A CYCLING charity has thrown its support behind the Telegraph & Argus Stop The Danger Drivers campaign - as it launches a road safety project of its own.
Sustainable transport charity Sustrans has urged Bradford to back our initiative - which instigated a crackdown on bad drivers by the police - and also adopt its own one aimed at getting rid of death and serious injuries on the roads.
Dave Stevens, of Sustrans, said: "We back the Telegraph & Argus campaign but urge Bradford to go even further and to adopt Vision Zero, a road traffic safety project aimed at creating roads with zero fatalities or serious injuries, including slower speeds on streets in built up areas and cycle lanes separate from the traffic.
"Sweden launched Vision Zero in 1997 and halved road deaths in Sweden between 2000 and 2009."
In 2014, 1,775 people died on Britain's roads and 22,807 were seriously injured, said Sustrans.
Mr Stevens, who lives in Bradford, said Vision Zero had been picked up by Brighton and Hove, Edinburgh and Northern Ireland but that Sustrans believed it needed to be rolled out across the whole of the UK.
He said: "Sustrans wants buy-in from the UK and devolved governments to ensure the right policies are in place to create safer streets such as a default of 20mph in residential areas and for safer segregated cycling infrastructure on all main roads.
"Small steps are being taken, such as the cycle superhighway being built between Bradford and Leeds, but funding for cycling infrastructure (in England outside of London) is likely to drop £4 per head to less than £1 per head."
Mr Stevens, who said Sustrans was probably most famous in Bradford for the "big red bridge across Manchester Road", added: "We support any initiative which helps to reduce road traffic incidents, but part of the approach has to include looking at reducing the amount and overall speed of traffic on the roads.
"We know from our previous work in Bradford that when we do put good quality walking and cycling infrastructure on the routes that people need to travel, that many more people do choose to walk and cycle for their everyday local journeys.
"That will help to calm our streets and help to introduce healthier lifestyles. It will also be a much more attractive and cleaner environment in which to live and work."
Paul Corcoran, of Pennine Cycles on Thornton Road, which has a cycling club with about 50 members, also backed the T&A campaign.
He said he noticed "crazy manoeuvres and fast drivers" every day on Bradford's roads, but that his 34 years of cycling experience had enabled him to be "aware of everything going on around him".
l Have you got footage of dangerous driving in Bradford? E-mail newsdesk@telegraphandargus.co.uk.
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