Cycling campaigners demanded changes to a busy road where an Italian waitress was killed by a lorry months before her death, it emerged yesterday.
Lucia Ciccioli, 32, was knocked down on Lavender Hill in Battersea at around 8am on October 24.
She was pronounced dead at the scene.
A lorry driver stopped at the scene and was not arrested.
Well-known cycling campaigner Jon Irwin today revealed to the Standard that he contacted Wandsworth Council in August in a bid to change “grim” road safety policies on Lavender Hill and a nearby road.
However he was told by council bosses that rules on safety procedures on the road, and nearby Queenstown Road, will only be reviewed if three people are killed or 12 seriously injured within a certain distance of each other.
The council said Lavender Hill is managed by Transport for London and that it was not a matter for them.
They told Irwin that London-wide accident reduction targets relate to the number of people killed or seriously injured but said their investigations are “triggered by all road traffic accidents”. Road safety policy set out for local government in the London Implementation Plan states that accident reduction targets – used to improve safety measures on certain roads – are based on the number of people killed or seriously injured in one area.
According to Wandsworth Council guidelines, an investigation into improving road safety would be triggered by three fatal road traffic accidents within a 50m radius of a junction.
Investigations could also be launched if 12 accidents happen within a year on a 1km stretch of road. The 36-year-old, from Tooting, said: “What I want to see done is have these guidelines changed.
“I’m lucky that I’m not campaigning burdened with the trauma of having lost somebody on the roads.
“Every time you see this happen you think, ‘it could have been me or it could have been one of my mates.
To have that happen and get told, ‘your statistic isn’t enough’ – this needs to stop.
“Every tragedy needs to be reviewed in itself; no one should have to lose their life to have things changed.”
Simon Monk, infrastructure campaigner at the London Cycling Campaign, said action needed to be taken more quickly to prevent deaths on the roads.