Cycling and Road safety

Between January 2019-November2019 There were 1468 road accidents recorded (according to Office of national statistics) and sadly 24 deaths. We know some small accidents may not be recorded and so the true number of accidents on our roads will be much higher.

Vision Zero

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough does have vision zero road safety partnership with a vision of having no deaths or serious injuries on our roads by 2030. I would argue that though its great having a target it feels like a tick box exercise, we need to Vision Zero to be looking at preventing deaths and serious injuries from NOW so I remove the target and rebrand as Vision Zero NOW.

Vision Zero and it’s work needs to be looking at how road design has an impact on drivers such as speeding and what interventions can be done NOW to make roads safer.

We need to be gathering and looking at near miss data and information from our communities in order to prevent some of these accidents from happening before any accidents are recorded, as well as looking at accident hot spots before a death occurs.

Lower speeds

I do support 20 Mile Per Hour (MPH) is plenty campaign and that of the Louis Thorold Foundation, to lower the speed limits of all roads around our urban areas to 20 miles MPH. The lower the speed the lower the risk of serious injury.

Average speed cameras and speed enforcement cameras can help towards lowering speed, in 2019 there was a 22% reduction in collisions at camera sites.

Community interventions such as Speedwatch and Speed indicator devices are also great, and I am Speedwatch trained and I am the only active Speedwatch member in the city at the moment so I am told.

Road design

However the real key is road design. We shouldn’t have roads that need policing speed enforcement because they have been designed as race track! Our police officers need to focus on the most serious crimes including dangerous driving and not on speed enforcement.

We need serious consideration on road design from the new roads that are being built to looking at existing roads. We already know that by changing the feel of a road through street furniture, small changes like chicanes, road colour and texture and signage - we can change the speed of a road and therefore making it safer for all roads users. In 2010 Sustrans the transport charity worked on a pilot project where residents could fundraise and work to help make changes to their roads to slow down traffic. The end result was brilliant partnership work with the community! It as well as the impact of the COVID19 road changes that have been quickly implemented, shows that road change layout doesn’t have to be costly.

Cycling and road safety of all road users

By lowering the speed and making our roads safer will encourage modal shift, moving people out of their cars and onto sustainable transport modes such as walking and cycling.

We need to do what we can to move people our of cars that are damaging our environments and onto sustainable transport such as public transport , cycling and walking. Cyclist’s need help in making sure that the safe pass is actively campaigned on, better signage and better cycle lanes can help.

https://www.lancashire.police.uk/campaigns/safepass/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-53338043

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1326361/Stop-cars-speeding-DIY-way-using-plant-pots-drawings-road.html

https://twitter.com/nmassey79/status/1379192841990238210

https://twitter.com/ElyCycle/status/1375390823777452032

https://twitter.com/nmassey79/status/1375442326210875399