London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

The London School of Hygiene, along with 25 other national organisations has joined a new initiative which will campaign for more Government action to tackle speeding motorists.

The Safer Streets Coalition will put forward the views of people who are often ignored in national media coverage about transport issues, such as older people, disabled people, children, pedestrians and cyclists. The Coalition believes these groups suffer disproportionately from speeding motorists who reduce their freedom to walk and cycle. Its manifesto includes calls for lower speed limits, tougher enforcement and more traffic-calming in towns and villages.

Speeding traffic blights many town and city centres as well as rural villages. Over 3,400 people are killed on our roads every year, while 1,100 die in crashes in which speed is the major contributory factor.

The Safer Streets Coalition is calling for a review of speed limits across the country, the introduction of speed limits appropriate for each road, better speed limit enforcement and the accurate collection of statistics to accurately reflect the true level of death and injury on our roads. It is also pushing for recognition of the fact of death or injury in charges brought against drivers who cause road deaths or injuries, increased fuding for well-designed traffic calming in town and country and government initiatives to change public attitudes to dangerous driving.

The other members of the Safer Streets Coalition are Age Concern, Children's Play Council, Civic Trust, Campaign for the Protection for Rural England, Child Accident Prevention Trust, CTC (national cyclists' organisation), Friends of the Earth, Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, Help the Aged, Institution of Civil Engineers, JMU Access Partnership and the Joint Committee on Mobility of Blind and Partially Sighted People, Living Streets, London Cycling Campaign, National Federation of Women's Institutes, National Heart Forum, Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, RoadPeace, RNIB, RNID, RoSPA, Slower Speeds Initiative, Sustans, Transport 2000, Whitby Bird & Partners Engineers.

Lindsay Wright
Press Officer
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
020 7927 2073