LBTH not acting to make lorries safer

Submitted by owen on 18 January 2013

The London Cycling Campaign has released a progress report on its Safer Lorries, Safer Cycling campaign and it's not good reading for those cycling in Tower Hamlets. Our council has been given the lowest possible mark for their inaction on committing to use the safest lorries and best-trained drivers.

The LCC's summary report is below together with links to the campaign pages and actions. Write to LBTH today to let them know that you think they should be leading on improving lorry safety on our borough's roads.

LCC Safer Lorries, Safer Cycling: Only two councils in London have committed to using the safest lorries and best-trained drivers, even though half of cyclist deaths in the capital involve lorries.

See the rating for all councils on our borough map

The shocking fact is that - while Islington and Waltham Forest councils have committed to the highest standards of lorry safety - a total of 10 councils have done almost nothing to protect cyclists from lorry danger:

Barking & Dagenham, Barnet, Bexley, Croydon, Greenwich, Kingston upon Thames, Merton, Richmond upon Thames, Tower Hamlets and Wandsworth.

We applaud Waltham Forest and Islington councils for committing to our Safer Lorries pledge, and hope your pressure can persuade many more councils to take our pledge too.

LCC chief executive Ashok Sinha said, "Our councils have a duty to only use the safest lorries and best-trained drivers.

"The inaction of the 10 worst councils stands in sharp contrast to the great work on lorry safety being done by the best councils and other major lorry transport users such as Transport for London."

  • LCC has been in contact with all 33 councils in recent months, lobbying them to raise their standards of lorry safety.
  • 2000 LCC supporters have already used our online letter-writing tool to write to their council leader calling on them to take our Safer Lorries pledge.
  • 200 supporters have shared our letter-writing campaign with friends or on social media.

Yet despite this, 10 London boroughs are putting cyclist lives at risk daily by using inadequately equipped lorries and under-trained drivers.

Another 20 councils, despite taking some steps towards improving lorry safety, have failed to match the standards demanded by our Safer Lorries pledge.

Tags:
  • campaigns
  • LBTH
  • LCC
  • safer lorries

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