Collision course

Laura meets Andy Cox, the police officer making our roads safer

I’m worried about Detective Superintendent Andy Cox. The national police lead for road collision investigation and I are cycling together down a hill on the Isle of Wight and he’s veering to the other side of the road on a blind bend. “I don’t have great road sense,” he admits, as I urge him to pull in a bit, before adding: “If something happened to me on this trip, RoadPeace would be set for life.”

Cox is on day one of his week-long challenge, cycling and running 200 miles around the country to raise awareness of the impact of road danger – and to raise £100k for RoadPeace, the charity that helps pick up the pieces when the worst happens. His second annual challenge is the latest in the unstoppable policeman’s efforts to change the culture around road danger, and cut the number of collisions. His route links police forces, bereaved families and the odd celebrity across the country. He’s hoping for a critical mass of support – and he’s a very ambitious person.

Days before, Cox was behind a major road-crash-data correction. Police reports weren’t being updated following collision investigations, meaning the initial assessment of what happened, recorded in the immediate and often unclear aftermath of a crash, became official data. Updating the role of road conditions, driver behaviour and more, following a thorough investigation, revealed speed as the single biggest cause of road deaths, contributing to more than half of all fatal crashes. Before, it was thought to be a fifth. It was something Cox had suspected for a long time. “It was an 18-month battle to change that,” Cox tells me as we ride along, saying cultures like this are hard to change.

Coming from a murder-investigation background, he was handed the national role of special operations, including firearms and road policing “without ever having held a gun or issued a parking ticket.” He brought to the role the rigour of murder investigation – albeit with a fraction of the resources. This is on top of his day job as head of crime for Lincolnshire Police. “Luckily we have broad shoulders,” he jokes.

When he came to the Met Police, he says cops would focus on the fast roads because that’s what they had always done. However, he says, data is key and most crashes happen in 20mph and 30mph streets: places where people live, walk and cycle. It took time to change that approach, too. In London, there are 9,000 roads, 136 of which see most collisions, with just four taking the lion’s share. By targeting those, and the 500 known most dangerous drivers via ANPR (automatic number plate recognition), they were able to do a lot with a little – preventing, not simply detecting, danger.

“I call it road crime,” says Cox. “Calling it an accident is offensive to bereaved families. It’s important to change the narrative to make society think differently.

“More priority needs to be given to road death because it accounts for more fatalities than murder and terrorism combined – five people a day,” he says. “People need to recognise we can’t continue to accept that many people dying and being permanently disabled.”

Cox admits to talking to certain police forces in private, those still recommending cyclists wear hi-vis and helmets, to bring them up to speed on current thinking, targeting the cause of harm, not its victims.

Change isn’t nearly keeping pace with his ambitions, though, and it’s clearly a source of frustration. When I ask him what he feels is wrong with roads policing, he can’t help but chuckle. It’s a long list.

Later on in the week, he’s in London and one of his group, a uniformed police officer, is close-passed by a lorry driver. Jeremy Vine records the incident on his helmet camera and we’re promised the driver will be brought to book, but the social media responses to the video are depressingly familiar, defending the driver and asking what all the fuss is about. Cox sees this as yet another example of the culture change that’s needed.

When I text him to congratulate him on making it through a gruelling Peak District ride with Dame Sarah Storey that week, he jokes about making next year’s challenge less hilly. If policing can keep pace, he could have a huge impact, but it could well be an uphill struggle.