A unique and dignified protest event, the National Funeral for the Unknown Victim of Traffic Violence, will take place tomorrow on Oxford Street, central London.

November marks the first anniversary of last year’s awful spate of horrific accidents in London which resulted in six cyclists being killed.

These deaths led to a massive peaceful “die-in” protest outside Transport for London’s HQ organised by a new grassroots pressure group called Stop Killing Cyclists.

It was widely reported at the time and yet neither Boris Johnson, the government nor the great majority of local councils of any political persuasion have made any meaningful investment in Britain’s cycling or pedestrian safety since then. 

Britain spends a pathetic £2 per person per year on cycling safety, compared to the £28 spent by the Dutch government.

Stop Killing Cyclists is marking the anniversary by taking a coffin mounted on a horse-drawn hearse in a funeral procession from Bedford Square down Oxford Street to Marble Arch.

There, the coffin will be placed on a catafalque and the protesters will then lie down on the ground surrounding it to represent the thousands Britain’s pedestrians, cyclists and motorists who have been killed, maimed or poisoned over the last 10 years by our lethal motorised traffic culture.

This will be followed by a rally where victims, doctors and grassroot safety campaigners will address the crowd — the event is endorsed by a coalition of pedestrian, environmental and cycling safety groups.

While over 26,000 cyclists, pedestrians and motorists have been killed in Britain following traffic collisions over the last decade, the real death toll from our motorised traffic culture is far higher.

The NHS estimates that 50,000 people were killed by traffic pollution alone and Professor John Garthwaite, from the University of London, calculates that up to 400,000 may have died through physical inactivity due to the lack of cycling infrastructure.

Transport carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are also killing people, contributing to the four million people the UN estimates have died over the last decade due to climate change.

Hundreds of thousands more people across Britain are living with disabilities, lung and heart diseases caused by traffic pollution.

And finally, there is a national obesity epidemic with over 25 per cent of adults clinically obese and 30 per cent of children overweight or clinically obese as hundreds of thousands are afraid to cycle to work or school due to the lack of cycling infrastructure.

This litany is clearly intolerable in a civilised society. There is hardly a family that the toll of death and disease from our motorised transport culture has not touched.

A report in Lancet estimated that 4,500 lives could be saved in London alone every year if we moved to a pro-walking and cycling culture similar to that of Holland.

Extrapolated across urbanised Britain, this would result in about 21,000 lives saved every year.

Another 60,000 people in London would be saved every year from living with disabilities. Breast cancer, heart diseases, depression and even dementia would be radically reduced.

Making roads safer for people to cycle or walk also has major equality implications. Over 50 per cent of poorer households, 65 per cent of pensioners and 40 per cent of working single people do not have a car.

While car-running costs have come down, public transport costs have consistently risen higher than inflation for the last decade, forcing more working people into transport poverty.

Cycling and walking can help people escape such poverty, as well as increasing health and longevity.

The National Funeral & Die-In protest’s demands are:

• Stop the Killing of Children — set up a national, multi-billion pound programme to convert residential communities across Britain into living-street home zones to abolish dangerous rat-runs.
• Stop the killing of pedestrians — establish a national programme to fund pedestrianisation of our city and town centres, including the nation’s high-street — Oxford Street.
• Stop the killing of pensioners from excessive speed — introduce and enforce speed limit of 20mph on all urban roads, 40mph on rural roads and 60mph on all other trunk roads.
• Stop the killing of cyclists — invest £15 billion in a national segregated cycle network over the next five years.
• Stop the killing by HGVs — ban lorries with blind spots by making safety equipment mandatory and strictly enforce current truck-safety regulations, to reduce levels of illegally dangerous trucks down from estimated 30 per cent to less than 1 per cent.
• Stop the killing without liability — introduce a presumed civil liability law on behalf of vehicular traffic when they kill or seriously injure vulnerable road-users, where there is no evidence blaming the victim.
• Stop the killing from lung, heart and other diseases caused by vehicular pollutants — make it mandatory for particulate filters that meet latest EU emission standards to be fitted to all existing buses, lorries and taxis.
• Stop the killing at junctions — introduce pedestrian crossing times long enough for elderly and disabled people to cross. Legalise filtered junction crossings by cyclists with strict legal priority for pedestrians and carry out urgent programme of physically protected left-hand turns for cyclists.
• Stop the killing from climate crisis caused by CO2 emissions — all transport fuels to be from environmentally sustainable, renewable sources within 10 years.
• Focus on life — Transport governance must make safety and quality of life the top priority. Reform all council transport departments, the Department of Transport and Transport for London into cycling, walking and transport departments with formal pedestrian and cyclist representation.

Morning Star readers can sign up on the Facebook page to let organisers know how many people are coming. If you are a member of a community group, trade union, student union, pensioner group, etc, ask these organisations to email their members about the protest.

The national funeral of the unknown victim of traffic violence is a clarion call to people across Britain to unite to bring this carnage and environmental destruction to an urgent end.

It is being organised by grassroots activists and so is dependent on grassroots support. Please help spread the word and help make our roads fit for humans once again.

Donnachadh McCarthy is co-founder of Stop Killing Cyclists — contact@3acorns.co.uk
Facebook page: National Funeral for the Unknown Victim of Traffic Violence. Event website: www.stopthekilling.org