Humps save lives but there are better ways to make roads safer

1.48.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Wed 14th Apr 2004

The London Assembly Liberal Democrats today called on local councils to trial alternative speed reduction solutions rather than using the crude, though effective, humps which have controversially been in the news this week.

Lib Dem spokesperson Lynne Featherstone, who chairs the London Assembly's transport committee which this week produced a report on speed humps, said London needed to move on:

"There's hard evidence that speed humps can and do save lives. But they are cheap and crude Third World solutions to speed reduction.

"London should move on to chicanes and road narrowings to reduce traffic speeds, and trial innovative new methods like deflating humps which flatten if crossed at the correct speed.

"Let's move on from speed humps. There are better ways of reducing speeds and saving lives. We need more intelligent expenditure and debate on road safety, not the playground politics that the Mayor and local councillors such as those in Barnet have indulged in."

ENDS

Notes to editor:

1. London's Got The Hump - published by the London Assembly.

2. The Transport Research Laboratory found that in London's 20mph zones, which mainly use speed humps, there has been a 57% reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured.