Green Assembly Member Baroness Jenny Jones publishes a new report on road safety stating the “desperate need to update the rules of the road”.
Jenny Jones AM, picture courtesy of Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.
Jenny Jones is publishing a new report on lawless roads, six years after the previous one. The proposals arise from a seminar held in the summer, attended by around a 120 cycling campaigners, the acting head of the Met’s Transport Police and the Mayor’s Commissioner for Cycling.
The four key reforms prioritised at the seminar and discussed in the report are:
1. Presumed liability – the assumption that injured pedestrians or cyclists deserve compensation unless it can be proved otherwise, or the Dutch scheme where at least 50% of responsibility for all cycle-related collisions lies with drivers;
2. The law should be adjusted so that the punishment fits the crime with greater use of driving bans in sentencing and for longer durations;
3. Enforcement of 20mph limits by police and their widespread use as the default limit across London, unless a case for exemption has been made and approved.
4. Advanced Stop Lines to be treated the same as yellow box junctions, with the offence being decriminalised so that enforcement can be done by Transport for London (TfL) or local authorities.
Jenny Jones said: “We desperately need to update the rules of the road in order to reflect the fact that three out of four road casualties in London are now vulnerable road users, either a pedestrian, a cyclist or a motor-cyclist. I welcome the fact that the Met Police are starting to do more enforcement, but their job would be a lot easier if the courts used their powers to take bad drivers off our roads for longer and we had civilian enforcement of some low level offences. We need to slow traffic down so that mistakes are not fatal and that means making speed enforcement a priority again.”