New Analysis Shows Chiswick's Most Dangerous Junctions

Data on injuries to cyclists and pedestrians shows area is relatively safe

The junction with Duke Road has had the joint highest number of collisions

November 19, 2023

A new report by the London Cycling Campaign (LCC) appears to indicate that Chiswick is a relatively safe place both to walk and cycle.

The group has released a new interactive map showing where London's most dangerous junctions for cycling and walking are situated. For the first time, LCC's mapping covers all of London, and can be filtered to find the most dangerous junctions for pedestrians as well as those cycling – and by borough. The map uses the latest, recently released 'Stats19' emergency services response data for 2018-2022.

The data suggests that both Chiswick and the rest of Hounslow Borough have a low incidence of injuries to cyclists. Only one junction in the borough appears in the top fifty across the capital. This is at a spot on the A4 near Hounslow West which where the borough’s only cyclist fatality covered in the report occurred in 2019.

Within the borough, although Chiswick is over represented in the top twenty most dangerous locations, only one spot, the junction of Wellesley Road and Burlington Road, appears in the top ten with two serious and three slight injuries being suffered by cyclists. Changes have since been made to the junction layout with the aim of making it safer. The junction of Duke Road and Chiswick High Road had the joint highest number of collisions resulting in injury but six out of seven were slight so the spot has a relatively low Danger Metric based on the methodology used to compile the report.

*Chiswick locations in bold

However, just over the border in Hammersmith & Fulham there are two junctions with a much higher danger ranking for cyclists. Where Stamford Brook Road meets Goldhawk Road by the Duchess pub has seen two serious cyclist casualties and nine slight casualties and the Weltje Road junction with King Street had three serious and six slight collisions involving cyclists during the period covered by the report.

The most dangerous junction for cyclists in the capital is in Tooting where Cycle 'SuperHighway' CS7 is intersected by a number of side roads. CS7 at this point is 'wand' protected cycle tracks but the LCC says both wand placement and side road treatments are poor and that the lack of treatment of the 'ratruns' with LTNs is the big issue. 29 cyclists have been injured at this junction over five years, 11 of them seriously.

For pedestrians there are no junctions at all in Chiswick in the twenty ranked as most dangerous in the borough but the local authority area as whole has three in the top 50 for the whole of London. There were eight fatalities involving people on foot across Hounslow with the top danger rank being given to the Syon Lane/ Great West Road/ Northumberland Avenue Spur Road. This junction had one pedestrian death, one serious injury and three slight injuries to rank it has the 17th most dangerous in London. Most of the junctions with the highest Danger Metric were in the vicinity of the A4.

Michael Robinson, Co-ordinator Hounslow Cycling said, “The LCC dangerous junction tool is a useful resource to highlight the locations where there has been the most harm to people walking and cycling so residents can ask for action to address this.

“One of the problem junctions in Chiswick has recently been remodelled by Hounslow Council with measures to slow traffic.

“The map highlights the danger created in particular for pedestrians by the A4 in Hounslow. The road severs local communities with a number of fatalities at inadequate crossings.”

Junctions and crossing points are where a significant proportion of serious and fatal collisions happen in London and in general. The LCC says that junction design has long been understood to be one of the key methods of not only reducing road danger but also enabling more people to walk and cycle comfortably and safely.

LCC's map has been a year in development to use an algorithm that treats nearby junctions as 'clusters' (so larger gyratories, or complex multi-junction systems show up), uses five years of emergency services data for 'slight', 'serious' and 'fatal' collisions weighted by DfT 'value' factors, and weights newer collisions higher so junctions where traffic patterns have changed or improvements have been made are progressively downweighted, and factors in multi-victim collisions too.

Tom Fyans, Chief Executive of LCC says, "Behind this horrific data are hundreds of stories of families torn apart by tragedy and lives changed forever. The Mayor has committed to a 'Vision Zero' of London by 2041 – but that would mean over 17 years more fatal and serious collisions for Londoners. Whilst cycling and indeed walking and wheeling remain relatively safe, healthy ways of getting about London, TfL, the Mayor and our boroughs must move faster and be bolder on road danger to stem the human cost posed by dangerous junctions and poor road designs,"