London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine has today called for an expansion of traffic calming schemes, after the largest review to date of the evidence on their effectiveness concluded that they 'may have the potential to reduce road traffic deaths and injuries'.

Traffic calming is becoming a high profile media issue with opinions running high, both for and against. It will be one of the issues highlighted in the forthcoming launch of the manifesto of the Safer Streets Coalition. The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is the base for the Injuries Group of the International Cochrane Collaboration. The Group which carried out the review seeks to assemble all available information from research that has been conducted on particular methods of treating or preventing injury. The data is collected, analysed and presented in the form of systematic reviews.

'Traffic calming interventions need to be properly evaluated using well-designed controlled studies, so that we can more accurately estimate their effectiveness', comments Professor Ian Roberts, one of the review team. 'Whenever reliable studies have been done, traffic calming has been shown to make roads safer. We do need more research but, in my view, we already know enough to justify an expansion in the number of traffic calming schemes. Contrary to what some people have claimed, there is no evidence that traffic calming increases the risks'.

The team expressed concern that so far no reliable research on the topic has been conducted in developing countries, where the death rate from injuries on the road is increasing most rapidly.

If you would like to interview Professor Roberts, please call the School's Press Office on 020 7927 2073. More information about the Cochrane Collaboration can be found at www.cochrane-injuries.lshtm.ac.uk