Dangerous Junctions Map Updated

The London Cycling Campaign has updated its Dangerous Junctions mapping, highlighting across London and by borough the most dangerous junctions for cycling, walking and wheeling for Londoners.

The new map, launching during Brake’s Road Safety Week 2025, covers five years of emergency services data including newly-released 2024 data. LCC updates the map annually in order to highlight to the Mayor, TfL, the police, London’s councils and the public that we know where road danger is, but all too often do nothing about it.

As well as the mapping, this year, LCC also launches a new and ongoing email for you to send to the Mayor to tell him to improve his and TfL’s response to dangerous junctions.

We’ve also followed up what has happened to the families, friends and with the councils, TfL and police around fatal collisions at ten notorious junctions. Because this isn’t just about kerbs and signals – it’s about lives lost and ruined, and the shameful inaction of too many of London’s leaders.

“Shatha’s passing has left an immeasurable void in our lives, and we continue to grieve for the light that was taken away from us too soon. Shatha was full of kindness, laughter and compassion. She brought joy wherever she went, and her presence had a way of brightening the darkest of days.

“Whether it was through her infectious laugh, her generosity of spirit, or her quiet acts of care, she touched the lives of everyone who knew her. Shatha was the ninth cyclist to die at the Holborn gyratory since 2008, and we are passionate to ensure that she is the last. We need our city to be safe for all cyclists, so that no friends or family experience the same heartbreak that we live with daily”, Noor Ali, sister of Shatha Ali, killed cycling at Holborn, 2022

“Matheus’s presence in our lives was a light of incredible strength, he had a love to give that transcended everything. His presence is deeply missed by everyone whose life he touched. Matheus created a project to support local and underrepresented artists called Effervescent Sounds.

“He had a deep passion for music and built a wonderful community of musicians, hosting many beautiful shows. I’m so proud of everything he achieved with it. It was incredibly sad to hear that the ghost bike had been removed. We had created a special place there, with letters from friends, pictures and decorations.

“He used to say, ‘Celebrate life is my religion’ and this tribute is about that. Critical Mass were incredible in helping us place a second bike. Now, we need action from the police — we want to understand what caused this tragedy and see justice served,” Carol Sebben, close friend of Matheus Piovesan, killed cycling at Cable Street, 2024

“All too often the friends and family of those killed at a notorious collision hot spot face a shrug of the shoulders from TfL, the police and our local councils. We shouldn’t have to keep demanding action, protesting, wrestling change from uncaring authorities after yet another cycling fatality.

“The Mayor of London has committed to ending serious collisions on our roads. It’s time for him to take far bolder measures to do so,” Tom Fyans, Chief Executive, London Cycling Campaign

“We are grateful to LCC for all their work in highlighting the cost of inaction in tackling dangerous junctions across London and for telling the harrowing stories of some of the people whose lives have been lost on our roads. It is vital that as part of the upcoming Vision Zero Action Plan 2, TfL and the Mayor act quickly to make these junctions safe,” Jeremy Leach, Co-Founder, Action Vision Zero

The ‘ghost bike’ placed at the junction of Cable Street, memorialising the place where Matheus Piovesan lost his life riding through

Why aren’t these junctions being fixed faster?

LCC’s view is TfL has avoided or delayed years overdue changes to many junctions to avoid impacts to bus journey times – this is what council officers across London and even inside TfL tell us repeatedly is the primary cause of inaction: a calculation on what is acceptable in collision numbers versus impacts to bus journey times.

LCC’s view is ‘balancing’ such ideas is ludicrous given the real problem for bus journey times (too many cars) remains largely ignored and people keep dying.

Indeed, TfL could act on both bus journey times and road danger by more boldly separating buses from private motor vehicles using bus ‘priority’ measures, freeing up space and time for walking, cycling and public transport at junctions, by reducing capacity for private motor traffic.

That’s what LCC is asking the public to demand from the Mayor – bolder and more rapid action on junctions, that doesn’t ‘balance’ public transport and active travel safety but solves both.

The junction of Curtain Road, one of the top 10 most dangerous in London to cycle through

The toll of lives lost and inaction

In tracking the inaction of TfL, the Mayor, the Police and borough leaders, we today have followed up on ten dangerous junctions that have seen fatalities across London. Each of these fatal collisions have seen families and friends suffer terrible loss.

Each of those killed were simply trying to get around London by a largely safe, healthy mode of transport. And in each case, as is all too common, those with most power to take action on these issues – to prevent another fatal or life-ruining serious collision at these locations, known for being danger spots – have failed to do just about anything…

Below are summary versions of each of the ten fatalities we have followed up on and then in more detail…

Unnamed man, 20s, 13 January 2025, Stratford High Street/ Carpenters Road, Newham
Summary: A young business student in London for only a month killed by a lorry driver, but the inquest won’t happen until at least a year from the collision and TfL and Newham are years away from changes to any of the dangerous junctions on Stratford High Street.

Jamal Yahya Pratley, 24, 12 April 2025, New Oxford Street/ Bloomsbury Street, Camden
Summary: A well-liked London cyclist killed by a van at a hostile junction that’s part of a notorious east-west corridor where despite very high cycling volumes, and high rates of collisions, little has been done for too long, at least partly it appears because TfL balance bus journey times against lives lost.

Dean Jones, 27, 2 November 2024, West Hill (A3)/ Lytton Grove, Wandsworth
Summary: Despite pressure from the local MP Fleur Anderson and campaigners, Wandsworth council leader Cllr Simon Hogg has failed to engage over Dean’s death, while officers have defended the council’s safety reputation instead of pushing for changes to the junction.

Matheus Piovesan, 36, 6 July 2024, Cable Street/ Cannon Street Road, Tower Hamlets
Summary: Over a year on from an apparent hit-and-run at one of many poorly-designed junctions in Tower Hamlets along Cycleway 3/Cable Street, the police have gone quiet after having questioned multiple people involved and all Tower Hamlets council has done is tried to remove the white ‘ghost’ bike marking the spot where Matheus was killed.

Unnamed woman, 33, 19 March 2024, Farringdon Road/ Clerkenwell Road, Camden/ Islington
Summary: TfL’s decision to route Cycleway 6 away from main roads and onto a tangle of back streets, while most people have just kept cycling north up Farringdon Road, had disastrous consequences for a “perfect PhD student”. Yet over a year on, there is little sign TfL want to deliver Cycleways where they’re needed, not where is most convenient for them.

Unnamed man, 53, 5 December 2023, Old Kent Road/ St James Road, Southwark
Summary: Two years on from this fatality at one of the most dangerous junctions for cycling in Southwark, the police and TfL are silent, while an Old Kent Road overhaul is possibly decades away and simple changes appear not to have been considered for this seven-lane monster junction.

Unnamed woman, 20s, 15 September 2023, The Duck In Pond roundabout, Harrow
Summary: Range Rover driver gets slap on wrist for killing woman in her 20s who’d recently moved to London, Harrow Council goes on to do next to nothing at junction.

Unnamed man, 40s, 14 August 2023, Great Eastern Street/Curtain Road, Hackney
Summary: Two years on, TfL barely acknowledges the cycling fatality here. Its scheme  for the junction means it will remain dangerous for cycling, and the police have gone silent.

Dr Marta Krawiec, 41, 28 May 2021 and Shatha Ali, 39, 1 March 2022, Holborn, Camden
Summary: Since fatal collisions with an eminent paediatrician and a rising lawyer, plus LCC protests, Camden Council and TfL have tackled the key points at Holborn junctions to improve them, with Camden also announcing further plans to transform the remaining junctions and area. Political will at least here has resulted in life-saving changes – it can be done.

The LCC Dangerous Junctions Map – click to view it in full

LCC’s new top 10 dangerous junctions

Today, LCC releases its new interactive mapping highlighting the most dangerous junctions in London and each of its boroughs for walking/wheeling and cycling.

As before, our map clusters nearby junctions and analysis emergency services Stats19 data across five years, weighting collisions by severity and recency to create a map of the most dangerous junctions for either pedestrians or those cycling, for all of London or by borough.

This new update shows that the most dangerous junction for cycling remains the Upper Tooting Road cluster of rat-runs that have seen little to no action from Wandsworth Council or TfL, despite having won this dubious distinction for all three of LCC’s annual updates on dangerous junctions in a row.

The last five years data show the junctions around the Ansell Road, Lessingham Avenue and Derinton Road rat-runs as they cross Upper Tooting Road are seriously injuring two cyclists a year on average and slightly injuring four more.

The same Cycle SuperHighway C7 corridor also appears for the third most dangerous junction again at Clapham High Street and Gauden Road (as featured in The Guardian and on GCN recently). And now at number eight with Balham High Road and Ramsden Road.

The second most dangerous junction for cycling remains the Great Eastern Street/ Curtain Road junction as mentioned above. But new to the top ten are the Cycleway C9 junction of King Street and Weltje Road (number five now) that Hammersmith & Fulham Council has thus far refused to take action on despite a clear pattern of serious collisions from a rat-run from the A4 crossing a bidirectional cycle track.

Also new to the top ten at sixth is the Farringdon Road/ Clerkenwell Road junction where a “perfect” PhD student was killed at in 2024 (the LCC map update now includes 2024 emergency services data) and ninth is the West Hill junction Dean Lawson Jones was killed at also in 2024. Both fatalities having joined existing clusters of serious and slight collisions that meant it was just a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ a fatality would occur.

For the first time in the mapping, Camden’s actions have pushed one of the two Holborn junctions out of the top ten and the other has dropped several places from five to seven. However, joining the top 10 is Royal College Street / Baynes Street with a pattern of a serious and several slight collisions annually on average.

The scene from LCC’s second protest at the junction of Southampton Row and Theobalds Road, Holborn

Emerging trends: are cycle track junctions dangerous?

It’s worth noting that several of the junctions we list above as the most dangerous in London are now along Cycleway corridors with cycle tracks. Some critics of cycle tracks claim that such tracks worsen danger for cycling or are ineffective – and no doubt some will seize on the results we highlight above as further evidence to bolster their views.

However, the evidence on cycle tracks has been clear both in London and internationally for years now: cycle tracks in general strongly improve not only cycling safety but also diversity, enabling many more people to cycle that wouldn’t otherwise.

Corridors where there are now cycle tracks are safer than the same roads were prior to cycle tracks’ arrival and their arrival sees significant boosts to cycling numbers, particularly among those less likely to cycle in London generally – such as women, children, the elderly etc.

But where junctions are poorly designed, as still happens far too often in London, without adequate separation for those cycling from the turning movements of motor vehicles, then collisions do occur – and rising cycling rates at these locations mean more collisions.

Where we are seeing clusters of collisions, including serious and fatal ones, at junctions along otherwise protected cycle tracks, it is precisely because cycling rates have gone up while TfL and/or councils involved have tried to skimp on junction protection for those cycling in order to retain ‘capacity’ for motor traffic, particularly buses.

That, ultimately, is a balancing act that is doomed to fail unless TfL is willing to abandon its own ‘Vision Zero’ targets on road safety. Instead, TfL and councils really now need to get on with delivering not ‘safer’ junctions, but safe junctions, that don’t routinely maim, injure and kill people for cycling or walking or wheeling.

If TfL, the Mayor of London and London’s council leaders are serious about avoiding more fatalities, they need to act, not just offer more lukewarm words. And they need to deliver more, not fewer cycle tracks – but with better junction designs, as seen at Holborn, and increasingly across London where progressive boroughs are pushing modern junction designs, including Waltham Forest and Newham.

This approach can also, by taking capacity away from private motor traffic even give benefits to public transport. It’s TfL’s refusal to reduce private motor vehicle capacity at junctions and separate buses and cycling that is the problem here, not cycle tracks per se.

The West Hill/Lytton Grove junction in Wandsworth; a prime example of junction that could be made safe with an LTN

Emerging trends: missing Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs)

The latest round of Dangerous Junctions mapping now sees multiple unsignalised side street junctions in the most dangerous list.

One of many reasons why LCC has been a strong proponent of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) is that not only do they provide many benefits, and provide high quality cycle routes into and through quiet areas, they also reduce risky turning movements onto and off main roads where there are high cycling numbers and often cycle tracks.

The most dangerous junction cluster for cycling in London is where the old Cycle Superhighway CS7 on Upper Tooting Road, now with some wands for protection, intersects with major ‘rat-runs’ in Wandsworth. During the pandemic, Wandsworth Council installed LTNs on one side of this stretch of road, but removed them after opposition within weeks.

It is likely that LTNs here would fix the road danger issues that are seeing an average of two cyclists suffering serious (often life altering) injuries a year here, and a further four injured enough they needed emergency services attendance.

The same kind of issues also feature at the third most dangerous for cycling in London and recently featured in The Guardian and on GCN, also on Cycle Superhighway CS7 where side streets Gauden Road and Lendal Terrace meet Clapham High Street.

And again on CS7 at Balham High Road where it meets Ramsden Road. While the fifth most dangerous is where the bidirectional cycle tracks on Cycleway 9 at King Street pass the Weltje Road A4 rat-run.

The same issues also feature at the ninth most dangerous, West Hill/Lytton Grove junction in Wandsworth where Dean Jones was killed and the tenth – where Camden’s Royal College Street meets Baynes Street. All of these could be solved by simply stopping the rat-running to save lives.

Summary

The lesson from these junctions is simple; with political will, there is a way. That claims we need to ‘balance’ motor traffic, public transport, cycling, walking and wheeling are bogus.

If the choice is another life cut short, or many thousands moving through an area safely daily, the Mayor, TfL and London’s councils can choose the latter. The compromises, delays and inaction around too many junctions are killing Londoners.