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Boris Johnson aims to slash London road casualties by half in next 5 years

Number of bike riders killed in collisions involving large vehicles remains a huge concern, admits TfL

Mayor of London Boris Johnson has pledged to cut the number of people killed or seriously injured (KSI) on London’s roads by more than 50 per cent by 2020. With bike riders the second most vulnerable group of road users in the capital after pedestrians, measures to improve the safety of the city’s cyclists are at the forefront of his plans to reduce casualties.

According to road casualty figures published by Transport for London (TfL) for 2014 this week, KSIs among the city’s road users fell by 7 per cent compared to 2014, with a 12 per cent fall in the number of cyclists among those.

Last year, 13 cyclists were killed in London, while 419 were seriously injured. Those figures are higher than the numbers recorded from 2004-06, but given the rise of cycling in the city over the past decade, TfL insisted last week that the casualty rate per distance cycled is the lowest since records began.

But TfL said a particular area of concern remained the number of fatal incidents involving cyclists and large vehicles such as lorries, coaches and buses.

It said: “Of the 13 cyclist fatalities in 2014, five involved HGVs or commercial vehicles and all six to date in 2015 have also involved this type of vehicle.

“To help address this, a new campaign will be launched this summer to reiterate the warning for both drivers and cyclists of the risks of blind spots around large vehicles.”

It added: “TfL and London boroughs will be introducing the Safer Lorry Scheme from 1 September 2015, which will require all lorries entering the capital to be fitted with basic safety equipment including sideguards and mirrors.”

According to TfL, measures that will help meet that target include:

Major infrastructure improvements as part of the Mayor's £4bn Road Modernisation Plan, including safer junctions and extensive new segregated and partially-segregated cycle lanes

Road safety and cycle training across all 33 London Boroughs

Wide ranging marketing campaigns that target the main causes of death and serious injury on London's roads

Road safety operations with the Metropolitan Police Service Roads and Transport Policing Command (RTPC), where hundreds of officers are deployed to junctions across London to advise road users and enforce the rules of the road

Targeting the most dangerous commercial vehicles through the Industrial HGV Task Force, funded by TfL and the Department for Transport (DfT). The Task Force has already conducted over 200 roadside operations, stopped over 3,000 vehicles, and seized around 50 dangerous vehicles

Improving freight safety with the design of safer urban construction vehicles, reducing deadly blind-spots and improving drivers' direct vision to give maximum visibility of vulnerable road users

Earlier this year around a dozen vehicles with hugely reduced blind-spots were exhibited in London and are now being trialled by a range of companies.

RAC Foundation director Steve Gooding said: “Keeping people safe on our roads is one of the most important responsibilities local government has.

“Each death and injury brings with it significant human and economic costs and it is pleasing to see the capital taking the lead in reducing these.

“Targets for casualty reduction help focus people's minds on what needs to be done and in London the goals are backed by a concrete action plan.

“The marked fall in casualties in the capital is in large part a result of the effort TfL and the boroughs have put in working across organisational boundaries, and that must continue in order to achieve further reductions.

“In what is inevitably a crowded and congested city we particularly welcome TfL's work on reminding different groups of road users of their responsibilities to others.

“London faces the same financial pressures as the rest of the country and it is right that road safety interventions focus on those areas where there is the biggest need and largest benefit to be gained,” he added.

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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17 comments

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Yorkshie Whippet | 8 years ago
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Simon,

Fair point, however I still stand by my first statement, " Keeping people safe is everyones responsibility".

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ChairRDRF | 8 years ago
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Simon,

AA and RAC's charitable bodies do support some forms of more civilised driver behaviour (like existing speed cameras), but they won't go for anything which fundamentally reduces motor danger and/or makes drivers accountable. They certainly don't push against cheaper motoring or for motor traffic reduction.

Even if formally separate from the organisations whose names are in their titles, you wouldn't expect them to, would you?

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Simon_MacMichael | 8 years ago
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Yorkshire Whippet - the RAC Foundation is separate from the RAC and is most certainly in favour of speed cameras as this 2013 quote highlights:

"Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, said:

'At the end of 2010 we published a report by Professor Richard Allsop which concluded that without speed cameras there would be around 800 more people killed or seriously injured each year at that time. Overall his new work reinforces those earlier conclusions, but crucially the study has also identified a number of camera sites in the vicinity of which collisions seem to have risen markedly. This may or may not be related to the cameras but warrants further investigation. Therefore, on the basis of this study, we have now written to eleven local authorities suggesting they examine the positioning and benefits of a total of 21 cameras'."

http://www.racfoundation.org/media-centre/speed-camera-transparency-data...

The AA is also in favour of their use to improve safety.

http://www.theaa.com/public_affairs/news/speed-camera-switch-off-public-...

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Yorkshie Whippet | 8 years ago
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RAC Foundation director Steve Gooding said: “Keeping people safe on our roads is one of the most important responsibilities local government has.

 14 Typical response from a well educated, over paid, thick as pig **** brain dead, gormless corporate zombie.  102

Keeping people safe should be everyones responsibility! Why is it always the governments responsibility for the road safer, especially when the likes of the RAC and AA actively campaign against speed cameras and reduced speed limits. Do they not understand basic physics, large, heavy, fast moving objects have huge amount of kinetic energy. The same object moving slowly has less energy therefore the impact in genreally lesser.

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alansmurphy | 8 years ago
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If I survived an RTA in London I'm not sure I'd want Boris to try and slash me in half...

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farrell | 8 years ago
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"Boris Johnson makes grand statement that he has no intention whatsoever of following up".

It frightens me how many people fall for his bumbling idiot act. He's evil.

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vonhelmet replied to farrell | 8 years ago
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farrell wrote:

"Boris Johnson makes grand statement that he has no intention whatsoever of following up".

It frightens me how many people fall for his bumbling idiot act. He's evil.

While the bumbling is certainly an act, and he is certainly far smarter than he would like you to believe, I'm not sure why you're labelling him evil... Unless it's simply the fact that he's a Tory.

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ibike | 8 years ago
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There’s definitely more spin than substance here. Boris needing something to draw attention away from the 13 odd cycling deaths each year perhaps?

A target of 50% is easy to say (and easy to forget). Why not aim for no deaths, like Sweden’s Vision Zero?

Training and marketing campaigns? Umm, just get on and build us the segregated cycle lanes please, and lots more of them.

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pamplemoose | 8 years ago
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If you want to reduce the number of cycling deaths/injuries in London then reduce the number of cars/trucks. No one has the balls to do it though. Absolutely no-one *needs* a car in central London.

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Beaufort | 8 years ago
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Boris is not perfect - ! - but at least he is a cyclist. The next Mayor probably will not be.

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ChairRDRF | 8 years ago
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HarrogateSpa: I am Chair of the Road Danger Reduction Forum (hence ChairRDRF) - I'm not hiding this! My views are expressed more fully on our website - most of the posts are also written by me (sometimes with other RDRF committee members) anyway.

The reason for giving a reference to a relevant www.rdrf.org.uk post is that road.cc readers can read an extended version of, or relevant argument specifically related to, what I have said in the comment.

They don't have to do this , but apparently quite a few road.cc readers of my comments do go on to ww.rdrf.org.uk . Of course, I could just paste in the text of the post into my comment - but I think THAT would be wrong.

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FluffyKittenofT... | 8 years ago
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Someone should compile a comprehensive list of all the various 'targets', 'aims' and 'plans' issued by various parts of the UK state and its quangos, in relation to cycling, over the last 50 years.

I'd be surprised if any of them ever came to pass rather than being quietly forgotten.

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HarrogateSpa | 8 years ago
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I think it's fine to contribute to the debate, and sometimes direct people to the RDRF website; however, personally I would prefer if every now and then you commented without a link to RDRF - just a comment because that's your opinion, not trying to drive traffic to another site.

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ChairRDRF | 8 years ago
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Just to add on to the previous comment: the TfL Press Release inevitable lays the credit for cuts in casualties with TfL, but that doesn't mean it isn't due to other factors.

Incidentally, TfL may want to add a long quote from the RAC (or rather their charity the RAC Foundation) but that doesn't mean you have to. I guess some of us have different views about what the "responsibilities to others" are of different road user groups may be as compared to those of the RAC.

Of the measures referred to in the PR, those on HGVs are welcome but limited, marketing and publicity without strong law enforcement is pretty worthless, and policing - well, in London...http://rdrf.org.uk/2013/11/29/is-there-a-police-blitz-on-unsafe-driving-... there's the Michael Mason case http://rdrf.org.uk/2015/03/20/the-michael-mason-case-a-national-scandal-...

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ChairRDRF | 8 years ago
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Total KSIs - 90+% of which are Serious Injuries - tend to decline over time, particularly if there is a recession, irrespective of formal Government interventions (although this particular target does seem ambitious).

For cyclists, the point is that this has nothing to do with whether the road environment has become safer. Indeed, if it is seen as hazardous, people are put off cycling. They don't go out there and don't get killed or seriously injured as cyclists. That's why far more people per head of the population are killed as cyclists in the Netherlands wile having a far lower death rate per cyclist journey/kilometre travelled/time spent cycling.

TfL wilfully ignore this in their Cycle Safety Action Plan http://rdrf.org.uk/2014/11/07/transport-for-londons-cycle-safety-action-... . In fact, measuring danger for cyclist has to go even beyond looking at cyclist casualty rates per journey/distance travelled etc. See the discussion here:
http://rdrf.org.uk/2013/11/15/if-we-want-safer-roads-for-cycling-we-have...

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bikebot | 8 years ago
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Boris Johnson? Has he already forgotten that he has less than a year left?

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tourdelound | 8 years ago
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 39 Well, good luck on that one. I would say that the general standard of driving/riding needs to improve considerably to get anywhere near achieving these targets.

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