My mother was killed by a driver while I was campaigning for safer cycling. Now I’ve helped create a national travel strategy
A little over a decade ago my daughter Aggie asked me a question that changed the path of my working life. She asked: “Can we ride to the park?” It wasn’t her question that altered everything, it was my answer – which was: “No.”
We live in a typical northern seaside town, and the park in question was – I know because I measured it later – 549 metres away, a distance that takes a little over one minute to ride. I, an ex-Olympic cyclist, didn’t feel I could keep my daughter safe on our roads for one minute. And that felt very wrong. It wasn’t what I wanted for her, and it wasn’t the place I wanted to live. So I decided to do something about it.
Chris Boardman is the interim commissioner of Active Travel England
