Schoolchildren were among crowds of people to walk a collective173 miles for road safety awareness as Greater Manchester moved a step closer to realising its ambitions to end all road traffic fatalities and life-changing injuries.
More than 150 people took part in the ‘community mile’ at Heaton Park today (Thursday 16th May) as part of the RoadPeace Challenge 2024, an annual awareness-raising and fundraising week of action during Global Road Safety Week.
The event was also used as a call to action to people in Greater Manchester to help shape the region’s Vision Zero Action Plan, which aims to eliminate all deaths and life-changing injuries on local roads by 2040, by taking part in an online survey.
Around 120 Year 5 and 6 pupils from the E-ACT Blackley Academy were joined on the walk by bereaved families and representatives from the Greater Manchester Safer Roads Partnership, including Active Travel Commissioner Dame Sarah Storey and Kate Green, Deputy Mayor of Greater Manchester.
Each of the participants walked at least a mile in memory of the 173 people killed as a result of fatal road traffic collisions in the north west of England in 2022. As part of Road Safety Week, pupils at E-ACT Blackley Academy also took part in road safety activities.
Sarah White, Deputy Head Teacher at E-ACT Blackley Academy, said: “The Vision Zero Action Plan launch is an important event for us to be involved in.
“Some families at our academy have unfortunately experienced life-changing events due to Manchester’s roads. Our school is located on a particularly high-risk road where serious collisions and tragedies have occurred over the years.
“It is important to us that drivers understand their responsibilities on Manchester roads and outside our school, and that our pupils recognise the risks posed. We need to all work together to keep each other safe.”
Vision Zero is an ambition to eliminate all road traffic fatalities and life-changing injuries, while increasing safe, healthy and equitable mobility for all.
In the last ten years nearly 10,000 people who live in, work in or visit Greater Manchester have been killed or seriously injured on our roads.
In 2022, there were 71 road traffic fatalities or life-changing injuries every month in Greater Manchester. In total 64 people were killed over the course of the year – 25 of them pedestrians – and each of these deaths was preventable.
In January, Mayor Andy Burnham and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) endorsed a draft of the Vision Zero Strategy, and this week the public will have the chance to have their say on the draft Action Plan before any final decisions are made and published in November.
The online survey will run for six weeks from 16th May until 27th June.
Kate Green, Deputy Mayor for Policing, Crime, Criminal Justice and Fire, said: "Road crashes have devastating and widespread impacts on our communities and the schoolchildren here today serve as a reminder of that.
“Every death or life-changing injury on our city-region’s roads is one too many and we must all work together to ensure that pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and motorists feel safe and are safe on our roads.
“By sharing your views on the initial actions we have set out to improve road safety you can help us make Vision Zero a reality.”
First implemented in Sweden in the 1990s, Vision Zero has been adopted in other areas across Europe, the United States and the UK.
In the UK, Vision Zero has been adopted in several local authority areas, including regions
neighbouring Greater Manchester like West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Lancashire and the Liverpool City Region.
By taking decisive action in Greater Manchester, around 3,800 unnecessary deaths and life-changing injuries could be prevented by 2040.
Development of Greater Manchester’s Vision Zero Strategy and Action Plan is being led by the Greater Manchester Safer Roads Partnership. Members of the partnership include Transport for Greater Manchester, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Greater Manchester Police, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, National Highways and the 10 Greater Manchester local authorities.
Dame Sarah Storey, Active Travel Commissioner for Greater Manchester, said: “Over the coming months, there will further conversations about the actions needed to achieve this vital goal of no-one being killed or seriously injured on roads in Greater Manchester, by 2040.
“It will undoubtedly take some bold, new measures to start to make progress towards this ‘Vision Zero’, and we’ll only be able to get there, through different agencies working together, and through a change in the approach by national government to important issues, such as enforcing pavement parking and sentencing of road crime.
“Every death or life-changing injury, has an immeasurable cost to family, friends and the community, and the cost of responding to and dealing with all casualty and injury collisions in Greater Manchester is estimated at £472m. Inaction is not an option we can live with.”
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