Blackburn with Darwen’s leading health expert is calling for a debate about the introduction of 20mph speed limits as a new study published today (Jan 24) shows the North West has the highest number of road traffic casualties in the UK.
Director of Public Health, Dominic Harrison, hopes the report by the North West Public Health Observatory – which reveals more than 29,000 people are injured on the region’s roads each year – will trigger local discussion about whether more 20mph zones, or even a 20mph in all residential areas, should be introduced in the borough.
The study brings together wide-ranging data from the police, the ambulance service and hospital and death records between 2006 and 2008. It shows young people are at greatest risk of becoming a road casualty and more than four out of five road collisions that result in a child casualty happen on roads with a 30mph limit.
It also shows considerable differences between local areas within the North West. Blackburn with Darwen was found to have had an average of 705 people per year injured in a road traffic collision and even though more recent figures for 2009 show this has fallen to 656, it was still deemed ‘significantly worse’ than the regional average of 469. The report showed the borough also had higher numbers of pedestrian casualties and numbers of children killed or seriously injured than some other parts of the region.
Dominic Harrison said: “This report is shocking. It shows that 140 killed or seriously injured child casualties could have been prevented between 2004 and 2008 if 20mph limits had been successfully implemented in all residential areas in the region. This is a safeguarding issue of equal importance to any other incidence of harm to a child and we have a moral duty to act on it.
“Unless we have a borough wide 20mph limit in all residential areas that is observed and enforced by the whole community, this avoidable death and injury toll will continue. I hope this report will support local decision making and planning and plan to present it to the Care Trust, Council, Children’s Trust and Local Safeguarding boards in the spring to start the 20mph debate.”
Gladys Rhodes White OBE, Strategic Director of Families, Health and Wellbeing, said: “It is recognised that deprived areas have higher numbers of road traffic casualties and also that people from BME communities are three times more likely to be injured on the roads, so the statistics in this report do not come as a surprise.
“However, it does clearly demonstrate that while there has been some excellent work to tackle this problem in Blackburn with Darwen, more still needs to be done because the burden road deaths and injuries place on victims, their families, and health and social care services is huge.”
Blackburn with Darwen Council’s casualty reduction unit revealed road collision casualties fell by more than a third (36%) in the borough between 2004 and 2009 compared with same period a decade ago – the sixth best improvement in the country. It is the result of initiatives including a number of 20mph zones, child pedestrian training in schools, young motorist schemes, seatbelt campaigns and the mosque marshalling scheme.
A 20mph zone with traffic calming measures introduced in Shadsworth in 2002 has successfully reduced the total number of road casualties by 72% and cut the number of child pedestrian casualties by 81% within the first three years. Further 20mph zones are currently being introduced at Audley Range and Laxey Road.
Casualty Reduction Manager Graham Campbell said: “The cost of putting physical measures in place to slow traffic down means it would not be practical to introduce it in all residential areas. There would need to be 20mph speed limits introduced with road signs, but this is only one aspect and there would also need to be education and enforcement to make it work.”
Road death as been described by the campaign group 20sPlenty as the ‘greatest avoidable public health epidemic’. The group’s spokesman Rod King said: “This report marks a new milestone in health professional involvement with the health and wellbeing of people when in the public spaces we call roads. It provides essential information about the way our roads play an enormous part in dictating the health of our citizens, both in direct casualties and in influencing against active travel through the fear of being a casualty.”
