Road Safety Kings Heath & Birmingham Live In Hope

Lead petitioner : marcus parsons

Status: New > Draft > Rejected > Accepted > Collecting signatures > Awaiting submission > Submitted > Pending owner response > Closed > Withdrawn

Status: Awaiting submission

Petition

The aim of the campaign is to ensure that road safety in Kings Heath & Birmingham is significantly improved. Hope Fennell was crushed to death needlessly in November 2011 and there are many recommendations that would of prevented this death and many more in Birmingham. Therefore we are petitioning
Therefore, we are concentrating our campaign to demand:
1. Birmingham City Council and the Highways Agency to limit the access of HGVs down this very busy and well used stretch of road.
By either
2. Having a time restriction on HGV access as has been used in other cities with success.
a. It would help to keep pedestrians and cyclists safe through periods of heavy use, without restricting trade.
3. Re-designating this stretch of the A435 a 20 mph zone.
a. This would result in satellite navigation systems sending HGV drivers who are using the road as a quick route into or through Birmingham city centre, down other routes through or around the city. We don’t want to see these dangerous vehicles redirected to even smaller roads, so we want council to give very careful consideration to the knock-on effects of any change and a review of this to be undertaken
4. All Birmingham City Council contractors to have proximity sensors fitted to all vehicles as a condition of any procurement tender and insist these to be fitted as a variation to existing contracts with a time frame for these to be fitted within 6 months
5. Implement recommendations identified by the Birmingham City Council Accident Analysis (Atkins, April 2012) commissioned by the Birmingham City Council.
a. This identified numerous faults along the section of high street between the junction with Vicarage Road, and the junction with Valentine Road. And at the crossing where Hope died, there were numerous safety failings including traffic light detector faults, road surface with unsatisfactory skid resistance, insufficient space for pedestrians due to street clutter, insufficient crossing time and the crossing space itself being too narrow
6. We would ask that the council pledge to make pedestrian crossings in our community be a model of safety, placing as much priority on pedestrians as possible and set this out in a public manifesto and strategy.
7. Ask the European Union to make proximity sensors on HGVs mandatory.
a. Sets of these sensors only cost around £600 or less, when retro-fitted to existing HGVs, so should not bankrupt the companies that run the vehicles. They would alert drivers to pedestrians or cyclists entering their blind spots and would go a long way to preventing the sorts of collisions that we have already had too many of in our community.
8. All emergency services carry equipment to raise HGV’s off cyclists trapped under HGV’s
a. Hope was trapped under the HGV for over 20mins and may have been saved if equipment to raise the HGV off her had been carried by emergency services
9. To review all accident hotspots within Birmingham and have a clear and achievable strategy to implement safety measures to improve safety in these areas for Birmingham

Background information

There have only been three recommendations to improve road safety for cyclists nationally from over 48 deaths since 2009. This must change and we want councils and central government to raise cyclist safety on our roads up the political agenda.
Every indication we have had from the collision investigation points to the nature of the vehicle – a 17.5 ton HGV as being the crucial factor in her death.
The driver, high up in his cab, above his noisy engine, on his well cushioned seat, neither saw, heard or felt the collision with Hope and her bike, which she seems to have been pushing, rather than riding, across the crossing.
There are four previous deaths of pedestrians along the stretch of the A435 between the Maypole and Highgate caused by HGV and their blind spots that we are aware of, and probably many other incidents that we are not aware of.

Signature Count

682