Transport: Accident Prevention

Lord Jordan Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

I thank the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for this timely debate, coming as it does during RoSPA’s family week. I declare an interest as a vice-president of RoSPA.

My interest in safety began while working on the factory floor. My passion for cycling, sadly now dormant, predated that; I was part of a great bunch of lads with the unlikely name of “The Eager Beavers”. With them I cycled every weekend come rain or shine. Our single claim to fame was to have cycled from Birmingham to Abergavenny and back in one day. Its connection to this debate is that I was stopped on the way back, just half a mile from my home, by a policeman who told me that my front light was not working and that I would have to push the bike the rest of the way.

For many years we never had an accident on what seemed at the time to be car and lorry-free roads. It is not now as it hath been of yore. Every year in Great Britain, around 100 cyclists are killed, 3,000 are seriously injured and 16,000 are slightly injured in reported road accidents. Lorries present a particular danger to cyclists. Although cyclists are less likely to be involved in a collision with an HGV than with a car, they are more likely to be killed or seriously injured in any collisions that do occur.

Between 2009 and 2013, HGVs were involved in 23% of cyclist deaths, despite comprising only 5% of the traffic. A disproportionate number of female cyclists are involved in collisions with HGVs. HGVs present a particular danger to cyclists when they are turning left: 55% of cases where cyclists were seriously injured by HGVs larger than 7.5 tonnes in London occurred when the driver turned left across the path of the cyclist.

So what is being done about this problem? There are many good developments, and many solutions are being developed, especially in London, by Transport for London, the Met and individual companies that use large vehicles. Of course, very significant effort and resources are being put into producing a safer road environment for cyclists, especially in London but also in many towns and cities across the country.

Vehicle technology is also advancing rapidly and will help to significantly reduce road crashes and casualties. HGVs are increasingly being fitted with sensors and cameras that warn the driver if a cyclist is to their nearside. This type of technology will certainly help, although in the case of cameras it still requires the driver to check the screen as well as the mirror. Sensors can often give an audible warning, but may pick up pedestrians on the pavement.

Many of the companies who enter RoSPA’s managing occupational road risk—MORR—awards are making good, innovative use of technology to reduce the risk created by large vehicles.

The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, has given us an example of the sort of technology that is being developed to minimise cyclists’ vulnerability. Another example is a new collision-avoidance system that was presented to RoSPA’s national safety committee in October by Professor David Cebon of Cambridge University. The system uses sensors to detect the presence of a cyclist on the HGV’s near side, and software that predicts the path of the speed of the cyclist and the HGV. If it predicts that the HGV is going to hit the cyclist when it turns, it automatically applies the HGV’s brakes to bring it to a stop. According to Professor Cebon, an analysis of 19 fatal accidents involving a cyclist and a left-turning HGV concluded that 15 of these would have been completely avoided, and three would have been less severe, using the new system.

The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, makes a very good point about the lack of performance requirements for HGV blind-spot technology, although perhaps it would be better to put these into a standard rather than directly into regulation, at least until the point is reached where they could become mandatory in a European directive. The regulation would then require products to meet the standard. As technology develops, it would be easier to update a standard than a regulation. This should also apply to the transducer device fitted to bicycles if, of course, that particular technology is progressed.

What more can be done? We could adopt the Vision Zero approach recommended by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, which principally means attempting to prevent crashes from happening in the first place and reducing the impact of those that do to a level low enough for those involved to survive without serious injury. Another would be to include a mandatory road safety objective in the certificate of professional competence—CPC—regime for large vehicle operators and drivers. Another would be a comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of the CPC directive, specifically of the effectiveness of both the initial qualification and periodic refresher training requirements for large vehicle drivers.

As the noble Earl suggested, making work-related road traffic accident fatalities and injuries reportable under RIDDOR is a must. Of course, with so much varied development under way, it would be very useful for the Government to review and co-ordinate all these developments to identify the best examples and then push them forward, including proposing any necessary legislative changes in the European Community.