The implication of 500 deaths due to road humps has been used to justify a moratorium on traffic calming measures in several Tory controlled London boroughs. Jenny will use her speech today to the Pan London Road Safety Forum to point out that Mr Reinton’s ‘loose talk’ is costing lives by getting in the way of much needed road safety work. Jenny will also commend a new report that shows conclusively that 20mph zones work.
“The ridiculous and unsubstantiated claim that traffic calming causes 500 deaths a year in London, has become a matter of life and death for local people who are being denied protection from the road danger outside their front door,” said Jenny Jones.
Jenny has already written to Mr Reinton asking him to clarify his past statements and to disassociate himself from any claim of a direct connection between road humps and 500 lives being lost in London. Her letter and the accompanying briefing on the issue have been widely circulated amongst transport professionals. Mr Reinton is now backtracking and carefully qualifying his remarks. ,Mr Reinton’s defence appears to be that whilst he might have implied that 500 people die because of traffic calming, he has never directly made this claim. His response to Jenny failed to answer several key questions about the research upon which his claims are based.
Jenny has now written a further letter to Mr Reinton, giving him a chance to distance himself from the claim that traffic calming costs 500 lives. She also wants him to make clear what contacts he has had with local Conservative politicians on this issue, during recent months.
Today’s conference also features a report by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) on 20mph zones which shows that they reduce by 57% the number of people who die or are seriously injured. They also reduce the total number of injured people by over 40%.
“I’m no fan of road humps, but we do need to reduce speeds in London. This new report shows that 20mph zones save a lot of lives and if road humps is all we’ve got, then that is better than doing nothing. My ideal would be to remove all the traffic calming measures and have a comprehensive system of enforcement via cameras, or speed limiters. That requires government action, but they are too scared of the motoring lobby to get on with it,” declared Jenny.