This year I’m embarking on a year-long journalistic project, Project Pedestrian, in which I’ll investigate road safety through the lens of pedestrian deaths on pavements in 2020. The project is the brainchild of me, inspired by Gary Younge’s (Guardian Editor at large) year-long project on knife deaths in youngsters, Beyond the Blade. I’ll be supported by the University of Westminster’s Active Travel Academy (see previous blog post) and in particular, Dr Rachel Aldred, reader in transport at the University - who will conduct much of the data analysis.
I’ve built my second ever website for the project - on which I’ll keep all the news, features, analysis, etc., updated.
Through the year I will produce pen portraits of each of the projected 40 pedestrian pavement deaths in the UK in 2020, talk to consenting families and experts and conduct a detailed follow-up of at least one death. Rachel and the ATA will undertake data analysis of pavement deaths from the last 15 years, from which we will identify trends and try to find out why people die on footways and verges and what the potential solutions are.
The project will look at who is affected by danger on pavements, the impacts, the vehicles and the drivers involved, and how justice is done.
We hope with this project to start a conversation, and look at ways to tackle road danger as a society.
This website will collate cases, along with news, features and analysis of pedestrian fatalities on footways and verges in England.
Although it’s a sad topic I’m looking forward to looking at a subject in-depth for a year, to investigating some of the issues we as a society face around road danger, and what some of the solutions are.
I’ll use the hashtag #projejctpedestrian - do keep in touch and tweet me your thoughts