After five cyclists lost their lives on London’s roads in just nine days – with construction-related tipper trucks involved in two of the fatal collisions – the capital’s construction sector is set to sign up to a new code of practice setting stringent safety standards on vehicles.
Transport for London is preparing to launch the new industry-backed code for construction logistics at an event on 9 December, following six months of preparation by an industry working group.
The code will extend the safety culture that already exists on sites onto London’s roads, with signatories embedding best practice on vehicle and logistics safety in contracts and subcontracts.
It draws on 11 different existing standards already operated by organisations such as Crossrail and the Mineral Products Association, taking the toughest elements of each rather than average approach. Twenty clients and contractors have already pledged to sign up to the code.
Ian Wainwright, road freight programme manager at TfL, told CM: “We’ve tried to take the best from each of the existing codes, to create a clear lead in construction logistics. Transport for London’s role has just been to put everyone in the room, but the industry have taken this forward and led on this.”
“The Code of Practice clearly states that any vehicle procured for a project has to be up to the job – that’s what you expect if you order steelwork and it has to be the same for vehicles too.”
Work on the code got underway last May, following a cross-industry forum on construction vehicle safety convened by TfL (see our story here). The forum discussed TfL’s research into worrying figures on cycle accidents: in 2010 there were 10 deaths, with four involving HGVs, while in 2011 there were 16 deaths with 12 involving HGVs.
Last year, there was a slight dip, with 14 cyclist deaths, of which five were HGV-related, and so far this year there have been 13 deaths, with eight involving HGVs.
“We had a really positive reaction from the big firms in the construction sector, they know they don’t want to be associated with poor safety standards, so they’ve taken ownership of work-related road risk,” said Wainwright.
At the same time, TfL and the Department for Transport have launched a new inspection regime targeting vehicles involved in illegal tipping and other infringements. The two organisations are now funding a new Vehicle Task Force, launched at the beginning of October, to target enforcement efforts at vehicles and contractors breaching laws on weight limits and driver hours as well as vehicle safety.
Wainwright was unable to supply figures on enforcement action so far, but said that prohibition notices taking vehicles off the road had been served in the majority of cases where vehicles had been stopped.
Meanwhile, the Code of Practice will be self-policing, rather than enforced by a third party monitor. “In the majority of cases, self-policing works well. The signatories will embed it throughout their tendering and procurement processes. If the indsutry is doing its work and the resources are available to deal with the people not complying with the rules, there will be action at two ends of the spectrum,” said Wainwright.
In a third tactic, in September London mayor Boris Johnson announced a consultation on a proposed Safer Lorry Charge, modelled on the Low Emission Zone charge, which would mean any vehicle driving in London without basic safety equipment is fined £200 a day.
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We should follow the continental model, where any driver hitting a cyclist is automatically considered guilty of dangerous driving and faces hefty jail time. If drivers knew they would go to prison, cyclists would stop being killed and injured on our roads. Stop blaming cyclists for the apalling standard of lorry driving in this country (how many times this week were you tail-gated by an HGV?).
It’s a shame to see the reaction to cyclist deaths. Blame blame and more blame. It is very rare that any accident is down to one single reason. The fact is that a combination of driver and cyclist education, better road infrastructure and better design of vehicles will all make a difference but no one single factor will stop these tragic accidents. Instead of blame and finger pointing perhaps each group in the debate should fix the things they can first rather than spending so much energy on what others aren’t doing.
I’m sorry Mark Whelan but you like so many others don’t get it at all. This is nothing to do with the criminal issue of dangerous driving, it is a move to align civil law relating to road crashes with the same liabilities that are incumbent in the duty of care for any employer or worker using equipment which presents a hazard to others (and themselves). The concept is analagous with using a chainsaw, or a gun, and a third party gets hurt or killed – that third party might be a prime candidate for a Darwin Award (for improving the gene pool) BUT the person with the chainsaw or the gun still has a civil liability for using a dangerous item where it can harm others.
As for some of the ‘solutions’ it is very clear that incident reports to the standards set by HSE and RAIB are needed for road crashes, impartial record of facts, causal factors, and recommendations to remove the hazards, or manage the risks more effectively. These reports should be published – unlike the Police investigations, which are not generally made widely available, and also have the bias of often being required to establish guilt and appropriate charges for a motoring offence.
Clearly some of the cycle superhighways are a total disaster if subjected to a rigorous analysis of the hazards present, and the means (or lack of means) to manage the risk. A prime example is the Bow Roundabout where 3 cyclists have died. Aside from the bus services, 100% of the motor traffic circulating on the roundabout presents a serious hazard to 100% of the cycle traffic using the strip of blue paint at the 4 points where motor traffic drives through the path taken by cyclists to get on or off the A12. The only management of the risk is through the hope that both drivers and cyclists fully comply with the traffic signs and signals. These are, in the second version even more dangerous than the original design, and TfL has had to produce an animated instruction video to explain how to use the system – basically a total failure as a readily understood piece of road signage.
Fortunately around 60-70% of the cyclists travelling on the East-West axis are far more sensible than TfL’s designers, and they ride over the flyover – where the risk of a vehicle driving across their path is practically 0%. TfL’s own traffic counts knew this – as they admitted in the Dorling Coroner’s Inquest, and I suspect would equally confirm that around 80% of the motor traffic heads to & from the A12 via the roundabout – so much that one of the two Westbound lanes on the flyover is closed, and for the 2012 Olympics one of the Eastbound lanes was also closed. Just check out the aerial and map views from Bing and Google Maps, and you’ll see a deserted flyover whilst every approach to the roundabout is packed with queuing vehicles.
The challenging question is with such a safe option available who, or what drove the decision to use the roundabout instead?
What has now happened as well is that the road layout on the approach has been made more dangerous for cyclists riding to go over the flyover by the reduction from 3 to 2 lanes driven by the construction of a segregated cycle route, with its design so rushed that there was no drainage of the sections between the kerbs – and some parts flood to up to 15 cm when it rains.
A further detail is that the vehicles in use have such dire direct vision that a whole forest of mirrors and other devices are added to compensate for this.
Recent work concludes that these distractions can actually contribute to the risk, as it can take 5 seconds for a driver to scan through every mirror on current systems, and many responsible professionals are expressing concern that this affects their primary ability to drive the vehicle forwards.
Ironically there are vehicles which do offer excellent direct vision, and they are being used – mainly for refuse collection. With these trucks anyone standing outside can look in directly and see the driver – full torso – and clock in with full eye contact – a near certain way to avoid any other sort of contact.
So why are refuse trucks so cyclist-safe. Well its nothing to do with cyclist safety at all – too many of the drivers and crews were slipping and falling off the steps climbing up into the high cabs, and so the walk-in cab has become the standard, by dint of delivering the employer’s duty of care to eliminate that hazard.
Interestingly, when talking to someone with a pretty good grasp of tipper use, I asked what were major causes of driver injuries, and guess what – falling off the steps when climbing up into the cab is a major item.
Walk-in cabs are used for tipper trucks – and several are in use – especially useful when a crew is also travelling with the truck. So why are we still using such dinosaur vehicles, which through their design present such a major hazard with such weak systems (secondary vision through mirrors etc) for risk management?
One of the fundamental issues is the fact that in the push to increase the miles of cycle lane no one has properly considered how they are all connected. Numerous cycle lanes just stop short on roads and then cyclists are forced to merge with the main carriage way. Equally the penalties for cyclists should be increased, not wearing safety gear, no lights, ear phones in, poor positioning at junctions, jumping red lights, I see this being done by cyclists all the time in the city. By no means are drivers blameless but lets not pretend that cyclists are either. Education and penalties need to be increased on both the driver and cyclist side of this argument.
The best way to eliminate these tragedies is to separate cyclists and vehicular traffic. This is an unrealistic proposition so perhaps it is time cyclists and drivers were better educated. a cyclist can take to the roads without any formal training at present and perhaps drivers of all vehicle classes should be taught how to drive rather than how to pass the test.