Brentford & Isleworth's Most Dangerous Junctions Named

Data on injuries pedestrians shows four high risk locations

Great West Road at the junction with Syon Lane. Picture: Google Streetview

November 24, 2023

A report by the London Cycling Campaign (LCC) has identified a number of particularly high risk junctions in the Brentford and Isleworth areas.

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 analysis reveals that the most dangerous junction for pedestrians in the borough, and also the seventeenth most dangerous in London, is at the point where Syon Lane crosses the Great West Road. There have been five pedestrians injured there during the period under review including the death of an 88-year-old man who was hit by a car in June of last year.

A number of people have raised concerns about the lack of safe crossing points at the junctions and the length of time it takes to cross during pedestrian phases which encourages some to attempt to cross when the traffic is not at a red phase.

There are three other junctions in the area close to the Great West Road which also saw fatalities – Jersey Parade, Thornbury Road and Boston Manor Road.

Hounslow local authority area has three in the top 50 for the whole of London. There were eight fatalities overall in the borough involving people on foot.

For cyclists, the data presents a better picture with the borough as a whole having a low incidence of injuries. 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.

The most dangerous spot in the TW7 and TW8 areas is at the junction of Twickenham Road and Park Road which saw four cyclist injuries over two years, two serious and two slight making it the second most dangerous in the borough.

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.

Michael Robinson, Co-ordinator Hounslow Cycling said, “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,"