Harringay online

Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Haringey Revealed as 5th Most Dangerous London Borough for Pedestrians

In a report last week, The Guardian Newspaper reported  research by Dr Rachel Aldred at the University of Westminster. This revealed that for every billion walking trips that occur in London, 600 people are killed or injured on average, the analysis showed. 

Whilst Barking and Dagenham is the worst affected borough where the number rises to 825, Haringey with 770 comes in fifth. Three more boroughs that averaged more than 700 deaths or injuries per billion walking trips are Hackney at 796, Brent with 793 and Redbridge at 790.

“We don’t know why this gap exists, although it fits with other evidence suggesting pedestrians from lower income backgrounds are at higher risk of injury than are better off pedestrians,” said Aldred. “It reinforces the need for proven measures to reduce road danger across London, such as reducing speed limits and ensuring that drivers stick to those lower speeds.”

Tags for Forum Posts: traffic

Views: 2309

Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Apparently sources include the London Travel Survey which included daily walking trips by London residents and  data at borough level from the Census.

Nobody in Kingston is stupid enough to cross the road.

Spiderman, re 'number of injuries', "While Barking and Dagenham has one of the lowest figures for pedestrian fatalities or injuries – a total of 40 between 2014 and 2016 – the risk to pedestrians is high once the low number of walking trips in the borough is taken into account. "

Link to full article here.  Dr Aldred's research interests here.

This is vague in the extreme.

It doesn't say whether the pedestrians are  killed or injured by motor vehicles or simply by slipping on a discarded banana skin.

Is a 100-yard trip to the corner shop counted the same as a two mile excursion to Sainsbury's ?

Is it likely that poor people walk more than the well-off ?

" We don't know why this gap exists " .... but " it reinforces.... "  (our prejudices against motorists ? ) ..

I personally agree with the need to lower and enforce speed limits but I suspect that if I have to do 1.3 million walking trips to be in serious danger of death or injury I won't worry about stepping outside my front door to stroll across to the corner shop.

If you think it through a bit I suppose

  • If you are poorer you’re less likely to own a car therefore your walking trips will be longer
  • If you own a car your walking trips are likely to be shorter as the temptation will be to get in your car for longer ones
  • The more distance you cover, the more likely you are to be involved in an accident, so length of the foot journey needs to be factored in

Or

  • Dagenham is so awful that throwing yourself in front of a bus is an attractive option.

Ha!   Plus,  Dagenham was London's 'Motor City' for many years - Ford's plant.

Here's something on this in an exchange about the Guardoan piece from Aldred's Twitter stream:

It's cheaper to own a car if you get free parking, than to use the tube. Poor people own cars. Young people don't. Sometimes they are the same.

There quite a bit of information in this TfL paper based on the last census 

http://content.tfl.gov.uk/technical-note-12-how-many-cars-are-there...

Amongst other things it shows a clear correlation between income, age, ethnicity and car ownership.

One of the other things that may be a factor is accessibility to tube and rail services in the boroughs.  As a for instance Camden residents have low car ownership but a high high density of tube services so people have shorter walking trips to the nearest station.  Somewhere like Barking and Dagenham has moderate car ownership but sparse tube and rail density and longer walking trips to services.

There will also be issues like average vehicle speed.  The denser the area (central London) the slower the vehicle speed and vice versa.

Breaking it down to borough level is quite crude though as averaging out data over fairly large populations masks statistical clusters within them.  Somewhere like Havering is geographically huge (about four times the land area of Haringey) and contains wealthy areas like Hornchurch and areas of very high deprivation in places like Romford.

John, you were one of the people who introduced me to the research of Mayer Hillman and Anne Whalley

A couple of Aldred's research papers attached.

Attachments:

Thanks Hugh. Those answer my questions.

RSS

Advertising

© 2024   Created by Hugh.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service