This is not my... Interview
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Blake Ludwig co-founder of The Alliance Against Urban 4x4's.
Which leads "a growing campaign uniting environmental, consumer, road safety groups and concerned individuals all over the UK."
Find more at: www.stopurban4x4s.org.uk
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How did the Alliance Against Urban 4x4's come about?
Sian (Berry) was trying to make a Camden parking ticket against 4x4’s but didn't have enough money, so I invited her along to a Camden Greenpeace group where we did a whip around to help get some tickets made.
This was late summer 2004 - nobody had been doing any 4x4 action before that.
When we did get the tickets done we actually began to see just how many 4x4’s there are out there.
Some of us in the Camden Greenpeace group had wanted to do something about 4x4’s but we didn’t know what. After a few discussions we agreed to start an alliance of different Camden environmental groups.
We set up a website and Sian started producing tickets - initially for 6 London boroughs.
In January last year that we did our first School Run Protest.
It was an incredible event.
It only took one brain storming session with a few people to come up with it and it hit a raw nerve.
We were facing the 'yummy mummies' driving their kids'to a local school in Belsize and so it got us a lot of media attention and
threw us forward into the spotlight as a lobbying group.
Now you can’t read a motoring section about 4x4’s without some sort of apology for the CO2 emissions.
What happened in the last year is really exciting as we have grown from a London centric group and now have very active groups in Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Norwich, Reading, Basingstoke, even a group in Belgium.
We have also just launched in Brighton. The launch will be aired on the Trevor McDonald show on the 24th March.
Have you had any interest from America?
Yes, when we first started we were in touch with the Rainforest Action Network (a very strong lobby against Ford in America).
They came over and ended up giving us money for our first big run of tickets, which allowed us to print 10,000. They were one of the supporters of our first campaign in front of a Land Rover dealership in South Kensington.
In America there have been a lot of radical groups, such as Earth First. They take actions such as setting vehicles on fire, letting air out of their tyres and painting figures of Iraqi people around the cars, things like that.
There are also concerned religious groups like those who set up 'What Would Jesus Drive?'
In France they have ‘the deflated ones’ who let down car tyres.
We have chosen not to go down the extreme route. As a consequence we have gained support from people across the country.
Has this approach helped the campaign?
Yes, the school run campaign showed that by doing something confrontational but not serious (we had people dressed as school teachers, people with report cards, light-hearted things), we could gain support.
There are light hearted ways of giving a message to 4x4 drivers. We just want to say, "We’re watching" and ask them whether they
think they might have made the wrong choice with the vehicle they have chosen.
I should qualify here that all of this work is a result of the fears we have about climate change.
We must look at how our choices effect our future.
What reaction do you get from 4x4 owners?
Some people write and say, "I am on-board in general with what you are doing but I have a specific reason for driving this - such as pulling a horse trailer", we get a lot of nasty ones saying, "How dare you touch my property, it is my choice to do what I want" but we also get some people who say, "I am concerned but what should I do and want to know what the best choice is".
Those are the people we are targeting. We are getting a great reaction from people around the country.
What reaction from the general public?
We did orders for tickets last night that took 2 hours to put into envelopes. We have an extraordinary amount of people who want them.
We know the campaign is getting out there and has gone up to Scotland and across to Wales.
Have you seen tickets on vehicles that you haven’t known would be put out?
Only occasionally. Though I did see one that I put on a 4x4 a couple of months ago and the drivers has left it on. I think because then at least no one else will put another one on!
You have a petition as well. Have a lot of people signed it?
Yes, I think a few thousand so far.
Where do you see that the campaign will go from here?
Part of our remit this year is to increase our membership and to get more groups going.
Norwich launched a couple of months ago and that got a lot of media attention, and attention from the car industry.
We have plans to create new groups, a couple up in Glasgow and Edinburgh and also one in Wales.
We want to pursue the three main aims with which we started the campaign.
One, London specific, is to increase the congestion charge for 4x4’s. One is to restrict advertising for 4x4’s and the other to set up exclusion zones for 4x4’s.
4x4’s are more dangerous* than other vehicles and so we want them banned from sensitive areas, such as schools and the middle of city centres.
Regarding advertising, you may have seen the advert which shows an Inuit in Alaska on a sledge running along side a Land Rover.
The idea of the advert is that somehow the Inuit is mesmerised by the 4x4 and how it can go faster than his sledge. He then ditches the dogs and decides to get into the 4x4.
There are 70 people that we know who complained to the ASA about that. Sadly no charges were pressed.
It is the Inuit's who brought a complaint to the United Nations about how their community is being destroyed by climate change.
Land Rover are using those worst effected by the consequences of climate change to sell their cars.
We want to get the message across to 4x4 drivers that they are endangering the planet. We would like to counter with our own advertising.
We are waiting on funding for that but in the meantime you can do a lot with a little.
For example, last year we ran the 'mud wash' campaign.
Sadly it took place in the same week as the London bombings, so there was little publicity. But I am sure we will come up with some other ideas.
We will also be targeting footballer's. The top three vehicles that they tend to drive are the top three polluting vehicles which have the worse track record for CO2 emissions.
We want to ask them to look at the signal that they are sending out. In Hollywood a lot of the stars are buying hybrids, like the Prius, they are sending out a different message.
Have you had any response from footballer’s yet?
Not yet. I think David Beckham has a Hummer. Apparently he even bought his son a mini one, so if we could convince someone like him that would be great!
Are you providing specific information to politicians about 4x4's?
Yes, Ken Livingstone set up a meeting for us with one of his staff where we went over the reasons why we should be increasing the congestion charge for 4x4’s.
We are currently drawing up a report to show how we can justify such a rise in terms of CO2 emissions and how it could fit in to the current congestion charge mechanism.
We are going to be suggesting a charge of £20 per day for vehicles that emit a certain level of CO2.
There needs to be some sort of regulatory process.
Already the the Treasury plans to increase Vehicle Excise Duty on 4x4’s but what we, the Energy Savings Trust and Transport 2000 know from different surveys is that, in order to get people to change vehicles, they need VED to be increased much more than they are proposing.
Are you encouraging other disincentives?
Yes, if you look into climate change and what will help there has to be some sort of incentive based approach so that people wont want to buy these type of cars.
I believe we do have a right to penalise car manufacturers and people who want to drive heavily polluting vehicles, given what we now know about climate change.
The stick will have to be taxation and disincentives and the carrot no congestion charge and more free public parking.
It just has to go that way. Free choice is not an option on this anymore.
How can people get involved if they want to?
We don’t have any particular events coming up, other than the launch of the congestion report in a couple of months.
The best way for people to get involved is to start groups in their local area. Get people together and go out ticketing. We can send out kits and help with this. They don’t need us to get involved but we are there to provide support.
There is also the on-line petition.
We are also now selling T-shirts that have our message on.
What do you think the campaign has achieved so far?
At the end of the day our campaign has started the debate about 4x4’s. Whether people agree with us or disagree at least now it is something that is being discussed.
Sadly, sales of 4x4’s are still going up but we are able to provide a conduit for people to speak out against them.
Hopefully, with enough support, this will soon lead to concrete legislative action.
*The Alliance Against Urban 4x4 website dispels the myth that 4x4's are safer than smaller vehicles.
In addition the Sunday Herald notes that:
“Dozens of children in the US are run over and killed every year by large vehicles reversing. The accidents often happen in their own driveways, and the drivers are often their own parents or carers.”
You can check out the New Scientist article on how they double pedestrian fatalities.
Or citizen.org which reiterates the same and points out that the risk of roll over is greater in SUV's than other vehicles.
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