Boris Johnson: mayor under pressure to halt rise in pedestrian deaths in London

 
1 April 2014

Boris Johnson came under pressure today to put pedestrians, rather than vehicles, at the heart of his transport policy for London.

The Mayor was warned that a recent rise in the number of people killed or seriously injured - known as KSIs - could continue unless he sped up reforms.

A report by the London Assembly’s transport committee revealed that more pedestrians end up dead or as badly hurt than any other road user group.

Almost 70 pedestrians were killed and another 1,054 seriously injured - an average of three people a day - in 2012, the last year for which figures are available.

Val Shawcross, chair of the committee, said: “It’s time to redress the balance and place equal safety emphasis on pedestrians. It is not right that pedestrian deaths and injuries are treated as acceptable – they’re not and urgent steps are needed to stop the rise in its tracks. If an average of three people per day were killed or seriously injured on the buses, there would be an uproar.”

The hard-hitting report, Feet First, has called on the Mayor and Transport for London to:

  • appoint a pedestrian champion who could sit on the TfL board
  • improve the safety record of large vehicles and beef up the safety requirements of bus contracts
  • publish a timescale for implementing 20mph speed limits
  • draw up plans to improve 24 pedestrian collision “hotspots” by October this year
  • review sites where green man crossing times have been changed
  • ensure road crime is included in Met crime statistics.

Transport for London claimed the latest KSI figures - yet to be published - show they are in fact falling again after going up between 2011 and 2012.

The body said it was aware of many of the issues raised by the Assembly and was already working on improving the worst junctions.

Mr Johnson has pledged to reduce the number of KSIs by 40 per cent by 2020.

Leon Daniels, TfL’s director of surface transport, said: “We’re absolutely certain that we’re on track but we can’t be complacent. Of course one person killed or seriously injured is one too many so we’re working hard with lots of innovations to reduce the number of vulnerable road users killed or seriously injured on our roads.”

Over six million journeys are made on foot in London every day and millions of people take to the streets as part of longer journeys made by bus or Tube.

Figures show that 56 per cent of pedestrians killed were struck by a car, 17 per cent by a bus or a coach and 14 per cent by an HGV.

Of the total number of KSIs between 2010 and 2012, 1649 were more than 50 metres away from a crossing, 620 took place at the pedestrian phase of traffic lights, 349 at zebra crossings, 322 at pelican crossings and 41 on the central reservation.

*This is a joint project by the Evening Standard and London Live.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT