Project Description
James Luckhurst reports from the city’s Millennium Square, where a host of Vision Zero partners gathered in August to raise awareness of their aim to eliminate death and serious injuries on the roads of West Yorkshire by 2040
A Vision Zero strategy was adopted by Leeds in September 2022, making it the first city in West Yorkshire to commit to eliminating all road deaths and serious injuries by 2040. It was a bold move which came as part of the lead Safer Road’s Vision Zero 2040 strategy.
Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime Alison Lowe OBE also chairs the West Yorkshire Vision Zero Board. She told us more about what she wanted to achieve.
“Today is about celebrating 12 months of Vision Zero here in West Yorkshire,” she said. “We launched our Vision Zero strategy in Bradford a year ago, and we have committed to holding a Vision Zero event in the five areas of West Yorkshire over the next five years.
“We have brought all the different stakeholders together for the public to meet and to understand what Vision Zero is all about. After all, without the public, their engagement and their buy-in, we will not deliver our aim of eliminating killed and seriously injured on our roads here in West Yorkshire by 2040.”
Since the launch, activity has included educational campaigns, safer road design, stricter enforcement of speed limits, and new technologies to capture and deter dangerous driving. The implementation and delivery of Vision Zero across West Yorkshire is managed by Gillian Macleod, who told us more about who was part of the team.
“We’ve got a really passionate group of people, and they’re from within the city council itself, across all sorts of departments, but also partners outside the Council,” she said. That includes the police, National Highways, Fire and Rescue and others. We have recently been doing work with the Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust. They’re a very large employer in the city, and the chief executive has given a pledge, and we’re really working with them to push that out to all their staff members.”
This year’s event in the Centre of Leeds is designed to promote Vision Zero, and public engagement is essential because road safety improvements depend not just on authorities, but also on the behaviour and support of the people who use the city’s roads. Participants here today represent the entire Vision Zero spectrum, for example, public health.
“I think public health’s role in Vision Zero is one of trying to bring all partners together because one of our key roles is to ensure that we have a healthy environment,” John Wilcox from Wakefield Council told us. “A key cornerstone of any healthy place is safe roads. And so safe roads is used to drive lots of other pieces of work, for example, encouraging people to be more active. If we want places where children feel they can play and be active and safe, people feel safe and happy. Safe roads are a real cornerstone to that.”
Fire and Rescue makes a substantial contribution to the delivery of Vision Zero and has a deep involvement in targeted prevention programmes, for example, with young drivers. Claire Wright from West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue explained more about the sort of conversations she might look to have with young drivers, a particularly high-risk road-user group.
“We do probe a bit,” she said. “We do ask about their current road behaviours. It’s not just cars we focus on. We focus on powered two wheelers and motorbikes also. We try and look at what are the current behaviours? With the cars, with the new drivers programme, we’re looking at who’s in the car with you.
“We then go into the fatal five, looking at what can cause you to have a collision and how many of those relate to the behaviours they’re currently taking part in. We look at the consequences of a collision, not just through the practical sessions I mentioned, but what other knock-on effects, ghost points on licences, losing licence, injury and the wider impact on the community as well. We really explore those also.”
The message from Alison Lowe is there’s no room for passengers on the West Yorkshire journey to Vision Zero, and she has particular tactics for keeping everyone focused. “My expectation of anyone who works with me is that they will act,” she emphasised. “We can talk for England, all of us, but our job is to deliver for the people of West Yorkshire. If you’re not going to deliver, then don’t please ask to work with me.
“Our Vision Zero board is all about listening to the progress that’s being made based on the five elements of the Vision Zero whole system approach. People have to report against those five elements, and they have to tell us the progress that they have made, and they’re held to account in that meeting. They also tell us about any barriers and issues.
“We share good practice, but we’re all We’re talking about progress all the time. We also have the voice of those with lived experience on that board. So Ian Greenwood, whose daughter Alice was killed aged 12 as a result of young people speeding on our roads, he’s there to hold that mirror up. If we forget why we’re there and we start meandering or we start talking shop, he reminds us that Alice will never see 13.
“So can we stop talking shop and can we start talking action? So we made sure that action is the name of the game, that every meeting we can see the progress we’ve made. And so far in West Yorkshire, we’ve had 10 fewer deaths, 40 rather than the 50 that we had last year. And so I can see that what we’re doing is working.”
Dr Ian Greenwood calls himself a critical friend. “I first started campaigning in West Yorkshire in about 2017, 2018, and I got very, very little support, very little help, very few people opened their doors and wanted to talk about road death,” he said. “If we fast-forward to 2025, we have all the partners working together to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured in West Yorkshire. And I hope that I’ve made a very small part of that by being a critical friend on the board, bringing the victim voice so that people remember exactly why we’re doing this.
“We have started to see a reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured in West Yorkshire. So I’m really pleased about that. And with leadership from people like Alison Lowe, the Deputy Mayor, we will go a lot further.”
Finally, a tip from Alison Lowe to boost the effectiveness of any local or regional Vision Zero strategy.
“You need to get political engagement from your local authorities, because without local authorities owning Vision Zero, it cannot be delivered,” she said. “They are essential partners. But even if you’ve got the officers involved and engaged, the politicians need buy in as well.”
Images from the day
