Critical Safety Issues for Walking, Wheeling and Cycling

Active Travel England (ATE) has published guidance on Critical Safety Issues for walking, wheeling and cycling. There are sixteen of them.

What is a Critical Safety Issue?

A Critical Safety Issue is defined as a street layout or condition that is associated with an increased risk of collisions for people walking, wheeling or cycling.

ATE’s guidance illustrates and explains each of the issues, and provides links to relevant guidance and evidence.

Examples of Critical Safety Issues

These are some of the more interesting Critical Safety Issues.

Conflict at Side Roads (Issue 1)

This issue involves conflict at side roads between turning drivers, and pedestrians or cyclists going straight on.

It applies where more than 2,500 vehicles per day make the turn, because evidence shows that this leads to more ‘forced yields’ (by pedestrians to drivers).

Remedies include tighter turning radii or continuous raised footways.

Road markings to highlight the presence of cyclists, and give them legal priority over turning drivers, can be used. Parallel crossings are another solution.

Conflicts at Roundabouts and Signal Junctions (Issue 2)

There are Critical Safety Issues at roundabouts and signal-controlled junctions where more than 2,500 vehicles per day turn across a main walking, wheeling or cycling movement.

Cyclists turning right at signalised junctions face particular risks.

The main method to resolve these issues is to separate pedestrians and cyclists from motor vehicles in time or space.

Lane Widths (Issue 3)

Lanes in the range 3.25-3.9m represent a Critical Safety Issue for people on bikes, because drivers may try to overtake them when there is not enough space – for example when there is oncoming traffic. This can result in ‘shunt’ or ‘clip’ collisions.

With lanes narrower than 3.25m, it is usually clear to drivers that there is not enough space to overtake within the lane.

One solution can be ‘removal of centre line’.

Another, where there are two opposing lanes of 3.65m, is to create one lane at 3.25m and the other at 4.05m.

Pedestrian refuges can narrow lanes to the critical width. To solve this, replace them with zebra or puffin crossings that do not require central islands.

As a related point, evidence shows that advisory cycle lanes increase the odds of people on bikes being injured by 34%.

Trip Hazards (Issue 4)

Trip hazards are where there are level differences of more than 13mm, without colour or contrast to make them easy to detect.

Kerbside Activity (Issue 5)

This Critical Safety Issue is present when a cycle facility is next to parking or a loading bay, and there isn’t a 0.5m buffer.

Provision of Crossings (Issue 6)

This issue highlights the danger of busy streets (more than 8,000 vehicles per day) where controlled crossings are more than 400m apart.

There’s also a problem on less busy streets where visibility at desire lines is blocked by parked vehicles.

Standards of Crossings (Issue 7)

A Critical Safety Issue arises when pedestrians are expected to cross two or more lanes of a busy road without a priority crossing.

‘It is also considered present at signal-controlled junctions or roundabouts where there are arms with dropped kerbs and tactile paving, but no dedicated signalised pedestrian crossing is provided regardless of traffic flows’.

Motor Traffic Speed and Volume (Issues 8 and 9)

There is a Critical Safety Issue for pedestrians crossing, and cyclists riding along, a road where the 85th percentile speed is over 30mph.

The same applies where the volume of motor vehicle traffic is over 1,000 in the busiest hour.

The issues can be resolved by:

• reducing the speed of motor traffic or
• providing controlled crossings for pedestrians and protected facilities for cycling

Footway Widths (Issue 11)

Narrow footways represent Critical Safety Issues where:

• clear footway width is less than 1m
• clear footway width is less than 1.5m for a continuous width of over 6m or
• there is 1.5 to 2m of footway width on a busy pavement

Guard Rails (Issue 16)

Guard rails can represent a Critical Safety Issue if there is a risk of cyclists or pedestrians being crushed against them by motor vehicles.

Guard rails should not normally be used on staggered crossings.