Road safety

Jenny was the Mayor’s Road Safety Ambassador between 2001 and 2008. Road casualties fell in London at a faster rate than anywhere else in the country as Jenny persuaded the Mayor to support a range of projects.

• Funding trebled to £59m
• 20mph areas expanded at fast rate
• The road freight enforcement unit set up
• Met Police make casualty reduction one of their top five priorities and end the cuts to traffic police

As a result, the total number of child casualties more than halved during this time and when Jenny stopped being the Mayor’s Road Safety Ambassador, an average of over 2,200 fewer children were injured on London’s roads.

The new Mayor cut the funding for road safety from £59m to under £26m and the rate of casualty reduction slowed. In fact the total number of casualties was higher in 2012 than when Boris Johnson was elected. After a lot of hard questioning by Jenny and a huge public campaign, the Mayor reversed his previous approach for his second term in office.

• Post 2012 investment in Go Dutch cycling infrastructure
• Mayor drops insistence that the convenience of car and lorry drivers comes ahead of safety concerns when roads are redesigned.
• Jenny met Boris to save the Freight Enforcement Unit from closure
• Initiatives started by Jenny and shelved by Boris have re-emerged, e.g. speed limiters for buses.
• Jenny’s report into borough wide 20mph zones got cross party support in 2009 and a third of London boroughs now have 20mph as the new norm.