Plan launched to cut number of deaths on West Yorkshire's roads to zero by 2040
The plans include proposals to make roads as safe as possible, teach drivers about their behaviour and improve response to crashes.
Plans to reduce the number of deaths on West Yorkshire's roads to zero by 2040 have been launched today.
The West Yorkshire Vision Zero Board was established by The Combined Authority and commits to half the number of people killed and seriously injured on roads in the region by 2030, and to zero by 2040.
The plans include proposals to make roads as safe as possible, teach drivers about their behaviour and improve response to crashes.
Alison Lowe OBE is West Yorkshire’s Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime and has launched the west Yorkshire Vision Zero scheme.
She lost her sister to a fatal road accident in 1965 on Roundhay Road in Leeds when she was three years old.
She said: “I never got to grow up with my sister and the whole that her loss has left in my life is lifelong. We don’t want that for anyone else here in West Yorkshire.
“My sister would have been 63 this year, had she not been killed by a speeding driver so for me one death is not acceptable, that could be Debbie.
“The impact of death or serious injury is immediate, but the pain and devastation for families and the wider community can last for decades.
“This relies on all of us believing that we are part of the solution and doing differently.
“We have to address our own driving behaviours. We've got to report poor driving behaviours.
“We have to all believe it's possible, if we believe it, we will make it happen. If we are negative, we will always find a reason why we aren’t part of that solution.
“Without action now we won’t deliver our ambition.”
Figures show 1,450 people were killed or seriously injured on West Yorkshire's roads last year.
More than half of collisions are caused by careless driving.
Bev and Steve Gough lost their daughter Naomi shortly after her 19th birthday on January 10th 2007.
Naomi had just returned from a holiday to Blackpool before she was killed in a crash returning from work that evening in Halifax.
Mr and Mrs Gough set up a road safety charity, the Naomi Cheri Gough Foundation, in their daughter's memory. Speaking on what happened to Naomi, they said: "It's been a nightmare since. You live a life sentence and it’s always like the horrors of that night were only yesterday.
“After tea, she gave me a hug and she told me that she loved me and that was the last time I saw her alive.
“Something that really hurts to this day and always will do, is that we couldn’t have a wedding for her. As a proud father, I didn’t have the honour of walking her down the aisle in white. The only way we could do that was in a white coffin and that will never go away.
"Naomi had plans, she wanted to get married and have children. We should have more grandchildren. Our grandchildren, who never met Naomi ask, ‘how many cousins should they have?’. We were robbed of our future, we had to start again without Naomi.”
The West Yorkshire Vision Zero partnership consists of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, the five local authorities, Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds, Wakefield, West Yorkshire Police, West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, National Highways, victim support services, and road safety campaigners.
For more information and to have your say visit https://www.yourvoice.westyorks-ca.gov.uk/ltp.