After another horrific crash on Birmingham’s roads resulting in the death of a four-year-old girl, the topic of road safety is high on the agenda ahead of the upcoming West Midlands mayoral election. In the wake of the tragedy, campaigners renewed calls for ‘sustained action’ to make our roads safer for everyone.
“The people of Birmingham and the West Midlands need to hear clearly from Mayoral candidates vying for their votes as to how they will prevent families of the future undergoing the unthinkable pain of losing a young child,” said campaign group Better Streets for Birmingham. And at our hustings, we posed these questions to the six mayoral candidates.
Mayor Andy Street, hoping to secure a third term in office on May 2, said that ‘progress has been made’ to make the roads safer - but wanted to push for tougher sentences and deterrents. His main rival, Labour’s Richard Parker, said there ‘seems to be a tragedy and avoidable death every week’ as he outlined plans to bring down speed limits across the region.
Andy Street has recently joined forces with BirminghamLive in calling on the Government to do more to tackle the scourge of reckless and dangerous driving. He outlined his intentions to bring forward more ‘physical’ measures to reduce speeding.
“Last summer, we pulled together all the main players and a bit of progress has already been made,” he said at BirminghamLive’s virtual hustings. “We have more dashcam footage of bad drivers being processed by police - up to 91% of footage which is sent in is now leading to action.
“We need more average speed cameras across the whole of the region. Six of the local authorities are working with us on that, but Birmingham, unfortunately, is standing aside at the moment. We’ve got to press for much tougher sentences and deterrents - and we’ve written to ministers alongside BirminghamLive and Roadpeace about this issue.”
Labour’s candidate Richard Parker, currently ahead in the polls, said ‘there seems to be a tragedy and avoidable death every week’ on our region’s roads.
A total of 57 lives were lost on roads across the West Midlands in 2022 - with 950 people injured in the region every year. Sixty per cent of all those killed on the roads are 'vulnerable' users like motorcyclists, cyclists, and pedestrians.
Parker said: “I fully subscribe to the Vision Zero by 2040 campaign strategy. We need more average speed cameras and I would like to see speed limits reduced on our roads too.
“I would like to see safer crossings for people at major junctions and better protected lanes for those cycling and walking on our roads. I would look to work with the PCC on designing a safer road strategy across the West Midlands.”
Siobhan Harper-Nunes (Green Party) said investing heavily in our region’s existing transport network would also help to reduce road accidents. “We need to be much tougher on road users who speed and drive dangerously and enforce those fines,” she said.
“We also want to create a hierarchy for road users to make sure that the most vulnerable are prioritised in areas where there is high car usage - near schools for instance.”
There was disagreement among some candidates over the effectiveness of speed bumps to reduce speeding. Akhem Yakoob (Independent) said more speed bumps and speed awareness would help tackle road deaths.
Elaine Williams (Reform UK) disagreed saying: “I don’t believe speed bumps are the answer - drivers still drive over them incredibly fast. Bringing down speed limits is not going to solve the problem. We need more education and need to take these people off the roads for everybody."
Sunny Virk ( Liberal Democrats ) added: “I’m taking an anti-speeding approach to this election. I want to reduce speed around schools, specifically at drop-off times. This is something big on my agenda.”
The virtual hustings, held yesterday, saw all six candidates in the upcoming election face a grilling on topics vital to the people of the region. Hosted by West Midlands editor Graeme Brown and Jane Haynes, BirminghamLive politics and people editor, questions submitted by our readers were put to the candidates.
For a full round-up of all the questions and answers given, check out our liveblog , or watch the hustings here .
