Ringway Jacobs puts focus on cyclist and pedestrian safety

Ringway Jacobs has announced a partnership with Cycle Safety Shield that aims to reduce cycle and pedestrian collision with heavy goods vehicles (HGVs).

Joint ventures of Colas/Volker Highways/URS, Ringway/Jacobs, Enterprise/Mouchel and Conway/Aecom have each won an eight-year highways maintenance contract from Transport for London (TfL) that could be worth a combined £2.6 billion.

Ringway Jacobs will be working in partnership with Cycle Safety Shield to help reduce cycle accidents with HGVs in London and other UK cities. The company is a fully integrated highway services provider.

“Ringway Jacobs is delighted to support such a strong safety initiative in London, by working with Cycle Safety Shield, we hope to help reduce the risk of collision between HGVs and cyclists and hopefully encourage other organisations to do the same,” said Phil Skegg, operations director for Ringway Jacobs.

The Cycle Safety Shield system was originally designed to work with radio-frequency identifications tags (RFID tags), which are fitted to each cycle. Cycle Safety Shield can be easily fitted to any vehicle, such as buses, HGVs and taxis, in a couple of hours and will detect any cyclist with a RFID tag fitted when they approach the danger zone.

The system has since moved into phase two and can now be HGV mounted only. This does not require pedestrians and cyclists to wear a tag.

The system is based on another shield system designed for the rail industry “Rail safety Shield” which uses a unique technology to identify specified objects only.

Unlike other systems currently available, the new Cycle Safety Shield System is designed to locate only cycles, pedestrians and motorcycles and will not detect other objects such as other motorists or street furniture.

A key requirement for an improved safety culture is better driver training and awareness. Cycle safety shield delivers part of this training through its warning and anti-collision detection.