According to a report by Shahzad Sheikh 140,000 drivers lost their licenses last year. This is a 15% increase. Why are the numbers rising? It’s from lowered speed limits, more speed cameras and more enforcement mainly although using a hand-held phone is also a problem.
Have these tougher measures actually improved road safety and reduced the number of casualties? In essence no.
In 2023 there were 29,643 killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties, little change compared to 2022 according to the latest DfT report based on police STATS19 reports.
Clearly the policies adopted on improving road safety are not working even ignoring the fact that these figures need adjusting for changes in the number of vehicles on the road and traffic volumes.
Congestion Getting Worse
TomTom, the provider of SatNav systems, has recently reported on traffic volumes and congestion. London as usual comes out badly and is getting worse. Average time to travel 10 km in London is now over 33 minutes. That makes it by far the worse of major cities in Europe. See https://www.tomtom.com/traffic-index/ranking/ for more details.
The London Mayor’s Transport Strategy to reduce congestion and improve road safety is not working as could be expected. When dogma takes priority over rational analysis and sensible policies there is no improvement.
New York recently introduced a Congestion Charge for the Manhattan area to cut traffic congestion and improve funding for public transport. Is it working? That’s debatable and surrounding areas like New Jersey are complaining. Donald Trump is trying to overturn the change.
I suggest that any improvement will be temporary as traffic will soon adjust to fill up the new road space. You cannot price people off the roads as there is too much unsatisfied demand, as has been demonstrated in London where the data has been ignored.
If a politician proposes any measure to improve road safety, they should do a cost/benefit analysis. In other words, work out whether the proposal will save more in financial terms than it costs.
The benefit of any road safety scheme can be estimated by looking at the likely reduction in casualties and what they might be worth. For example, the Department for Transport (DfT) publishes estimated costs of accidents – these are £2.2 million for a fatal casualty, £250,000 for a serious injury and £20,000 for a slight injury. One can argue as to whether these are accurate and realistic estimates. Some people argue that they are pessimistic – for example would you pay £20,000 to avoid a minor bruise or cut that did not require hospital treatment? But they do provide a good starting point for any examination of any proposed scheme. The cost of any proposed scheme can usually be estimated fairly closely and it’s not difficult to estimate the likely reduction in casualties from looking at the historic records of police reports on accidents on a stretch of road.
For example, take the wide-area 20 mph limit schemes that are springing up everywhere, particularly in London. From research published by the DfT these are known to have minimal or negligible impact on casualties. But they cost a lot of money to implement – to put up signs, maintain them and the associated road markings, and to enforce them by the police.
In reality spending money on such schemes might be much better spent on other road safety measures – such as education and road engineering to improve accident black spots. Reducing traffic speeds alone costs money in driver and passenger wasted time (bus passengers can be badly affected for example).
A recent article published by the Telegraph (see link below) shows that many London councils do not do any cost/benefit analysis on new schemes. They rely solely on the often mis-informed views of councillors. This irrational behaviour is one reason why London is now the world’s slowest city as reported by satnav company TomTom.
If people wish to reduce road casualties, they need to do a cost/benefit analysis of any proposed scheme, and compare it to the alternatives. All we tend to get at the moment is prejudiced opinions from ill-informed commentators.
It has been reported that a pedestrian was hit by a bus at or near the war memorial junction in Chislehurst on the 8th April at 10.35 pm. This would appear to be an incident that will be classified as a “minor injury”. It has prompted renewed calls for a pedestrian phase at these lights which has been used as part of a political attack on the Bromley Council Conservative administration who recently rejected a petition on this subject.
It would be wrong to jump to conclusions over the cause of this incident until the full facts are known, but it’s worth pointing out that accidents late at night to pedestrians are often the results of alcohol consumption.
But let’s look at this issue rationally rather than emotionally.
Firstly is this location a particularly accident black spot? One can review that by looking at the Crashmap web site ( https://www.crashmap.co.uk/Search ) where you can easily see all the accidents in the area in the last few years. There are hundreds, and the nearby Chislehurst High Street is clearly an even worse problem area despite the fact that it has several pedestrian crossings which unfortunately many pedestrians ignore and choose to cross elsewhere. The same issue also arises at the War Memorial junction if you review details of the incidents at or nearby.
One of the key principles when deciding whether to spend money on road safety measures is to look at the cost/benefit ratio and where the most benefit can be obtained. There are limited funds available for road safety projects so the money needs to be spent where it can be most effectively deployed.
Looking at the past accident data is much better than relying on often ill-informed opinions on where the most danger lies. The number of minor accidents is a good pointer as large numbers indicate there is high risk of more serious injuries or fatalities (KSIs). KSIs have much higher values attached to them however you care to value them, but large numbers of minor accidents can point to where road safety budgets should be spent.
So people concerned with road safety should look at the statistical data on past accidents which they can easily do and you can obtain details of police reports on accidents (STATS19 reports) by using Freedom of Information Act requests. These provide a lot of information on the causes of accidents.
We don’t need to guess at the causes of accidents or where money should best be spent. You can estimate the benefit of introducing a pedestrian crossing for example, as against the cost; and compare it with the benefit of spending the money elsewhere. You can also calculate the possible disbenefit if traffic is delayed by a new crossing, or diverted onto minor roads.
That is what sensible councils like Bromley do. The unwise ones instead react to political clamour for simplistic solutions and as a result waste a lot of money on ineffectual solutions. You can see that in London boroughs such as Lewisham and Croydon where wide area 20 mph speed limits and speed humps everywhere have been installed at enormous cost and where the result has been a worse road safety improvement record than Bromley. Money has been wasted on ineffective solutions.
Bromley used to suffer from the busybody syndrome 20 years ago before I got involved in road safety issues. People who thought they knew best when they knew little about the science and failed to study the data.
We certainly do not want that scenario back again when money was wasted on ineffective schemes (such as the speed humps on Watts Lane/Manor Park Road).
Ignoring the advice of council officers is another failing of the busybodies. Good ones have both training and experience and should not be ignored unless there are very good reasons.
In summary, road safety decisions should not be made by amateurs, or uneducated grandstanding politicians, who have not looked at the statistical data or the causes of accidents and who are ignoring the wider implications of their decisions.
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In the London Borough of Bromley a new political party called “Chislehurst Matters” has been formed to fight the council elections in May. A few local activists seem dissatisfied with the efforts of their current Conservative councillors. Specifically they have concerns about actions on road safety and particularly the lack of a pedestrian phase at the Chislehurst War Memorial junction.
Tonight (28/2/2022) the council is considering a petition signed by more than 4,000 people and submitted by a group called “Safe Crossings for Chislehurst”. Who are they? Unlike the leaders of Chislehurst Matters they seem to prefer to remain anonymous although Chris Wells was promoting a previous petition on the same subject.
You can read the latest petition here: https://cds.bromley.gov.uk/documents/s50096598/Petitions.pdf and the council’s response which I consider eminently reasonable. Councillor Huntington-Thresher has previously said this on this issue: ““Road Safety remains an ever present high priority, with this particular junction being carefully considered for a controlled crossing point over the years. The reality is that the installation of a pedestrian phase without a redesign of the junction would undoubtedly increase congestion, not just at the junction itself but also in the surrounding local roads, actually and ironically, causing an even bigger road safety issue”.
My recent comments to Chislehurst Matters were:
To Alison Stammers, et al
I welcome the formation of Chislehurst Matters to fight the forthcoming council elections as it’s always good to have more choices in whom one can vote for. But I have some concerns about some of the content of the platform you are adopting.
For example you highlight road safety and particularly the controversial issue of the War Memorial junction crossing.
You don’t seem to be aware that Bromley has an exemplary record on improving road safety and in general has been following rational policies since the Conservatives took over control of the Council many years ago. I recall what it was like before then and it was certainly greatly improved partly by not wasting money on political dogma but actually looking at the available evidence. I have been involved in road safety issues in many London boroughs, particularly Croydon and Lewisham for example, where the result of their policies has been a worse road safety record than Bromley.
This is a complex issue but I don’t think Chislehurst councillors or Council staff have been thwarting safety improvements. If anyone is to blame it is the attitude of the Common Trustees who have blocked any changes to improve that junction and the Chislehurst Society has not been helpful either. And there is also the issue of where the required funding for any scheme would come from which is subject to the whims of TfL.
That also applies to the accidents that regularly take place at the white spot roundabout in the centre of Chislehurst Commons (on Centre Common Road) where a restructuring of the roads over the Common is the sole way of fixing the problem. But regrettably there is an attitude of opposition to any changes in the minds of many Chislehurst residents.
It might help to have more active councillors on other topics but when it comes to road safety issues I fear more anger and less science is not the solution.
Please pass my comments on to your colleagues.
Roger Lawson
Summary: It is most disappointing that this small group of activists are persisting with stirring up public concerns about this issue and putting forward simplistic solutions that might make overall road safety worse. They appear to know little about road safety and how best to examine and tackle the issues. In effect they are a bunch of amateurs with a bee in their bonnet about a single issue without looking at the wider environment.
I recommend that they be ignored as I find the Council’s response both rational and reasonable.
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There has been a big push to encourage people to take up “active travel” in the last few years, i.e. to cycle or walk on the premise that this will improve their health. It is hoped that this will relieve pressure on public transport and reduce traffic congestion by getting people out of their cars. So the Mayor of London’s Transport Strategy that he adopted focussed on this well before the latest attempts to encourage active travel in response to the Covid-19 epidemic.
How successful has this strategy been and what are the unintended consequences?
The latest figures available from the Department for Transport (DfT) in their National Travel Survey for 2019 showed no change in the number of stages cycled and an actual fall in the average distance cycled from 58 to 54 miles. The number of stages walked also fell from 347 in 2018 to 332. Cycling remained very much a male dominated travel mode – they made 3 times as many cycle trips as women.
There was little change in the road casualty statistics in 2019. The number of people killed was 1,748. Despite sharp falls in the number prior to 2010, the figures plateaued in the 2010s. The DfT suggests that any changes in recent years are simply random variations (only 2% down in 2019). There has of course been some increase in traffic volumes in the last few years but the results are still very disappointing.
Although overall casualty figures fell by 5% in 2019, this data is probably an under-estimate as it is known that slight casualties are under-reported and recent pressures on police resources mean even fewer are reported with police forces not even turning out to attend many road traffic accidents.
We have been claiming for some time that the failure to bring down casualties is due to defects in road safety policies. For example a concentration on automated speed enforcement rather than spending money on road engineering and education. The encouragement of cycling may not have helped either. These are the relative figures for fatalities per billion miles travelled using different transport modes:
Motorcycling: 113.3
Walking: 34.1
Cycling: 29.4
Car use: 1.8
HGV use: 0.9
Bus use: 0.6
Van use: 0.6
A new negative trend may soon appear if E-Scooters are widely adopted as they appear to be positively dangerous. The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS) recently said this: “From evidence and experience around the world, it is now very clear that the public benefits of [e-scooters] are illusory and the disbenefits substantial, at least in a European context”. They oppose the current trials and wider legislation to support them. Very few car trips apparently transfer to e-scooter use and they also are not “active travel”.
They are also a particular danger to pedestrians when ridden on the pavement which is happening all over London at present with the police doing very little to stop it.
What have been the changes in transport modes prompted by the Covid-19 epidemic? They have been substantial, particularly in London. Underground and London bus usage has fallen greatly as more people worked from home which is why the Mayor and TfL have financial difficulties as income has fallen while the network has not been reduced. Nationwide cycling rose by as much as 300% on some days in the first couple of months (April/May) over the start of the year. The weather does of course have a big impact on cycle use which has been relatively benign in recent months and summer makes cycling more enjoyable. Cycle use rises sharply during weekends and bank holidays which suggests it is dominated by “leisure” and “exercise” use, particularly as gyms and sports venues have been closed. But the cycling numbers are now reverting to more normal levels. You can see the data for different modes during the epidemic here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport-use-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic
Car use fell very substantially during the first few weeks of the epidemic but that has also reverted to near normal levels across the country. Any big increases in traffic congestion in London are surely due to the road closures and removal of road space by cycle and bus lanes using Covid-19 as an excuse.
Comment: The fear of gridlock on the roads as people avoided public transport is not born out by the facts. They have mainly avoided travelling altogether. As people have learned to work from home, it is clear that the demand for central London offices will fall, and the number of commuters may never recover to previous levels. Why should TfL maintain a network of bus and underground services at previous levels when the passengers are much reduced? Any commercial business would cut services to match demand because to do otherwise leads to bankruptcy. That is what will happen to London’s transport services unless the Government bows to Sadiq Khan’s demands for more cash to keep it afloat. The Government should ignore such requests and force TfL to adapt to the new world rather than waste the taxes we all pay.
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I have commented before on how Transport for London (TfL) have failed to justify their “Safer Speeds” proposals which includes imposing 20 mph speed limits on many roads. We have previously pointed out how TfL have been misinterpreting police accident data to support their claims that the measures are justified.
For example, they issued a Tweet that said “speed accounts for 37% of all death and serious injuries” in road accidents in London. That figure is simply wrong. The claim was allegedly based on the STATS19 data reported by the police (a form they fill out about every accident involving injuries). That form allows for multiple factors to be recorded and after submitting a Freedom of Information Act request we learned that they counted all the accidents where factors 306, 307 and 602 were noted.
But factor 602 is described as “Driver/rider either behaved in a negligent or thoughtless manner or was in a hurry….”. Clearly the key word in that sentence is the second “or” when TfL have interpreted it to mean “and”. There is no basis for claiming that all accidents where factor 602 is attached were rated by the police as ones where a driver was in a hurry. They might have simply been careless. Only where the other factors 306 or 307 were also noted could there be any claim that speed was a factor in the accident.
We now have the complete accident data and the data makes it plain that exceeding the speed limit (factor 306) is a very minor factor in KSIs (Killed and Serious Injuries) in London. It’s actually recorded as a contributory factor in only 5.9% of such accidents in the last five years. That’s actually less than the figure of 7.1% reported by the Department for Transport for the national figures in 2018 – see table below. Clearly tougher enforcement of speed limits is therefore unlikely to have much impact on the overall numbers. That of course is particularly so in London where average traffic speed is typically well below the speed limit.
The largest contributory factor by far is “Failed to Look Properly” which accounted for 42% of KSIs in London or 35% nationally. But there are several other factors with higher ratings than “Exceeding the Speed Limit” such as “Poor Turn or Manoeuvre”, “Failed to Judge Other Persons Path…”, “Loss of Control” and “Careless, Reckless or in a Hurry”.
Even if you bundle factors 306 and 307 together only 12% of KSI incidents are included nationally so reducing speed limits is going to have only a small contribution at best to reducing such accidents. It’s reducing the other factors that is the key to substantially reducing road casualties. More driver education, improved roads and research into saccadic masking may be productive.
Note also that a lot of the reported factor 306 and 307 claims of excessive speed and speed above the speed limit might well involve illegal use of vehicles such as stolen vehicles so reducing speed limits will have negligible impact in reality.
There is simply no cost/benefit justification for the Safer Speeds proposals as pointed out in our previous article and TfL have clearly been abusing the data so as to make spurious claims.
In 2018 the Mayor of London launched the Vision Zero strategy to reduce road casualties in the capital city. But road casualty figures for 2018 show that Killed and Seriously Injured (KSIs) on London’s road actually increased by 5% to 4,065 in 2018. Vision Zero is a key part of Mayor Sadiq Khan’s Transport Strategy along with the encouragement for modal shift with the aim of getting more people walking and cycling.
However, cyclist fatalities actually rose by 20% to 12, and cyclist serious injuries rose by 14% to 770. Cycling is one of the most dangerous ways to travel so is this encouragement to cycling misconceived?
The trend in London KSIs matches the national picture where road deaths have plateaued in recent years. See chart below from the DfT report of national road casualties in 2018.
We will no doubt see renewed calls for lower speed limits and more enforcement, but the Freedom for Drivers Foundation has consistently argued that the focus on simplistic solutions to road safety problems, such as traffic speed reductions, cannot and will not work to cut the horrendous toll of road casualties. The encouragement of cycling is surely an example of an unintended consequence of a policy introduced with the best of intentions to improve the health of the population. In London enormous expenditure on Cycle Superhighways and cycle lanes of other kinds has been incurred in the last few years. This was justified on improving cycle safety but in reality the impact is not apparent. The encouragement of cycling may have actually made the road casualty statistics worse.
We argue that Vision Zero is a counter-productive road safety fantasy, and that more attention should be paid to road user education and road engineering.
Postscript: With the appointment of Andrew Gilligan as a transport advisor to our new Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who as former London Cycling Commissioner under Boris was a big contributor to the growth of cycling in the capital and what many argue is the wasted expenditure on Cycle Superhighways, will we see the same defective policies being spread across the country?
Air pollution from motor vehicles, particularly in major conurbations such as London, has been a hot topic of late. The impact may be exaggerated but it has certainly become a matter of public concern with the increase in diesel vehicles allegedly making it worse.
It has been known for many years that speed humps actually result in more air pollution. For example this writer published an article back in 2002 which said the following: “Pollution Caused by Traffic Calming. As a contribution to the local debate on the merits of speed bumps, it is worth covering a report produced by the TRL (Transport Research Lab.) last year. In the past, different studies in different countries seemed to produce very diverse results, but the latest methodology seems more likely to have produced accurate figures. TRL Report No. 482 studies the effect of a number of different traffic calming measures, including road humps, cushions, pinch points and mini-roundabouts. They also studied the impact on traffic flows and delays experienced by fire engines. To quote from the report “The results of the study clearly indicate that traffic calming measures increase the emissions of some pollutants from passenger cars. For petrol non-catalyst, petrol catalyst and diesel cars, mean emissions of CO per vehicle-km increased by 34%, 59% and 39% respectively. For all three vehicle categories the increase in mean HC emissions was close to 50%. Emissions of NOX from petrol vehicles increased only slightly, but such emissions from diesel vehicles increased by around 30%. Emissions of CO2 from each of the three vehicle categories increased by between 20% and 26%. Emissions of particulate matter from the diesel vehicles increased by 30%.”
The advocates of speed humps ignored this negative evidence in their commitment to road safety even though their impact on accidents is very marginal and may be a mirage.
As confirmation for the above a recent study from Imperial College, London also found high levels of pollution from road humps – indeed higher than from other forms of traffic calming (see the Daily Telegraph on the 11/6/2016 for a fuller report on this and some quotes from me).
For example they got 47% more particulates and 64% more NO2 from a petrol car when driven over humps, and even higher figures for diesel cars.
As I pointed out in my comments to the Daily Telegraph, accidents to school children are not particularly frequent outside schools so putting humps there is unnecessary. But the health impact on children of air pollution may be particularly severe. There are numerous reasons why the use of speed humps should be banned and this is yet another – see this page for lots more information written by the author on this topic some years ago (and the facts have not changed since): http://www.bromleytransport.org.uk/Humps.htm
