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Road Safety - Londoners get the hump
May 14, 2004 12:00 AM
By Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP in Local newspapers
By Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP in Local newspapers
Dear Sir, Debate has been raging about road safety, with people across London getting the hump. If all London's motorists could be relied upon to travel at appropriate speeds then I would happily join the calls for the road humps to be ripped up. However, there is a stubborn minority of reckless drivers.
I'm keen for us to explore alternatives, with inflatable humps and other methods of traffic calming. But with over 9,000 people - many of them children and pensioners - killed or injured on London roads every year we can't afford to wait for the 'perfect' life-saving solution.
That's why I'm urging all London Councils to sign up to the European Road Safety Charter, to help cut the horrendous tally of 40,000 people killed on Europe's roads annually.
I want to see more improvements in car design to protect not just the passengers, but also pedestrians and cyclists. This means softer car fronts, and the EU is making progress in this regard, despite manufacturer lobbying that it could spoil the design of their cars. But one piece of legislation that can't come too soon is a ban on bull bars, an outrageously vicious addition especially in urban London.
We should stop referring to deaths on our roads as traffic 'accidents'. If someone kills a person while travelling too fast it is a 'collision', not an accident. Our key priority must be saving lives, and the simple truth is that humps do work.
Yours sincerely, Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP
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