Safety

Every now and then my local XR group hangs banners from a footbridge over the busy A34 road. For safety's sake, four of us hang them and take them down and two of us stay with them while they are there. It's brutally noisy on the bridge so I no longer sign up to do more than a one-hour shift. About 40 minutes into my hour this morning I saw a large leafy forked branch in the middle of one of the two lanes just after a slip road joined the main road. It must have fallen off a truck. Three fast lanes of traffic were merging into two while swerving to avoid a large obstruction. Our banner may have said 'END FOSSIL FUELS NOW' but it didn't say 'End the lives of people who use fossil fuels'. I phoned 999.

By the time a highways vehicle came past 24 minutes later about five HGVs had driven over the branches and crushed them while the airflow between vehicles had shifted the pieces onto the white line between lanes. The highways vehicle didn't stop so I assumed they had decided that what was left was not a risk. I cycled home.

One of my fellow banner-droppers sent me a photo he'd taken shortly afterwards of two police vehicles slowing down all the traffic and removing the debris.

Look out for the headline: 'Responsible XR rebels protect car drivers'.
No, I don't think so either.

(Photo taken on my way to another birthday party/rounders match in Witney where this time, after the fiasco three weeks ago, I succeeded in not getting a black eye. At least in part by not playing rounders.)