A police sign has finally gone up at the site of the pedestrian fatality in Lea Bridge Road. Look carefully and you'll see that the telephone number to ring is obscured by the Keep Left sign.
RoadPeace has long complained that the investigation of road fatalities is unprofessional. In London it is under-resourced because road fatalities are not treated with the same seriousness as murder:
No more than 400 traffic police officers are left in the whole of London to respond to over 80,000 personal injury crashes and nearly 300 deaths.
Furthermore
The government currently estimates the average cost of the police investigation into a fatal road death to be less than £1,500 (0.1% of the total value of prevention for a fatal crash), and only £200 for a serious injury crash (the equivalent of no more than a few hours of police time) (DfT, 2003). In London there are over 1000 murder detectives and although there are approximately twice as many road deaths investigated as there are murder investigations, last year the Met Police reported having only 46 specialist collision investigators, about 5 % of what would be required if the investigation of road deaths and murders were given equal priority.
