Mayor's Questions - HGV action

hey just wanted to mention this. a mate of mine who works in casualty says that she's treated about a dozen cyclists who were injured in accidents with hgv's recently.

she says that almost all of the victims say that the last thing they remember is being sucked under the trucks. be careful when passing/getting passed by these things. give them plenty of room.

Hi Teddy,

Any chance you could put the action group in contact with your friend. We'd really like to gather moe info from survivors.

Jo

Quick bump for those arriving at work and going straight on the internet - I'm sure some of you do this.

You might be aware of the goings on cited earlier in the thread, but it's worth knowing about the 'exciting development' in post number 24.

I've had this nagging doubt recently that London's reverting to a shittier status quo. Bus services have deteriorated, the roads are a mess, air quality tastes like it's on the slide... all this in the last year or so.

Can't think why :/

I cant really understand why he would do this. As a cyclist himself surly he would want the roads as safe as possible for himself. Either that or he is spending the £1m on a one person cycle bridge from Islington to the GLA so he can cycle to work safely himself.

has anyone thought about contacting someone with a bit more political muscle who could put pressure on our good friend Boris. You know someone who is in tune with the public feeling .... Stephen fry for example has 841742 followers on twitter alone and probably a whole lot more who listen to his podcasts i dont know, anyone who can increase public awareness, surely people care?

Just to reiterate:

15.10.09

A specialist police unit dealing with HGV accidents is to be disbanded.

Transport for London has withdrawn the £1 million-a-year funding that pays for the Met's Commercial Vehicle Education Unit, which helps prevent cyclists being crushed by lorries.

Mayor Boris Johnson, who is chairman of TfL, was told shutting down the unit was "misguided".

The CVEU will close in March.

Jenny Jones, a Green party London Assembly member, said:* "The Mayor is risking Londoners' lives in order to save a small amount of money."*

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23756785-tfl-shuts-down-specialist-police-lorry-safety-unit.do

It's even more boggling because he personally was nearly killed on Narrow St by an HGV whose driver had decided a coat hanger was the best way to secure the rear doors of his lorry.

Total puppet, but then most high profile Tories are.

I have received this from Jenny Jones ref CEVU and the future - there's a PDF as well to read - it is attached.

Jenny Jones asked me to circulate this letter from Boris Johnson to interested cyclists, please feel free to pass on.
Hi
I have finally had a response from Boris Johnson about the Commercial Education Vehicle Unit being cut (attached). I wrote to him back in November with a set of specific questions about the functions which the CEVU carries out to address the lack of a safety culture in many dark corners of the freight industry. The reply represents a significant shift from the Mayor's initial responses which emphasised the role which Transport for London and the Freight Operators Recognition Scheme would play. This response recognises that it will in fact be the Met Police who will have to carry out most of the functions of the CEVU, but without the £1m of annual funding from TFL.
The Traffic Police within the Met are already having to make efficiency savings, along with the rest of the service. The creation of a specialist team to deal with commercial vehicles will probably require cuts to other important work which the Traffic Unit currently carry out. If this team is less than the 12 specialist police officers currently employed in the CEVU, then it will raise concerns about a loss of capacity. I will therefore be pressing the Mayor to increase funding for the Met Police Traffic Unit in order to set up a specialist team and to compensate for the TfL cut.
You can contact the London Mayor on: Mayor@london.gov.uk
E-mail addresses for Assembly Members are available at : http://www.london.gov.uk/assembly/lams_facts_cont.jsp
Jenny Jones
Green Party member of the London Assembly

1 Attachment

• Reply from Mayor to Jenny Jones CVEU.pdf

Vote a monkey you get a monkey.

Not true. Other people voted for him, but I have to live with his decisions.

So that's: Vote for a newt, but get a monkey.

I've been looking for the right place to ask this question and I figure I'll just do it here:

I assume that the HSE do not look after cyclist/HGV deaths? For instance, the HSE keep statistics on all the H&S related accidents/fatalities from last year in the construction industry. They claim of 53 deaths only 3 were members of the public. The HSE website states:

[*]Fatal accidents involving workers travelling on a public highway (a ‘road traffic accident’). Such incidents are enforced by the police and reported to the Department for Transport. Those killed whilst commuting (travelling from home to work, and vice versa) are also excluded.

Does this make sense? If these instances are not reportable under RIDDOR then what incentive is there for contractors to carry out risk assessments and plan/manage the health and safety of the public off their site. For example, if they were reportable then wouldn't someone like Mace be carrying out detailed risk assessments of their haulage journey planning and routes from the Shard? It might make them segregate the routes, or avoid peak commuter times.

My reasoning (as applied to the above example) is that if you stick a fatality onto Mace's contract record there would be the kind of financial incentive for them to avoid traffic during peak commuter periods. Or ensure that the tippers used on their projects have all the most state of the art safety measures in place.

But perhaps it would be unfair to have traffic incidents reportable to the HSE for haulage companies. I haven't thought the problem through fully. I just know that all major contractors take H&S exteremely seriously, and all other risks to the public and employees on a construction site are incredibly well managed. If we added transport/highway injuries as reportable it might encourage contractors to take measures further on their own backs.

serk, Google for 'Commercial Vehicle Education Unit' or search on here. A good part of our criticism of the Mayor's decision to cut funding for this was that it was the only police unit in the country with H&S powers. These have now transferred to the Commercial Vehicle Unit.

It's not the whole H&S caboodle just yet, but it's a start.

Thanks Oli!

@Oliver

So I wasn't far off in my assumption that things would be better if the HSE were to get involved in road deaths in LGV/HGV cases. I think that is going to be my stance until someone points out an obvious reason why they shouldn't. I mean, if you search the HSE site one of the first ones that comes up is this:

http://www.hse.gov.uk/press/2007/gnnne29807.htm

If the company isn't capable of running the correct risk assessments for the drivers within the yard, it seems pretty negligent to allow them to operate on the public highway!

I'm not seeing much on the Commercial Vehicle Unit. TfL have links to FORS - and FORS appears to be a privately run/voluntary scheme? How is it stacking up compared to the CVEU?

As an Engineer, I could make a request that contractors tendering for a project ensure all their haulage companies are a member of FORS. But would that make a difference?

This isn't really my area. I'm not in contracting and I don't do highway projects. I was a project engineer on well over £100m worth of development within London last year. If there is something useful that can be done at a consultant level I'd like to work out what it is!

You're spot on about the importance of H&S in this area. FORS doesn't do much in that regard. What's happened is that the Met traffic division have retained their H&S powers, albeit without that cancelled Mayoral funding, and moved it to the Commercial Vehicle Unit. It's not the worst outcome, although it still means a shortfall in funding.

I'm not sure what you can do as a project engineer, not my area at all, but if it becomes best practice to request such things, it is certainly worth ensuring that all lorry drivers of companies you use have had cycle training (not such an unusual thing these day, following LB Lambeth's influential initiative with its own drivers) and it certainly helps if the company have had input from the CVEU/CVU, although how exactly that works in practice, I don't know. You can contact RoadPeace or the LCC about it.