Leaders from Greater Manchester’s 10 local authorities unanimously approved the city region’s Vision Zero Strategy and Action Plan, which aims to eliminate road deaths and life-changing injuries by 2040.
Transport for Greater Manchester said that in the last 10 years nearly 10,000 people in the region have been killed or seriously injured on its roads, with 64 fatalities and a further 787 people seriously injured in 2022.
However, the most recent figures from the Department for Transport show that the number of casualties in Greater Manchester fell by 6.2% to 799 in 2023, including 45 deaths – a 29.7% decrease.
The region’s newly-adopted plan includes an interim target to halve road traffic deaths and life changing injuries by the end of this decade.
Kate Green, Greater Manchester’s deputy mayor for Stronger and Safer Communities (pictured), said: ‘This is a powerful moment where all Greater Manchester’s leaders have come together behind a joint plan to take decisive action and make a change.
‘We must remember that behind every headline about collisions on our roads are families that are either grieving or supporting victims whose lives have been changed forever.'
Major interventions within the Action Plan include:
- a new Greater Manchester speed management policy by 2025 to equip local authorities with the tools to review or change speed limits, ‘to ensure they are at an appropriate level for specific areas, reflecting the mix of road users risk and purpose of the road’
- increasing targeted roads policing, such as speed enforcement and vehicle stops, where there is a high risk of incidents or a known hotspot
- upgrading spot speed and average speed cameras across the region, supported by police enforcement
- lobbying for local highway authorities to be given extra powers to tackle illegal and inconsiderate parking at high-risk locations, such as outside schools, while providing support for these measures such as appropriate road marking and signage delivering campaigns
- targeting antisocial road user behaviour, while also educating road users on the ‘Fatal Four’ biggest causes of injury collisions and how they can keep themselves and others safe
- removing dangerous vehicles from the road and continuing to target individuals who are not driving their vehicles legally, including off road bikes and illegally modified e-bikes, e-scooters and e-motorbikes
- ensuring people involved in road traffic collisions get the best possible care in the short and long term
- continuing to invest in specialised incident training and undertaking thorough investigations when collisions occur.
