No More Lethal Lorries - Petition

What is a lorry?

Google images brings up a HGV articulated vehicle.

Now which vehicles are the problem?

Why no inclusion of buses and coaches?

If you (any cycling organisation) want to make a difference actually deal with the problem area, using the correct language if you want to organise a change.
We use 'lorry' because it is recognised in British english as a term covering most large freight vehicles. We foreigners might prefer 'truck' but that has several meanings in British english. HGV is an alternative term but its use can get very confused with legal definitions and the EU preference for LGV - which is also ambiguous in english.
Some people get turned on by alliteration:

We also campaign for safer buses but the issues are a little different. London bus drivers already get cyclist awareness training which we helped organize a few years ago, some of them are beginning to get on-bike training too. Bus drivers generally have better visibility and buses are generally less lethal.

This is being ramped up by LCC - could others who have not signed up do so ASAP? See www.no-more-lethal-lorries.org.uk/

This needs a bump, especially in the light of yesterday

NO MORE LETHAL LORRIES CAMPAIGN

Next Wednesday LCC will be holding their biggest Day of Action ever to eliminate lethal lorries. We will be standing at 10 points across London trying to raise awareness and get all London cyclists involved in the campaign. We will be looking to get thousands more signatures for our petition which is insisting on cycle training for all London council lorry drivers to help improve safety for cyclists.

Lorries make up only 5% of London traffic, but are involved in over half of the cyclist fatalities.
On the Day of Action, LCC staff and volunteers will be located at busy cycle routes all over central London, stopping cyclists and asking them to sign the petition.

We need more cyclists to support us on this day, so if you are passionate about lorry safety then please help us by giving up a couple of hours of your day either on the way to work or on the way home to help collect signatures and make cyclists voice heard.

To volunteer fill out this form http://tiny.cc/HGVdayofaction

Done

I'm afraid I think the LCC are too timid in their campaigning and they should be pressing to get lorries banned from inner London completely between 6am and 8pm, and for all trucks that operate in London to have low cabs and low level glazing as bin wagons do.

Pussyfooting around the issue with calls for training and mirrors and sensors is ineffective against a construction industry which simply doesn't give a fuck.

Join lcc and push for this then

done

I'm afraid I think the LCC are too timid in their campaigning and they should be pressing to get lorries banned from inner London completely between 6am and 8pm, and for all trucks that operate in London to have low cabs and low level glazing as bin wagons do.

Pussyfooting around the issue with calls for training and mirrors and sensors is ineffective against a construction industry which simply doesn't give a fuck.
We try to concentrate on the areas where we can make a difference. So we are campaigning for better lorry designs with low level cabs and bigger windows. With TfL we are talking to the Freight Transport Association and the lorry importers. Working on legislation is very slow work, especially if it involves EU design rules. It took us 7 years to get better mirrors, and another two to get those mirrors fitted to older lorries.

One way to short cut this is to put economic pressure on the industry. We have forced Crossrail to only use lorries that have extra mirrors and sensors to detect cyclists, all drivers working on their sites need to have had cycle awareness training or they don't get in. With CTC we opposed the Crossrail act in parliament to make this happen.

We are campaigning for on-bike cycle awareness training for all council drivers now because it is achievable. New rules mean that all drivers must have additional training every year - the cost of doing this is already covered. We can show that on-bike sessions make the training much more cost effective, it also provides extra benefits for the drivers. It is very different from spending 7 hours in a classroom in front of a screen. When done proplerly the drivers' fears and prejudices are explored and resolved - then they get on a bike in front of a revving lorry. It's learning by doing.

We need the petition signed to get the politicians behind this simple way to change the behaviour of a whole block of professional drivers.

Thanks to all who have signed the petition already. We want to get many more names in a day of action next Wednesday. If you can help sign up here http://tiny.cc/HGVdayofaction

Signed.

Re: the overall subject, it's impractical to lobby for a complete ban at present as lorries are a key part of the logistics infrastructure of the construction and retail industries. Change on that level will take a long long time. Better to try to work with the existing structure and make things safer for all.

I find bus drivers in London to be extremely conscientious these days (and certainly 100 times safer and more considerate than the one's in Manchester) - which is a huge huge improvement over 5-6 years ago.

So, even though these things don't always happen quickly it* is* possible to see the improvement.I hope we can do the same for HGV drivers in general. Chapeau to all at LCC for making the road a safer place to be.

Please lobby for cab drivers to have to attend cycle training though - please. They may not cause as many fatalities but I find they are the most antagonistic, aggressive and unpredictable of all road users.

done :)

Talking to the Freight Transport Association and council drivers is all very well but it's not road haulage lorries that are killing cyclists, it's construction vehicles, skip wagons and the like. These are not driven by professional truck drivers but by builders, scaffolders, etc. I doubt these people give a crap about the FTA. The problem needs to be addressed at source.

There's already a complete ban for certain hours. Those hours just need to be changed. It's not impractical, just inconvenient. The GLA may not have the power to ban them but it does have the power to charge them money and make it uneconomic, and that can be just as effective as banning.

The reason you should have the complete ban option on the table is that the inevitable compromise you end up reaching will be much more in our favour than one reached when the option is some more mirrors.

One way of making sure all lorries have the required mirrors would be to push for the LEZ to be re-activated or whatever (cos Boris froze it). Lorries new enough to pass the more stringent emissions tests that were due to come in would also have the extra mirrors. Boris probably wasn't thinking about safety when he froze the limits but if he were made aware of this consequence he might change his tune.

There's no reason why the type of very glassy cab that a bin lorry has could not be adopted for construction industry vehicles. Perhaps approaching manufacturers to push for an "urban lorry" cab or tractor design might work. I imagine that a company that builds cabs that work much better and is easier to operate in cities will sell more trucks than one which doesn't so there's a financial carrot to dangle. One of the problems is that lorry designers design mainly for the inter-city road haulage market and other customers get smaller versions of those cabs.

It's often said that if car drivers went on two wheels first they would be better drivers, and Dan mentioned cabs. Of course most cabbies rode around on mopeds doing the knowledge before they got their badges, and they still drive like dicks :-)

I'm sure you've thought of this stuff already, but I hope I've suggested something helpful

Just a bump to put it back to the top.

I got 75% through filling out the volunteer form before checking the calendar and realising it's yet another day I'm out of town with work. Yawn.

Good work on those volunteering though, and if my meeting shifts I'll drop in on whoever is down at Hyde Park Corner.

This needs another bump - can't believe there aren't more on here who are willing to sign the petition/help out next Weds - especially in light of recent deaths.

NO MORE LETHAL LORRIES CAMPAIGN

Next Wednesday 30 March, LCC will be holding their biggest ever Day of Action ever to eliminate lethal lorries. We will be standing at 10 points across London trying to raise awareness and get all London cyclists involved in the campaign. We will be looking to get thousands more signatures for our petition which is insisting on cycle training for all London council lorry drivers to help improve safety for cyclists.

Lorries make up only 5% of London traffic, but are involved in over half of the cyclist fatalities.
On the Day of Action, LCC staff and volunteers will be located at busy cycle routes all over central London, stopping cyclists and asking them to sign the petition.

We need more cyclists to support us on this day, so if you are passionate about lorry safety then please help us by giving up a couple of hours of your day either on the way to work or on the way home to help collect signatures and make cyclists voice heard.

To volunteer fill out this form http://tiny.cc/HGVdayofaction

done

signed but i can't help on a wednesday

onemorefail

fail because i'm working wednesday? #confusedface

just an excuse to mock your name?

are you working all day ?

usually home before 5. if i finish early i'll check out waterloo and hyde park, see if they need a hand.

in addition to the petition's goals of training HGV drivers, any cyclist you talk to on the day is one more cyclist recently reminded of the extra dangers and visibility issues surrounding HGVs

done.

done

Don't even live in London and I will happily sign this (I have plenty of cycling friends in London who I would like to see spared a grisly lorry collision).

done.

also emailed it to all my mates that cycle.

I feel like standing on busy junctions with a sniper aimed at anyone trying to undertake to get to the front.

Bad day.