Thank you to the hundreds of cyclists who took part in the Tour du danger today to highlight a number of London’s most dangerous junctions and put pressure on the Mayor and on TfL to do some serious work on them.
Here are some maps showing where people are have been getting killed and injured in recent years. The first one shows deaths and injuries from traffic crashes between 2000 and 2010, the second for 2010 only and the next one for 2009 and the final one for 2000. Areas of blue indicate were pedestrians are getting injured and killed, red shows the high risk areas for cyclists. Purple is for motorcyclists and tan/green for vehicle occupants. Click on the images to see them full size.
Road casualties in Central London 2000-2010
Road casualties in Central London 2010
Road casualties in Central London 2009
Road Casualties in Central London 2000
These maps appear to show that fatalities amongst vehicle occupants has fallen from 17 in 2000 to one in 2009 and then zero in 2010. For cyclists the trend is apparently going the other way (up from four in 2000 to eight in 2009 and also in 2010). Motorcyclist fatalities are up from 0 in 2000 to 6 in 2010, pedestrians falling significantly. Do however be aware that this map only shows one fatality blob for crashes with multiple fatalities (which may include multiple modes). I will do some more work on this in the coming week and the figures may then need to be adjusted upwards.
Based on Stats19 road casualty data. See ‘Reported Road Casualties Great Britain‘ for more details.
Pedestrian Liberation 
This type of visualisation shows clearly the dangers for vulnerable road users posed by arterial roads and junctions. Certain stretches of road are particularly dangerous, speed limits play a significant part in this, especially with children and young adults.
It seems very likely that traffic levels merely make matters worse.
I believe that this type of visualisation are highly significant and I hope will prove to be an instrumental one in showing residents and interested persons the areas of greatest danger. It is clear that road and junction design directly and indirectly influences heavily road user behaviour and encourages certain types of behaviour, some of it high-risk. Eventually, the probabilities stack-up leading to the inevitable collision and if a VRU is involved, with a motor-vehicle, especially a particularly large and heavy or fast-moving one, the consequences are most likely to be serious.
The power of this visualisation demonstrates clearly the areas of comparative danger, which will allow priorities to be identified and set easily.
The Public can then challenge the claims of the authorities and hold them accountable [e.g. Boris; TfL etc.] for their actions, omissions, or failures by repeated inaction.
I’m not sure how easy it would be to implement, but flicking between the different maps certain junctions stand-out as repeatedly [serially] dangerous and in some cases fatal. Is there a way to highlight these?
Thanks for the encouragement and your ideas! I am working hard on this in my day-job. Will see what we can do.