Councillors express outrage after warnings about junction ignored
In March 2006, Oxfordshire Council received explicit warning that the junction where Tsz Fok was killed last week was a public hazard. Road Safety Officials took no direct action to lessen the danger, leaving the junction as an “accident blackspot”. Two councillors have told The Oxford Student that the Council are more responsive to road safety warnings after a ‘fatality’ occurs.
In a similar case earlier this year, the Council overlooked repeat- ed calls to redesign the perilous Thames towpath. The Council only addressed the danger spot after a teenager died after losing control of his bike on the pot-holed path. A small group of councillors have this week revealed that a number of other “accident blackspots” in the city centre have also been neglected.
The Oxford Student has obtained documents revealing that Tony Kirk- wood, Oxfordshire Road Safety Of- ficer, was contacted by Green Party councillors Deborah Glass-Woodin year with a request that the safety of the junction be reassessed. The request came in the wake of an explicit warning from an Oxford student to the two councillors about the dangers of the junction. The stu- dent decided to involve the Council after nearly colliding with a motor- ist outside The Kings Arms.
The Oxford Student has obtained a copy of Kirkwood’s email response to this warning, in which he states, “It would be hard to justify the cost of providing a pedestrian phase on safety grounds given the large number of sites with much poorer safety performances. “Balancing the costs and ben- efits is not straightforward but colleagues, our judgment is that at the Parks Road junction it would be difficult to justify a high priority for providing a pedestrian phase.
Green Party councillor Matt Sell- wood lamented this response and the tragic failure of the Council to take direct action in improving the safety of the junction. Sellwood said, “The Council told us what they usually say, that there’s never been a fatal accident at the junction so it’s not a priority. “We’ve been asking repeatedly for pedestrian crossings to be put on Iffley Road, but it won’t be a priority until there’s been a fatality.
It should be about prevention instead.” Glass-Woodin reiterated Sell- jor accident happens, the Council doesn’t take any interest. As long as the Council argue that they want to manage the balance between cy- clists and motorists and improve traffic flow, cyclists and pedestrians lose out.” Tsz Fok’s friends are among the voices calling for the safety of the junction to be improved.
Lucy Chan told The Oxford Stu- dent, “We are currently working to- wards getting the junction formally identified as an accident blackspot in order to help prevent a repetition of such a tragedy in the future.” Tsz Fok’s death comes after Neil Wolfson, a Mansfield finalist, was left with memory loss and a bro- ken collarbone following a bicycle collision at the same junction last March.
A group of Oxfordshire council- lors have told The Oxford Student that they have compiled an unpub- lished list of “accident blackspots” in the centre of Oxford. Glass-Woodin referred explicitly to the stretch of road outside the Odeon Cinema on George Street as an area particularly dangerous to cyclists. She also cited the Botley Road underpass west of the train station, which has witnessed a number of injuries and several fatalities over the last ten years.
Although the group of councillors are set to present this list before the Council, Glass-Woodin expressed doubt that any changes would be implemented. “You don’t get preventative meas- ures put in for love nor money,” she said. “A fatality at a junction bumps it up the priority list. It’s an outrage: we have money to spend on war, but not on peace.
The Council’s policy on poten- tially dangerous cycling areas was under attack earlier this year after the tragic death of a teenage cyclist, who drowned after his bike hit a pothole on the Thames towpath. According to Sellwood, “All the councillors had been calling for something to be done, and then £400,000 was found after this fatal- ity. I hope they do something now at the Broad Street junction.
Tony Kirkwood, the road safety officer who received the initial warning about the junction last year, defended the decision not to intervene in the safety of the junc- tion. Kirkwood told The Oxford Stu-dent, “We have approximately 300 other locations in Oxfordshire with accident numbers in excess of this.
“As part of the standard investi- gations following a fatal accident, all aspects of the control, signing and road markings at the junction will be reviewed to identify any measures to improve safety”.
26th Apr 2007