Greater safeguards needed to protect pedestrians in Scotland's city centres
A charity has called for greater safeguards to pedestrians a year on from the Glasgow bin lorry crash which killed six people.
The refuse truck careered up Glasgow's Queen Street on 22 December 2014 before coming to a halt after hitting Queen Street Station.
An inquiry into the crash this month deemed that the main responsibility lay with the driver, Harry Clarke, and that better medical checks and education for other drivers into the dangers of losing control are needed.
But with six crashes, involving HGVs and pedestrians recorded in Scotland in the past year, walking charity Living Streets argues that other critical recommendations on pedestrian safety risk being overlooked.
Stuart Hay, Living Streets’ Scotland director, said: “Better medical checks eliminate only one risk factor to pedestrians from bin lorries and other heavy goods vehicles.
"Living Streets Scotland remains gravely concerned about the number of large vehicles manoeuvring in close proximity to pedestrians, especially at busy shopping times.
“We believe the risks around timing, frequency and routes used by waste and delivery trucks in busy town and city centres merits further investigation.”
Sadly the Glasgow crash last Christmas is an extreme but not unique incident
Lorries are over represented in incidents involving pedestrians being killed or seriously injured, said the charity.
It now wants more to be done to reduce the threat in busy urban areas including better designed vehicles, management of the time and amount of vehicles entering town and city centres, slower speed limits and better driver training.
Hay added: “Sadly the Glasgow crash last Christmas is an extreme but not unique incident involving a large vehicle hurting pedestrians.
“This danger was recently illustrated by a runaway truck crash in Edinburgh on a busy road next to the station.
“We appear to be seeing more of them on our streets, as a result of more frequent deliveries and increased competition by waste and recycling hauliers.
More needs to be done to better protect pedestrians from delivery vehicles ‘wrong time’ and ‘wrong place’ incidents. We want to see action now to avoid any other tragedies of this kind.”
