London Tackles Pedestrian Safety

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. More pedestrians are killed or seriously injured on London’s streets than any other road user group. Following a decade of progress in reducing the number of pedestrians killed or injured, casualty numbers began rising again in 2011. Sixty-nine pedestrians were killed and another 1,054 seriously injured in London in 2012 – an average of three people a day.

‘Feet First – Improving Pedestrian Safety in London’, is the London Assembly Transport Committee’s report into a worrying rise in the danger to pedestrians on the capital’s streets. Its recommendations include:

• Adopt a Vision Zero approach to eliminating road death and injury,
• Appoint a senior representative to champion walking,
• Use an assumed walking speed of 0.8 metres per second to calculate minimum crossing times and audit sites where Green Man times have changed,
• Provide monthly data on pedestrian deaths and serious injuries,
• Develop plans to improve 24 pedestrian collision hotspots by October 2014,
• Publish a timescale for implementing 20mph speed limits on suitable roads,
• Improve the safety record of large vehicles,
• Ensure road crime is included in Met crime statistics

Safe Streets for London, the Road Safety Action Plan for London,  launched in June 2013 sets a target to reduce killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties by 40 per cent, from the 2005-2009 baseline period, by 2020. In 2012, a total of 1,123 pedestrians were killed or seriously injured on London’s streets – the largest number for a single transport mode. Over a third of all killed and serious injury casualties in London are pedestrians and so reducing the number of pedestrian casualties will be key to achieving the 2020 target.