The Brighton Aquarium roundabout has been named one of the UK’s most dangerous, according to an analysis of thousands of roundabouts across the country.
The roundabout “league of shame” surveyed almost 6,200 roundabouts, with Aquarium roundabout placing 16th.
An average of over 50,000 vehicles pass through the Aquarium roundabout everyday. Department for Transport figures show the roundabout had 11 accidents over the course of a year. The accidents involved a total of 21 vehicles and led to 13 casualties.
To tackle the issue, Brighton & Hove City Council aim to scrap the Aquarium roundabout in 2021. This plan will mark phase 3 of the Valley Gardens project, which aims to replace the roundabout with a T junction.
A council spokeswoman said:
The council has already looked at five years’ worth of data to assess the junction in a robust way.
The most recent data from the Department for Transport for a 12-month period further demonstrates the need to proceed with the project as a matter of urgency.
We are now awaiting a final decision from the Local Enterprise Partnership about the £6 million funding it approved in principle back in January this year. This will enable us to continue discussions with the local community and further develop and then build the scheme.
However, campaigners argue that changes made to the roundabout will still result in accidents.
Conservative transport spokesman Councillor Lee Wares said:
As I say, one casualty is always too many. But assessments of how dangerous a junction is has to be in the context of the volume of traffic.
By the council’s own projections, should they remove the roundabout, they forecast numbers of casualties at the new Aquarium junction to still have the highest number of casualties in the city.
The roundabout “league of shame” surveyed accident records from July 2017 to June 2018.
Brighton Journal spoke to Carah, who recently experienced a near-crash whilst cycling around the Aquarium roundabout. She said:
I was crossing the roundabout on my bike, and even though I had right of way people kept on overtaking me. I eventually crossed it but it was really scary and I felt unsafe.
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