Drive to make roads safer hit by district's sharp rise in deaths

THE number of fatal road traffic collisions in Kirklees has risen from five to 18 in a year, according to new figures.

The statistics show that in 2008 five people died on the roads of Kirklees and 177 more were seriously injured. In 2009 the number of deaths was 18 and 113 were seriously injured.

Other policing districts either saw the number of deaths fall, remain the same or rise only slightly.

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The number of deaths in North West Leeds fell from 10 to five, Calderdale rose from seven to eight and Bradford South from eight to 11.

The figures are contained in a police report for the West Yorkshire Police Authority's strategic planning and performance committee.

The report says that West Yorkshire is on target to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured by 40 per cent by the end of this year, compared with the average level between 1994 and 1998.

The latest figures show that 915 people were killed or seriously injured on West Yorkshire's roads between December 2008 and November last year.

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This equates to a reduction of 38.3 per cent so far, with several more months to go to reach the 40 per cent target. Comparing 2008/09 with 2007/08, fatal collisions are up four, serious collisions are down 59, slight collisions are down 118 and the total number of collisions is down 173.

The figures show that enforcement has gone down for offences such as speeding, misuse of mobile phone and failing to wear a seatbelt.

For all three of those offences, the number of tickets issued fell from 30,027 to 20,178 between 2008 and 2009.

One of the largest falls in enforcement of seat belt and speeding laws was in Calderdale. In 2008 1,720 people in Calderdale were issued with tickets for not wearing a seatbelt, but this fell to 774 last year.

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And in 2008, 1,871 people in Calderdale got tickets for speeding. This fell to 425 last year.

Although enforcement fell in Calderdale the number of collisions remained about 500, although the number killed and injured increased by 20 per cent.

In North East Leeds there was a big drop in the number of speeders caught in 2009 (down from 2,504 to 1,141). Those caught without seatbelts rose from 772 to 965.

Across Kirklees, which saw a rise in the number of road deaths, enforcement of seatbelt laws rose slightly (927 to 1,192) but fell for speeding enforcement (1,121 to 1,059) and also feel for mobile phone misuse (796 to 650)

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The police report says that staff changes at the West Yorkshire Casualty Reduction Partnership – which oversees the network of fixed and mobile speed cameras – is the main reason for the reduction in enforcement.

"The main reason for this as due to staff reductions during 2009 and resulting from an organisation change from police officers to civilian camera operators. There was a delay in recruiting civilian staff by the Camera Safety Partnership, but these posts have now been filled and there is expected to be a return to or exceed the previous levels of enforcement in 2010."

The report adds: "Seatbelt and mobile phone enforcement has increased slightly across the force area but divisional performance varies considerably to the extent that a correlation between enforcement and collision reduction cannot be predicted."

In Bradford, there was an increase in enforcement activity of 2,400 offences. Despite this, the number of road deaths increased, as did the total number of injury collisions.