Here is a copy of the article in full.TfL forced to apologise for made-up accident statisticsThe Sunday Telegraph8 Sep 2024By Steve BirdFather Simon Brandes of St Nicholas Church in Chiswick is worried that TfL plans to make a major roundabout safer could mean funerals and weddings will not be able to negotiate a hairpin bend‘These changes will help reduce road danger at Hogarth, particularly for motorcyclists’TRANSPORT for London (TfL) has been forced to issue an apology after using “made-up” data to justify a multi-million pound upgrade to a major roundabout.Sadiq Khan’s transport authority insisted that Hogarth Roundabout in Chiswick, West London, needed “increased space for walking and cycling” to help achieve the mayor’s goal of “eliminating death and serious injury” from the capital’s roads.An online consultation said the £5 million works – which included reducing speed limits from 40mph to 30mph – were necessary due to the high number of motorcyclists injured at that spot on the busy A4.Documents claimed TfL statisticians had found that during just 18 months – from January 2022 to June 2023 – there were 25 slight, and five serious, motorcycle collisions at the roundabout.Penny Rees, TfL’s head of Healthy Streets Investment, told the consultation: “These proposed changes will help reduce road danger at Hogarth Roundabout, particularly for motorcyclists.”Chiswick residents, surprised by the suggestion that almost two motorcyclists were being injured every month, submitted Freedom of Information requests for accurate data.They established that TfL had inflated the motorcycle collision rate tenfold, getting the time period and the number of motorcyclists involved completely wrong.Instead of 25 slight, and five serious, motorcyclist injuries, there were in fact only five slight, and one serious, injuries at that roundabout.And, rather than being over 18 months, the six motorcycle collisions took place over 36 months: double the time frame.It meant the true motorcycle collision rate was 0.17 per month, not the 1.7 TfL had claimed. TfL updated its online consultation with the accurate data and apologised for the “error”.It has now extended the consultation by one week, until Sept 12, after which it will decide whether to approve the scheme.Jack Emsley, Hounslow Conservative councillor for the Chiswick Homefields ward, said that the mistake was “scandalous” and had “eroded trust” in TfL. The councillor‘Hogarth Roundabout ranks in the capital’s top 10 per cent of junctions in terms of road safety risk’said he wholeheartedly backed measures to make roads safer, adding: “This means, though, that we need to be able to trust the information given to us by TfL when being consulted on issues like these.“It’s a real scandal that TfL got its figures so incredibly wrong for this consultation, and seemingly only corrected them following a Freedom of Information request from local residents.“Sadly, inaccurate statistics now seem to be a pattern across a number of TfL consultations, and it is eroding trust in the organisation.“I don’t know how TfL arrived at its original figures, which were so inaccurate that they look almost made-up, but I do know that it now calls into question the reasoning behind the initial proposals.”In June, TfL was forced to apologise and update an official safety review into the dangers posed to pedestrians by cyclists on “floating” bus stops after an investigation into its data revealed “glaring omissions”.TfL had initially claimed only four pedestrians were injured – two seriously – between 2020 and 2022 at bus stops where a cycle lane runs between the stop and the pavement, and a zebra crossing is installed in the hope cyclists will give wayBut analysis by The Telegraph and the National Federation of the Blind of the UK established there were in fact six collisions, three serious, at the city’s floating bus stops.Referring to the Hogarth Roundabout “errors”, Ms Rees from TfL said: “There is an urgent need to tackle danger at Hogarth Roundabout, which ranks amongst the capital’s top 10 per cent of junctions in terms of road safety risk.“The decision to proceed with a consultation for the scheme was based on this analysis, rather than the figures that were published in our consultation materials.“We apologise for publishing incorrect figures and we have made everyone who had responded to the consultation aware.”
Adrian Irving ● 39d