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Emma Foa |
‘Woeful lack of understanding’ is killing cyclists
Warning comes as TfL respond to coroner
CYCLISTS will continue to be killed unless ignorance about road markings and a tame enforcement regime are stamped out, campaigners have warned after Transport for London (TfL) was forced to respond to a coroner’s concerns this week.
Reg Wright, whose wife Emma Foa was killed at a notorious junction when she and her bike were crushed by a turning lorry, said she “would still be alive today” if green cycle boxes were a standard requirement and properly enforced. He also condemned the “woeful lack of understanding” of drivers.
TfL was forced to address the issue of advanced stop lines – the official term for the green boxes reserved for cyclists at junctions – after Ms Foa’s death prompted St Pancras Coroner Dr Andrew Reid to write to the highway authority “to prevent the recurrence of fatalities”.
Dr Reid told TfL that his court had held inquests into a number of cyclists’ deaths and he was concerned that the authorities had done too little to publicise the rules and purpose of the advanced stop lines.
Though there was no cycle box at the junction of Camley Street and Goods Way, King’s Cross, when Ms Foa was killed in December 2006, he said, markings for the box had been made, then removed in the intervening period – and he had witnessed the box being repeatedly abused.
Mr Wright said: “My view is that there are far too few advance stop lines and exclusion boxes for cyclists in London, and that nobody knows what they’re for.
“If there had been one at the junction between Goods Way and Camley Street, my much-adored wife would still be alive today, I would still have my soul-mate, and my daughters would still have a mother. Instead, she was crushed by a lorry because the driver did not see her because he did not use his side mirrors.”
In a response published this week, Camden and Islington’s senior TfL engineer wrote to the coroner and explained that TfL was powerless to enforce the boxes and they were “not high on the list of police priorities”.
The letter read: “These markings are an increasingly common feature on the network and it is felt that motorists generally do understand what they are and abuse them because they do not appreciate their importance for cycle safety.”
Ms Foa, a jeweller and writer from Hampstead, was killed when she was caught under the wheels of a cement mixer.
Driver Michael Thorn, 52, who told the inquest last November he had looked but not seen Ms Foa, pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention at Westminster Magistrates’ Court and was fined £300.
Jean Dollimore, chairwoman of the Camden Cycling Campaign, said: “My own view is that enforcement of rules regarding cycle boxes and the lanes that lead into them is urgently required. And that using camera enforcement at a few of them could drive home the point. Such cameras would, of course, also catch cyclists who jump the lights.”
Power to enforce the boxes could be granted to TfL if the Transport for London and London Local Authorities Bill, lodged in Parliament last November, is made law. |
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