Category Archives: Road Safety

Scrutiny Committee of 20mph in Croydon

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Last night Croydon Council held a Scrutiny Committee to review the councils decision to go ahead with a wide area, signed only, 20mph scheme in North Croydon. It had been requested by 14 Conservative councillors who were concerned about the cost. You can see a video recording of the event here: http://www.croydon.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/215561.

I spoke to support the “call in” and in opposition to the proposal. To save you wading through the whole video, here is what I said:

“Objections to a Wide Area 20 Mph Scheme for North Croydon – Scutiny Committee Speech

I understand the call-in has taken place because of concerns about the cost of the proposed 20 mph wide area scheme in North Croydon. At a cost of £300,000 it is certainly likely to be a waste of money.

The main arguments for 20 mph schemes have always relied on the benefits to road safety. In other words that accidents and injuries will be reduced. But this is a mirage and is not borne out by the evidence available to date. Claims for such benefits are wrong and that is why the Department of Transport has commissioned more research into this topic. The latest part of London to introduce a wide area 20 mph scheme was the City of London and the initial evidence there is that injury accidents rose afterwards.

The other claims such as “improving liveability” are basically just hot air with no substance in reality. Introducing a 20 mph speed limit does not encourage more people to walk or cycle – there is simply no evidence for this.

So in reality nothing much will change but you want to spend £300,000 of taxpayers money on just one part of Croydon to prove how pointless it will be. If you have £300,000 to spend on road safety it would be much better spent on other road safety initiatives, or point solutions.

It is most regrettable that these proposals have been put forward by those ignorant of the facts, and supported by a rigged public consultation exercise.

That is all I wish to say, but I hope Councillors will see sense on this matter and not pour £300,000s of taxpayers money down the drain.“

Neither I nor local resident Peter Morgan who also spoke were given the opportunity to challenge many of the erroneous comments and “facts” presented by the supporters of this proposal, and none of members of the Scrutiny Committee apart from Conservative Councillors on the Committee (who spoke well incidentally in a reasoned and measured way, unlike some of their Labour opponents) took up any of the points I made or asked for more information. They prefer their own blinkered view of the wonders of such schemes rather than the facts – rather like adherents to a religion who will believe anything even though the facts undermine their beliefs.

One point not brought out though was that only residents within North Croydon were consulted (any responses from outside the area were ignored, so the views of those who drive through the area on the roads were sidelined).

As expected the motion to “call in” the proposal was rejected so the scheme will go ahead in North Croydon. Whether they will be able to push it through for other parts of Croydon, particularly if they see the results in the North Croydon first, remains to be seen.

Roger Lawson

The Latest Accident on Chislehurst Commons

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Last week saw yet another accident at the white spot roundabout in the centre of Chislehurst Commons (on Centre Common Road) – see the aftermath in the photo.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

This junction has been the scene of numerous accidents over the years, some involving serious injury. Typically vehicles approach from two right angle directions at the same time and one does not give way to the other – indeed it seems likely they do not see the other vehicle or recognise it is a junction.

Several attempts have been made by Bromley Council to rearrange the approach roads, and signage, but nothing has worked. The only real solution is surely to remove the junction by rearranging the roads over the Commons. This indeed is part of a proposal from the Council which is under discussion with the Commons Trustees whose permission is required for any changes but they seem reluctant to support it even though they would gain more “green” space.

The latest accident even involved a Transport for London (TfL) vehicle as can be seen in the photograph which might help to get their support for finance to tackle this issue.

Roger Lawson

HGVs and Cycle Safety

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Transport for London (TfL) are consulting on a proposed new regulation to require lorries to have additional side windows. This is what it says: “At present, lorries are currently only required to have a window on the upper section of passenger-side door.  This makes it difficult for drivers to have a direct view of pedestrians and cyclists who are near to the front left hand side of their lorry.  

We propose that the fitting of vision panels in passenger-side doors, wherever they can be fitted, should become the mandatory standard for lorries operating in London. Fitting an additional clear window panel to the lower section of the passenger-side door gives drivers a better, direct view of adjacent cyclists and pedestrians.”

The consultation also says: “Lorries are disproportionately involved in fatal collisions with pedestrians and cyclists.  Between 2010 and 2014, lorries were almost 10 times more likely to be involved in a fatal collision than cars; Seven of the nine cyclist fatalities in London in 2015 have involved lorries; 79 per cent of fatal collisions with cyclists in the past three years have involved lorries designed to be driven off-road”.

Clearly there is a problem here that should be tackled. But it is surely wrong to propose regulations for vehicles in London that differ from the rest of the country. This should be done by national regulation, not local regulation as vehicles can obviously travel long distances and if all cities introduced different regulations it would cause enormous confusion and lead to poor compliance. However meritorious the proposal, the strident demands of cyclists in London should not dictate how this measure is implemented.

As usual with consultations from TfL of late, there is no information provided on the likely cost of these proposals (i.e. the burden on lorry operators), or a simple cost/benefit analysis.

The full consultation is here if you wish to respond yourself: https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/roads/safer-lorries

Roger Lawson

Accident Statistics – An Inconvenient Truth

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A very good analysis of the road traffic accident data in London is present on this web page: http://www.londonbusroutes.net/miscellaneous/Accident_trends.htm. It has only recently been brought to my attention but it is definitely worth reading if you care about road traffic casualties.

It tackles the question of whether traffic calming, and in particular 20 mph speed limits, have the benefits claimed or are cost effective. One table in the report which I reproduce below is based on an analysis of the accident reductions in different boroughs with differing levels of traffic calming (it gives all the underlying data based on TfL figures if you want to check out your own London borough):

Level of traffic calming Reduction for
Deaths KSIs All
Low 42.21% 62.32% 38.71%
Moderate 53.54% 62.01% 37.11%
High 43.97% 57.07% 33.49%

 

As the report says, the correlation is the reverse of that normally claimed. It notes they are statistically significant although correlation does not necessarily imply causation.

The author of the report apparently has a keen interest in buses (most of his web site is about bus routes in the capital), and also says that most of his travel is by rail. So this is not the normal profile of a person who opposes traffic calming – indeed he seems most concerned about the delays to buses from wide area 20 mph schemes. But it is a very intelligent analysis of some of the issues and well worth reading.

Roger Lawson

Are Cyclists Racing on London’s Streets?

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Are cyclists racing against each other on London’s streets? This was a question raised in a letter to the Daily Telegraph this morning (29/12/2015) by Gareth Hayton following previous letters about speeding cyclists putting pedestrians at risk. His answer was yes because he said if you go to the internet and search for “Strava segment Embankment” it shows you that cyclists are recording their times on the stretch of road along the Embankment from the City to the West End (part of the http://www.strava.com web site).

The “winner” in the Men’s category at the time of writing is Tom Moses with a time of 3 minutes and 9 seconds which it gives as an average speed of 58.7 kph (i.e. 31.7 miles per hour). Apart from the fact that there are several traffic lights and pedestrian crossings on that stretch of road, clearly Mr Moses is exceeding the 30 mph speed limit along that road.

These timings can be recorded automatically by mobile phone apps or GPS products and there are large numbers of recordings being submitted – for example there are 247,000 records on the Westminster to Millbank segment of the same road.

As the writer to the Telegraph said “Many cyclists are racing, not just on roads, but on paths and tracks throughout the country every day, with complete disregard to others“. This activity is of course illegal. Cycle races of any kind have to be authorised by the police, and as pointed out above, speed limits are obviously being broken. Note also that “cycling furiously” is a criminal offence under the 1847 Town Police Clauses Act or under the  Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and there have been past cases prosecuted under those laws.

So if you wonder why cyclists are often the source of accidents to both themselves and others, now you know. They may be competing to get into the record books!

Roger Lawson

Croydon Still Raking It In From Video Cameras

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Despite the Deregulation Act 2015 severely restricting the use of mobile video cameras to enforce parking restrictions, they are still being used to penalise moving traffic offences. Croydon Council has been making lots of money from their use in a spy car to police a width restriction in Waddon Way. It issued 765 Penalty Charge Notices (PCN) between June and September 2015 for “failing to give way” (offence code 37J) at that location.

Waddon Way Croydon Edited

Waddon Way is a short cut used by a lot of traffic and an artificial width restriction with “one way working” was introduced by the Council. As in many other locations where such measures have been installed, this resulted in numerous accidents and confrontations – indeed some councils have subsequently removed them. But Croydon Council, now controlled by the Labour Party, would prefer to make money from it instead.

We have opposed the use of these traffic calming arrangements and using mobile camera cars to enforce them is exceedingly dubious. Unless there is an actual accident, it is debateable that an offence has been committed in many cases. But the usual principle of camera operators is to issue a PCN regardless and force the recipient to contest it, i.e. you are assumed to be guilty until you prove yourself to be innocent, which is an inversion of real justice. And surely using cameras to police moving traffic offences should also be banned.

Roger Lawson

Learning From Mistakes

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On the 21st October, columnist and author John Kay wrote in the Financial Times about the aviation industry’s “just culture”. He said “This starts with the recognition that mistakes happen and that organisations advance by learning from them. Its core principle is that individuals should acknowledge, and will not be penalised for, honest (but not reckless) mistakes consistent with their skill and experience”.

We have argued for many years that the same principles should be applied to road accidents with an independent investigation bureau. At present, anyone involved in an accident is advised to simply keep shtum for fear they will be prosecuted for an innocent error or temporary lapse. As Professor Kay said “If we ask ‘who is to blame’, rather than ‘what went wrong’, we encourage concealment and evasion of responsibility”.

Professor Kay is a very well respected economist and financial writer and was commissioned by the Government a couple of years ago to advise on stock market reform. His latest book “Other People’s Money” is a great analysis of the country’s recent economic problems.

And what was he referring to in the article on the 21st October. Why the responsibilities of directors in companies and the Volkswagen emissions scandal of course. But his words are surely worth heeding in other areas.

Roger Lawson

Prolific Speed Cameras

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A recent media report states that a speed camera in the Limehouse Link tunnel in East London issues the most speeding tickets in the country – on average about 50 per day. That’s 17,620 tickets in 2014-15.

There is one camera in the tunnel westbound, although it is moved around between three different locations within the tunnel (this is not an average speed camera system along the tunnel but a conventional gatso type). Often the active camera is near the westbound entrance, where the road slopes down into the tunnel and hence vehicles have a tendency to speed up and where they are just coming out of a 40 mph limit area. With a speed limit of 30 mph, the cameras being both invisible and poorly signed, you can see why they are so productive.

This writer looked at the accidents in the tunnel soon after it was built and when speed cameras were first installed. This is what I said back in 2003: “Why was this done? At first glance on the reasonable grounds that there have been a number of serious accidents on this stretch of road, including two fatalities, although there is no evidence that they were speed related (your editor has studied the police STATS19 reports on the accidents).

In fact there is a major design defect in this tunnel. It has a “pavement” at each side with a kerb that is several inches high, unlike most tunnels. Many of the accidents appear to be caused because people hit the kerb and are deflected into other traffic, or in the case of motorcyclists who seem to experience particular difficulties, are ejected from their bikes into the path of other traffic. The problem is that because of the poor lighting in the tunnel, and the fact that the kerb and pavement are a uniform monochrome grey that matches the surface of the road, drivers simply cannot see them. They therefore tend to follow the more brightly lit sides of the tunnel and run into the kerbs.

Comment: A few pounds worth of paint to highlight the kerb would have solved almost all the accident problems but instead we have the dogmatic approach of installing expensive speed cameras, and fining motorists, for no good reason.”

Needless to point out that my representations on this subject to the head of road safety at TfL fell on deaf ears.

Roger Lawson

Lambeth 20 Mph Scheme

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Lambeth Council are pushing ahead with a borough wide 20 mph speed limit. See http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/parking-transport-and-streets/streets-and-roads/lambeth-goes-20mph-guide#how-you-can-get-involved for the details.

Anyone who has any views on this should send them to Barbara Poulter at the Council (email address: bpoulter@lambeth.gov.uk ) . Here’s some comments this writer has already sent her (and the initial results from the 20mph speed limit in the City of London covered in another recent blog post show what a waste of money such schemes are and can actually increase accidents not reduce them):

Please note that we are not opposed to 20 mph speed limits in all locations – for example where the natural speed of traffic is near that speed. In many residential streets that is the case. However we are opposed to blanket wide area 20-mph limits because they are not a cost effective road safety measure, are not likely to be complied with and needlessly slow traffic.

  1. Let me first refer to your published document entitled “Lambeth Goes 20mph -Guide” which unfortunately contains a lot of inaccuracies.

For example, it states that “driving slower on residential roads has been proven to reduce traffic accidents,……”. Unfortunately there is no such evidence. Perhaps you could care to produce the evidence on that which is of course not supplied in the document concerned. Furthermore you say that “By reducing speeds to 20mph, it will reduce the number of casualties in the borough, improve pedestrian safety, encourage more confidence among cyclists and cut the number of incidents around schools”, but again there is no evidence for those claims.

  1. The facts are these:

a – In general the benefits of 20 mph signed area wide area schemes are grossly exaggerated. The average reduction in the speed of traffic is typically about 1 mph (assuming that there is no bias in the collection of data or other influences that might affect traffic speeds which is a dubious assumption).

Such a speed reduction is not likely to have a significant or measurable impact on road traffic accidents and not have any impact on the general environment of the roads concerned. Neither is it likely to encourage cycling or walking or discourage driving so the general health benefits will be nil – indeed there is no good evidence yet available for any such positive benefits (cities such as Bristol have claimed such benefits but their evidence is statistically dubious in the extreme).

b – The suggestion that a reduction in traffic speed translates into a significant reduction in collisions is not borne out by the real world evidence but is based on a biased analysis of traffic speeds on different types of roads. There has been no proper “controlled” trial of the use of signed only speed limits. The results in Portsmouth (which are mentioned in your document who claim an 8% reduction in collisions) do not provide firm evidence that there is any real benefit. Indeed KSIs in Portsmouth actually rose. I wrote this article on the bias inherent in the claims by Portsmouth that gives more information: http://www.freedomfordrivers.org/Portsmouth_20Mph_Zones.pdf

You also refer to data from Nottingham which only covers one year and any road safety engineer will tell you that one year is too short a time to be significant, particularly as there tends to be a short-lived reduction in accidents if the road environment is changed. And as you are no doubt well aware, it is more normal to only consider 3 year before and after periods as showing any significant change.

c – There is no good evidence that 20 mph sign only schemes provide any real, statistically significant, and below trend accident reduction. It is also worth pointing out that the Department of Transport (DfT) have recently commissioned a three year study into the effectiveness of 20 mph schemes as they suggest that current evidence is “inconclusive”. It would be rash of Lambeth Council to spend large amounts of money on any 20 Mph, signed only, schemes before more evidence is available on their financial benefit and effectiveness.

  1. There is no cost/benefit justification provided for the large expenditure of £700,000 on these proposals, money that would be better spent on other road safety measures. The key question is whether the benefits of that expenditure outweigh the costs, i.e. that it is a superior cost/benefit ratio to spending that money on other things.
  2. More evidence. Historically there was a 20-mph speed limit across the whole of the UK before 1930 when accident figures were much higher. Accidents fell after it was removed.
  3. In general the evidence put forward by those who support 20 mph wide area speed limits as a road safety measure is dubious and I would welcome the opportunity to contradict any that you receive. They often rely on selection of the data while ignoring other factors that might affect the results. In practice, their understanding of statistical evidence and the scientific method is weak in the extreme.
  4. So the key question, is whether spending £700,000 on such a scheme is worthwhile, or whether it would not be better to spend it on other road safety measures! Regrettably a proposal to reduce traffic speeds looks both simple and attractive which is why politically it can appear to be sensible. But road safety is a much more complex matter that is not amenable to simplistic solutions. Smaller, focused road safety schemes would be likely to create much more benefit than putting up 20 mph signs everywhere (which will of course be ignored by many road users who will consider it an inappropriate speed for many roads in Lambeth). Imposing a speed limit that is lower than necessary will slow traffic of all kinds, and will not be adhered to unless there is massive expenditure on enforcement (which of course has to be taken into account in the cost/benefit calculations as has the cost of increased travel times).

Finally, let me say that these proposals are being put forward by those who have little understanding of road safety or how to reduce accidents. In reality it is “gesture politics” of the worst kind. It it likely to result in fewer reductions in road casualties, and hence possibly more deaths, by wasting money that would be better spent on other road safety measures.

Roger Lawson

City of London 20 Mph Scheme – First Results

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The City of London has produced the first report on the wide area 20 mph scheme that was introduced in July 2014. It covers the whole City other than the A3211 (Lower/Upper Thames Street), but that has been slowed to a crawl anyway by the new Cycle Superhighway and associated road works.

Average speed has been reduced by 1.5mph which is higher than most such schemes (1 mph is more normal). But whether this was a result of the speed limit or more congestion generally is unclear. TfL have been complaining about more congestion from larger number of private hire vehicles in London and the Cycle Superhighway works and redevelopment of Aldgate have had wider impacts on congestion in the City also.

Provisional casualty data up to June 2015 suggest that there has been a continued increase in the number of slight injuries to people walking and cycling, according to the report. Increases in such accidents were one justification for the imposition of this scheme. The report argues that without the scheme, accidents might have increased even more, but that is a somewhat dubious statement is it not?

More data on accidents is not yet available (3 years before/after is the best measure of course although interpreting the data because of other changes in the City may not be easy).

The police have been quite vigorously enforcing the 20 mph limit and reported 370 traffic offences in the last 12 months which has resulted in 180 fixed penalty notices and 99 court summons.

The overall cost of this scheme was originally estimated at up to £150,000, and surely it has been a complete waste of money based on the evidence to date.