Boris Johnson aims to slash London road casualties by half in next 5 years

Simon,

Fair point, however I still stand by my first statement, " Keeping people safe is everyones responsibility".

Simon,

AA and RAC's charitable bodies do support some forms of more civilised driver behaviour (like existing speed cameras), but they won't go for anything which fundamentally reduces motor danger and/or makes drivers accountable. They certainly don't push against cheaper motoring or for motor traffic reduction.

Even if formally separate from the organisations whose names are in their titles, you wouldn't expect them to, would you?

RAC Foundation director Steve Gooding said: “Keeping people safe on our roads is one of the most important responsibilities local government has.

Typical response from a well educated, over paid, thick as pig **** brain dead, gormless corporate zombie.

Keeping people safe should be everyones responsibility! Why is it always the governments responsibility for the road safer, especially when the likes of the RAC and AA actively campaign against speed cameras and reduced speed limits. Do they not understand basic physics, large, heavy, fast moving objects have huge amount of kinetic energy. The same object moving slowly has less energy therefore the impact in genreally lesser.

If I survived an RTA in London I'm not sure I'd want Boris to try and slash me in half...

"Boris Johnson makes grand statement that he has no intention whatsoever of following up".

It frightens me how many people fall for his bumbling idiot act. He's evil.

There’s definitely more spin than substance here. Boris needing something to draw attention away from the 13 odd cycling deaths each year perhaps?

A target of 50% is easy to say (and easy to forget). Why not aim for no deaths, like Sweden’s Vision Zero?

Training and marketing campaigns? Umm, just get on and build us the segregated cycle lanes please, and lots more of them.

If you want to reduce the number of cycling deaths/injuries in London then reduce the number of cars/trucks. No one has the balls to do it though. Absolutely no-one *needs* a car in central London.

Boris is not perfect - ! - but at least he is a cyclist. The next Mayor probably will not be.

HarrogateSpa: I am Chair of the Road Danger Reduction Forum (hence ChairRDRF) - I'm not hiding this! My views are expressed more fully on our website - most of the posts are also written by me (sometimes with other RDRF committee members) anyway.

The reason for giving a reference to a relevant www.rdrf.org.uk post is that road.cc readers can read an extended version of, or relevant argument specifically related to, what I have said in the comment.

They don't have to do this , but apparently quite a few road.cc readers of my comments do go on to ww.rdrf.org.uk . Of course, I could just paste in the text of the post into my comment - but I think THAT would be wrong.

Someone should compile a comprehensive list of all the various 'targets', 'aims' and 'plans' issued by various parts of the UK state and its quangos, in relation to cycling, over the last 50 years.

I'd be surprised if any of them ever came to pass rather than being quietly forgotten.

I think it's fine to contribute to the debate, and sometimes direct people to the RDRF website; however, personally I would prefer if every now and then you commented without a link to RDRF - just a comment because that's your opinion, not trying to drive traffic to another site.

Just to add on to the previous comment: the TfL Press Release inevitable lays the credit for cuts in casualties with TfL, but that doesn't mean it isn't due to other factors.

Incidentally, TfL may want to add a long quote from the RAC (or rather their charity the RAC Foundation) but that doesn't mean you have to. I guess some of us have different views about what the "responsibilities to others" are of different road user groups may be as compared to those of the RAC.

Of the measures referred to in the PR, those on HGVs are welcome but limited, marketing and publicity without strong law enforcement is pretty worthless, and policing - well, in London...http://rdrf.org.uk/2013/11/29/is-there-a-police-blitz-on-unsafe-driving-... there's the Michael Mason case http://rdrf.org.uk/2015/03/20/the-michael-mason-case-a-national-scandal-...

Total KSIs - 90+% of which are Serious Injuries - tend to decline over time, particularly if there is a recession, irrespective of formal Government interventions (although this particular target does seem ambitious).

For cyclists, the point is that this has nothing to do with whether the road environment has become safer. Indeed, if it is seen as hazardous, people are put off cycling. They don't go out there and don't get killed or seriously injured as cyclists. That's why far more people per head of the population are killed as cyclists in the Netherlands wile having a far lower death rate per cyclist journey/kilometre travelled/time spent cycling.

TfL wilfully ignore this in their Cycle Safety Action Plan http://rdrf.org.uk/2014/11/07/transport-for-londons-cycle-safety-action-... . In fact, measuring danger for cyclist has to go even beyond looking at cyclist casualty rates per journey/distance travelled etc. See the discussion here:
http://rdrf.org.uk/2013/11/15/if-we-want-safer-roads-for-cycling-we-have...

Boris Johnson? Has he already forgotten that he has less than a year left?

Well, good luck on that one. I would say that the general standard of driving/riding needs to improve considerably to get anywhere near achieving these targets.