Katja Leyendecker is currently researching the intersection of engineering practices, transport/cycling governance and women’s activism at Northumbria University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

She is a chartered engineer and has worked extensively as a consultant and project manager in both the private and public sectors.

In her research she makes use of social theories, investigating two cities, high-cycling Bremen in Germany (25% cycle mode share), and Newcastle, England, with a low cycle share of 2%.

In 2010, Katja co-founded (with Claire Prospert) newcycling.org - a campaign group which lobbies decision makers to implement people-friendly urban designs and insert cycleways in spatial planning and transport engineering procedures. Newcycling.org also collaborates with inter/national groups to exchange knowledge and accelerate change processes.

Presentation: Call to action: towards a practice of inclusive road safety
This presentation will contend that road safety in the UK has a chequered history. Originating from an age of free motoring and wide-open roads of adventure, its practices and processes have often been preventative to walking and cycling.

UK road safety resorts to uttering warning words rather than a combination approach of engineering, education and enforcement - and so regularly blames and restricts the active travel modes.

This is to active travel's exclusion and reduction in participation when in fact walking and cycling should be promoted and prioritised in environmentally, socially and economically ailing UK cities.

A new approach to road safety will be discussed in this paper, using principles of engineering risk assessment and sustainability.

Countries such as the Netherlands have road-safety systems that are more holistic and take into account road design as well as promotion campaigns.

Using three case studies this paper seeks to describe the current practices of UK road safety, then continues to outline how a system of ‘Sustainable Safety’ can be applied in the UK.

A revised road-safety approach would include engineers and planners becoming more interactive on the political plane and employing wider assessment boundaries to road-safety analyses.