CycleSheffield have complained to South Yorkshire Police about their continuing refusal to record cycle/tram track crashes – the previous correspondence between Sheffield City Council and Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire, Alan Billings is included at the end of this article.
Hello
I am contacting you on behalf of CycleSheffield, we are a voluntary campaign group with over 1850 supporters.
We wish to complain about road accident reporting by South Yorkshire Police and would like this investigated.
This is in relation to this incident on West Street/Glossop Road in February 2022 as reported in this press article:
In this article, the comment to the press is “South Yorkshire Police said the accident was not a police matter and declined to comment.”
In the article stated “After she had her accident we tried to report it to the police and the council but no-one would take the report as no-one died and there wasn’t a car involved. This is a problem as it is a breach of a statutory duty and those accident statistics are what help transport planners/engineers decide where changes are needed to improve safety.”
The guidelines on the recording of accidents on the roads is set out in the STATS20 guidance document and it’s clear that accidents where there is an injury and only a single person/vehicle involved should be recorded.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/stats19-forms-and-guidance
“2.2 Examples of accidents to be reported include:
c) accidents to pedal cyclists or horse riders, where they injure themselves or a pedestrian;”
“The STATS19 requirement is clear that all accidents involving non-motor vehicles such as pedal cycles and ridden horses on ‘public roads’ (see 2.4) should be reported, regardless of motor vehicle or pedestrian involvement.”
We would like this recorded as a complaint and investigated because we believe that South Yorkshire Police recording of road accidents is not following police guidance and there is systematic under recording.
As background to this complaint: This issue has been raised twice before by Sheffield City Council with Alan Billings (SYP PCC) who responded to say that there “appear[ed] to be a lack of understanding around the definition of a RTC under the Road Traffic Act by Police Officers and Police staff within Atlas Court”. He informed Sheffield Council that this issue would be resolved by “additional training for call handlers” and “an internal communication to all staff”. I have attached the correspondence from SCC and SYP for information.
Regards,
Dexter Johnstone
Chair, CycleSheffield
Really interested to hear about this. The Metro Tram routes in Birmingham are being expanded and making cycling in the city centre much more difficult. Push Bikes the local cycling campaign can learn from your longer experience.
The tram tracks are the biggest cause of injury to people cycling in Sheffield and have also caused the deaths of 3 people. The court cases in Edinburgh should show that councils cannot get away with ignoring this risk now. https://road.cc/content/news/cyclists-injured-edinburgh-tram-line-paid-ps12m-296065