MPS road safety activity

Report: 09
Date: 28 November 2002
By: Commissioner

Summary

This report outlines MPS Road Safety activity carried out by the Traffic Operational Command Unit, Borough Operational Command Units, the London Safety Camera Partnership and the enforcement processes of the Central Driving Offences Unit.

A. Recommendation

Members are asked to note the report.

B. Supporting information

Organisation structure, roles, duties and resources

1. The Traffic Operational Command Unit has now been incorporated into the newly formed Traffic & Transport Branch. This development followed the setting up of the Transport OCU to provide a strategic co-ordinated approach to ensure the objectives of each of the OCUs are met, as shown in Appendix 1.

2. The objectives and associated performance indicators of the Traffic OCU are shown at Appendix 2.

3. The Branch Inspection and Review process is outlined at Appendix 3.

4. Traffic OCU Structure:

The Area Chief Inspector is responsible for the day to day running of the unit and has responsibility for achieving objectives within that geographic area.

5. Although the number of traffic officers has been declining since the 1980’s, as shown at Appendix 4, this trend is now reversing. The Budgeted Workforce Target (BWT) for 2002/03 is 647, following support staff and posts being transferred to other OCUs within the Traffic & Transport Branch. The current strength is in excess of 50 below BWT and although 54 constables have been selected there is an on going recruitment campaign, including from other forces, to take account of natural wastage.

6. Traffic officers are tasked both locally through intelligence led patrols and centrally by a central control room based at New Scotland Yard. This central control function is soon to be integrated into the joint MPS/TfL Traffic & Transport Branch control room based at Buckingham Palace Road to provide a co-ordinated approach to both traffic and transport generally.

7. Significant events during the year have impacted on the MPS in general but particularly on the Traffic OCU. Traffic officers are regularly deployed on pre planned public order events, which notably have included the Queen Mother’s Funeral, the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations and the Notting Hill Carnival. In September 250 traffic officers were deployed on the Countryside Alliance March.

Borough road safety and traffic regulation enforcement

8. Individual Borough Commanders are responsible for the strategic management of their borough, taking account of the MPS Policing Plan, local Crime & Disorder Strategy and Community Safety Plan. They prioritise resources in consultation with borough partners to police the community effectively. Account will also now need to be taken of the Home Secretary’s National Policing Plan. MPA members’ views are sought on what priority they give to road policing issues against other priorities.

9. The MPS is one of the pilot sites for ‘field impairment testing’ to identify drivers impaired as a result of drug taking. Both traffic officers and officers from boroughs are involved in this pilot. The results of the pilot are due to be returned to the Home Office along with any recommendations at the end of 2002.

Road death and casualty statistics for recent years

10. Road death and casualty statistics for 2001 are attached at Appendix 5. The type of road user killed together with the figures per borough for 2001 are attached at Appendix 6. A recent policy change has been introduced to ensure that collisions that relate only to cycles, where no other motor vehicle is involved, can be recorded more accurately.

Although the number of fatal collisions has remained at the same level over the past five years, the number of serious injuries has reduced significantly. Three key areas would have been responsible for this reduction:

• social behaviour has changed in relation to drink driving and wearing of seat belts as a result of public education campaigns.
• vehicle design with the introduction of occupant protection such as air bags and safety seats
• enforcement activity including the introduction of safety cameras and national themed campaigns

Appendix 6 shows that design and enforcement activity is required to address pedestrian and powered two-wheeler casualty rates, particularly in central London locations.

Incident location mapping

11. Collision [1] hot spot data is improving with the introduction of new IT systems. This results in better targeting of speed enforcement. An example of the map information generated is attached. This shows the collision hotspots, together with crime hotspots (street crime) and in fact shows the collision and crime hotspots in the same areas.

Initiatives promoting road safety

12. In addition to individual borough initiatives, including high profile enforcement activity dedicated to areas around schools and good practice taking place in Havering and Merton boroughs, Traffic OCU is following closely the National “Think” Campaign calendar of activity in its own programme of themed enforcement.

13. By taking part in this themed campaign the MPS is able to benefit from national advertising produced by the Department for Transport and is supporting Government policy as part of a consistent and concerted campaign of activity being carried out across the UK.

The following themed campaigns have and are planned to take place in 2002.

14. Additionally, work is being carried out to focus upon powered two wheelers in a ‘Bike Safe’ campaign to target the mature motorcyclists returning to motorcycling who are increasingly becoming victims of fatal road collisions.

15. In relation to MPS themed enforcement campaigns targeting speeding motorists, two themed enforcement campaigns were undertaken in April (in support of the national theme) and June. Another is planned for November. The following results were obtained:

• April: 106 Fixed Penalty Notices Issued, together with 91 motorists being reported for summons.
• June: 807 Fixed Penalty Notices Issued, together with 229 motorists being reported for summons.

It is not possible to break down these results to determine how many of these offences were for speeding.

Safer Streets impact

16. Following the Prime Minister’s announcement in February 2002 that street robbery was a priority issue for police forces to address, 230 traffic constables together with 14 unmarked and 46 marked police vehicles were seconded to “Operation Safer Streets” in support of Borough Command Units. (Senior Collision Investigators were exempt from this duty)

17. This temporary reallocation of resources was an unqualified success in reducing street crime levels in London. Throughout this time the OCU maintained its intelligence work around collision hot spots and some themed enforcement activity in support of the National “Think” campaign.

18. During phase 2 of Operation “Safer Streets” the OCU’S commitment was reduced to 70 officers, 7 unmarked vehicles and 19 marked vehicles. All Traffic Officers have now returned to traffic duties. However, Traffic OCU officers will be required to assist other MPS specialist units to escort army units to the scene of incidents during the planned Fire Brigade strikes.

Traffic speed enforcement

Prosecution policy for vehicles driving at higher than permitted speeds

19. The current MPS guidelines issued to operational officers reflect the over arching discretion given to a constable. It remains a decision for the individual to assess all the pertinent facts and decide on the appropriate resolution of the offence. The options are to warn the driver, issue a Fixed Penalty Notice (dependant upon the speed) or to report for summons. The London Safety Camera Partnership, in agreement with DfT, has set an objective to work toward the ACPO guidelines.

Current speed restriction methods

20. The MPS has a variety of tactical options available. Traffic patrol cars are fitted with calibrated speedometers enabling speeding vehicles to be tracked, at a constant distance, and the offender dealt with. Some patrol cars have in-car speed detection equipment, VASCAR or Pilot, which allow more sophisticated monitoring of vehicle speeds. A number of hand held speed detection devices are available for use in areas where complaints from members of the public indicate a speed related problem. These options are supported by fixed site speed cameras, which are being reinforced, by recently acquired mobile enforcement cameras provided by the LSCP.

21. The emphasis must be on prevention, not enforcement, so regular liaison takes place with the boroughs to determine if other engineering options would be more effective. These include introduction of speed humps, gateways, physical barriers giving priority over oncoming traffic and 20mile per hour zones. The Government requirement is for roadside cameras to be conspicuous to reinforce the ambition of changing driver behaviour rather than catching as many people as possible.

Distribution of safety cameras across London

22. This will change year on year as new casualty sites are identified, surveyed and deemed suitable for camera treatment. There are around 650 safety camera sites (split roughly 50:50 between red light and speed) in London. The Partnership has identified a further 1,000 areas that meet the DfT criteria and could potentially benefit from camera enforcement. It is envisaged the Partnership will address all these areas during the lifetime of the Partnership.

Capital/revenue/processing systems and costs

23. The total cost of the MPS activity in support of safety camera operations is borne by the LSCP. The funding is dependant upon the steady detection of offences and a significant percentage of those being converted to paid Conditional Offer of Fixed Penalty. Only monies from paid conditional offers are refundable to the Partnership to offset operating costs. In 2001/02 the MPS issued 73,967 postal fixed penalties to drivers captured by cameras committing speed or red light offences. 8,883 drivers were brought before a court for these offences and 7,159 people were prosecuted for failing to identify who was driving their car at the time it was photographed

24. The cost of the current MPS operation is around £3.1 million, rising to nearly £4 million for the year 2003/4

Update on progress of London Safety Camera Partnership

25. MPA members will recall supporting the involvement of the MPS, as a core ‘risk bearing’ partner, in the creation of the London Safety Camera Partnership (LSCP). The LSCP has been active since 1 April 2002, funded through the Department for Transport DfT ‘cost recovery’ scheme and has provided the platform for significant structured investment in improving offence detection, at specific sites where a tangible reduction in killed and seriously injured casualties can be achieved, and subsequent offender processing.

26. Detailed analysis of traffic speed through locations with a high casualty record, a precursor to acceptance into the DfT scheme, proved that the speed of traffic in various parts of the MPS area is totally unacceptable. This continues to be proven by the number of offenders detected by fixed cameras despite a relatively high enforcement threshold. The performance of the LSCP is monitored on a monthly basis.

27. The LSCP has started to address a number of operational issues, in accordance with its DfT approved Operational Case, which will in turn lead to improved performance overall. A considerable number of fixed sites have had to undergo remedial engineering work to make them operational, which in turn has hampered activity.

The future direction of MPS road safety work

28. Working together with the recently created TfL Road Safety Unit, available resources are committed to certain areas by a centrally controlled MPS Traffic Tasking Group. The deployments reflect detailed analysis of both collision casualty data, local crime pattern analysis and any other current initiative. This is an integral part of the Commissioner’s over arching strategy ‘to deny criminals use of the streets’.

MPS prosecutions

29. Competing demands for available resources has seen road policing fall down the agenda. Pressure on Criminal Justice Units to process criminal cases has seen traffic violations ignored. This is being addressed by the dedicated Criminal Justice Unit for traffic offences being created at Sidcup, Kent within the Central Driving Offence Unit. The paper on this proposal went before the MPA Finance Committee on Thursday 14th November 2002.

What opportunities does technology bring

30. A number of pan London technologies bring the opportunity for enhanced community safety. Developing and building upon existing Partnership arrangements we have secured access to this information.

31. Safety cameras capture images of circa 300,000 vehicles and as they are processed these contribute to the quality of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency database. Many cases of cloned or duplicated vehicle registration marks are revealed, details of which are forwarded to the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) teams whose success rate in detecting travelling criminals is phenomenal. The MPS is moving to develop a central intelligence unit to co-odinate use of the various ANPR systems currently in use.

32. The 200 congestion charging cameras, operated by TfL, will provide details of vehicle movements. The MPS has negotiated access to this information which will assist MPS crime analysts in their tracking of target criminals and recidivist offenders.

33. The sharing of information between partners is the key to delivering enhanced safety on the streets, avoiding duplication of effort, allowing more informed and focused deployment of officers who know why they are there and what they are looking for.

Borough enforcement activity

34. Higher speed range offences are dealt with by summons on boroughs. Data for these reported offences is not collated centrally. There were 9,894 fixed penalty tickets issued for speeding offences between April 2001 and March 2002. The number of fixed penalties issued by post in the same period for camera-detected offences was 73,967. It must be noted that approximately 20% of these were for red traffic light offences.

Collision investigations

MPS guidelines and policy for investigating road traffic collisions

35. The MPS has accepted as policy the ACPO Road Death Investigation Manual. This manual builds on the principles enshrined within the CID Murder Investigation Manual and advocates similar procedures and practices in relation to dealing with the investigation of what is a sudden and tragic death. In particular, the MPS has adopted policy around the appointment of a Senior Investigating Officer for each such collision and the use of Family Liaison Officers to help grieving families, relatives and friends during and after the investigative and judicial processes.

36. Furthermore, the Home Office announced in Circular 13/02 that all Police Collisions that result in a fatality of a member of the public were to be treated as a death in police custody. These investigations remain to be carried out by Traffic OCU appropriately trained officers but are subject to supervision by both the PCA and our own Department for Professional Standards.

37. Each of the five Traffic Garages has a Collision Investigation Unit. Sergeants perform the role of Senior Investigating Officers and Constables perform the role of Collision Investigators, Family Liaison Officers (following appropriate training) and statement takers. Staffing levels for Collision Investigation Units:

Notes:

• Brackets denotes number of staff trained to City & Guilds standard
• FLO function is undertaken as an additional role by the Investigators

These statistics are used by managers to determine appropriate staffing levels at garages in terms of distribution of work load and response times to collisions.

38. In 2001 there were 351 fatal collisions investigated by Traffic Collision Investigation Units. These collisions represent 368 deaths reducing to 297 confirmed fatal collisions after application of DfT guidelines. DfT exclude collisions, which occur as a result of:

• Sudden death prior to the collision e.g. heart attack
• Death of unborn infants
• Where death occurs later than 30 days after the collision
• Where the collision occurs on private property.

39. However, all collisions require the same standard of investigation in order to present the case before the Coroner and, where necessary, at a criminal trial. Investigations can be complicated by the number of witnesses involved. e.g one collision involved over 100 witnesses, all of whom were traced, interviewed and provided a statement. Failing to stop collisions involve much work to identify and trace the vehicle and its driver.

40. Trained family liaison officers provide support for all families and victims involved in fatal collisions. This support remains in place throughout the course of investigations, any criminal proceedings, Inquest and beyond if necessary. Traffic officers employed in collision investigation units have received numerous letters of thanks and appreciation for their work in this sphere.

41. Family Liaison Officers (FLO’s) have been trained in Traffic Division since 1999. The course has been carefully designed and includes diversity as a strand throughout and involves outside speakers from bereavement organisations together with victims families.

Continuous improvement

42. The development of the Traffic & Transport Branch structure, co-ordinating the work of several OCUs in partnership with TfL, with a clear process of monitoring achievements against objectives, provides a real opportunity for tackling quality of life issues relating to roads and the transport system in London. There is also the development of a dedicated CJU to deal with traffic process and work in hand with the Greater London Magistrates Courts to set up dedicated courts to deal with traffic prosecutions.

C. Equality and diversity implications

Employment

The Traffic OCU currently has 20 female officers (3.2% of the Traffic strength, compared to 16.4% of MPS strength) and 12 officers from minority ethnic backgrounds (2% of Traffic strength compared to 5.2% of MPS strength). Positive action recruitment drives (including seeking applications from other forces) are ongoing to achieve an appropriate percentage balance.

Disproportionality

The Traffic OCU is aware of the work currently being progressed by the MPS Diversity Directorate in developing a Fair Practice Monitoring process, (in consultation with the MPA and the GLA) and how best to ensure that pan London units monitor disproportionality in stop and searches, arrests etc. Guidance on this is awaited.

D. Financial implications

There are no financial implications in relation to this paper

E. Background papers

• MPA Paper - Proposal to set up Centralised Traffic Criminal Justice Unit, 14/11/02

F. Contact details

Report authors: Commander Jo Kaye

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

Appendix 1: Traffic & Transport Branch mission and key principles

Mission

• Fast and safe transport with the criminal denied access to the roads & public transport

Key principles

• Accurate and timely intelligence
• Rapid deployment
• Effective tactics
• Relentless follow-up and assessment

Organisation structure

Appendix 2: Traffic OCU objectives

Objective 1: Make London Roads Safer

Objective 2: To provide an effective response to the Strategic Road Network

Objective 3: To protect Londoners from security threats, criminal activity and public disorder

Appendix 3: traffic and transport branch inspection and review

Appendix 4: Traffic patrol strength

* strength excluding MPS boundary change secondments

** strength including MPS boundary change secondments

Appendix 5: Road death and casualty rates in London 1997-2001

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