of the 1.2 million road deaths each year.”

BUT …

“Despite decades of evaluation research, safety education has never been shown to reduce road injury rates, a point emphasized by the WHO in the World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention.”

The WHO report says on page 138 that the most vulnerable are children and older people walking or biking. Research seems to indicate that well-done education did change the knowledge and attitudes of children. However, there was a lack of good evidence for adults, “particular in the case of elderly people.” It also didn’t seem to work too well in “low-income and middle-income countries,” which means Road Safety Education can’t qualify as a tool to advance Transportation Equity.

Seat belts or bicycle helmets don’t prevent collisions. High-visibility clothing shows slight statistical improvement and might do more harm than good. Their usefulness is already questioned in all 50 states. On the contrary, highly reflective road workers, their vast, yellow machinery, and flashing-light-equipped emergency vehicles seem to attract crashes at high rates on highways with 15 ft lanes. There is absolutely no excuse to not see huge firetrucks behind red traffic cones along a freeway. And yet, 50 States have Move-Over Laws because they know that when gaffers stare at something, they tend to drive into it. More visibility might be the actual problem, and more Separation of Speed is the solution these 50 States have chosen.

Increased Road Building

The Road Safety/Car Racing Commission sees Increased Road Building as a way to induce economic growth. Now, the car lobby assumes that transportation leads to economic growth. And for selfless reasons, cars are the most viable option in their scenario.

However, the Department of International Development (Banister D, Wright L) found little evidence that transport infrastructure induces economic growth. They found that better public transport and support for cycling are more effective in stimulating small, local economies. This is especially true in the developing world, where people should not be encouraged to own cars and create more carbon than is absolutely necessary. We don’t need the ‘developing world’ to develop all the mental and physical health issues we in the ‘developed and civilized world’ have achieved already. They can easily skip a few steps to enlightenment and take some shortcuts.

Public-Private Partnerships

F1, together with car manufacturers, took on a leading role, which could help with road safety, of course:

“Formula One, motorist organizations and car makers have manoeuvred themselves into pole position in global road safety politics. Formula One’s ability to access and influence leading political figures has undoubtedly raised the profile of road traffic crashes as a global public health crisis, but the policies it promotes are neither the most effective in preventing injury, nor the most environmentally sustainable.”

The World Bank suggested and promoted a public-private partnership named GRSP.

“In 1999, the World Bank—arguing that a partnership between businesses, NGOs and governments can deliver worthwhile road safety improvements in poor countries—established a Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP) which includes General Motors, Ford, Daimler Chrysler, Volvo and the drinks multinationals Bacardi-Martini and United Distillers.”

at this GRSP apparently did was to take a known WHO report and rewrite it:

“A 2006 report compared the prevalence of certain key words in GRSP reports to their prevalence in a similar report by the WHO. In the GRSP reports there was a systematic neglect of pedestrians and cyclists. In the WHO report, ‘speed limit’ occurred 17 times in every 10,000 words; in the Partnership’s reports, just once. ‘Pedestrian’ was used 69 times by the WHO, and 15 times by the Partnership; ‘buses’ and ‘cyclists’ were mentioned 13 and 32 times respectively by the WHO but not once by the Partnership.“

Why we should not listen to the Car Racing Lobby

“Formula One has a chequered history in public health. In the nineties, it supported the interests of the tobacco industry when it successfully lobbied the UK Government into scrapping its plans to ban tobacco sponsorship in motor sport.“

And basically, they are coming for our lung health again:

“Urban air pollution, much of which is transport related, causes upwards of 750,000 deaths per year. Reductions in the volume and speed of traffic, particularly in cities, could mitigate climate impacts, reduce injury rates and improve air quality. Less traffic would help to raise physical activity levels, thus reducing rates of obesity and diabetes. Reclaiming the streets for walking and cycling is the future of sustainable transport – but this will not be in the interests of the car lobby.^“

Conclusion

When the car lobby heavily influences Road Safety, you often see three typical solutions, and none has anything to do with real safety for cyclists and pedestrians:

Road User Education (aka Victim Blaming)
Increased Road Building (false narrative about economic growth)
Private-public partnerships are key (this became known as ‘Astroturfing’)

Unfortunately, bike lanes are not one of their preferred solutions, so the dream of NASCAR and F1 racing with center bike lanes will remain a dream. The main goal of Formula One has always been to call pedestrians “lunatics” and get them off the course so race cars can go as fast as possible. They seem to favor a mix of Education and Enforcement or non-enforcement to push pedestrians and cyclists off city streets. They seem to favor scrubbing people walking or riding bicycles from all documentation. This way, road safety can become the sole field of car-on-car crime and for that the industry has plenty of expensive pretend-solutions (ADAS) to sell.

To Be Continued …

Of course, after the scathing report by Professor Roberts, FIA did have a response we will have to look at in more detail as well.

More Information:

Editor’s Note: The views and opinions expressed in all blog posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Redwood City Pulse or its staff.