UK’s first Dutch-style roundabout which gives cyclists priority sees increase in accidents

Britain’s first Dutch-style roundabout – which gives cyclists and pedestrians priority over vehicles – has led to an increase in accidents, official figures show.

The complicated Cambridge interchange opened in 2020 and has since seen 10 collisions, three of them serious.

In the three years before that, there were only six minor collisions.

The statistics question the wisdom of such plans, which Cambridgeshire County Council revealed are of ‘great importance’ to other local authorities.

At its official opening in July 2020, the then chairman of the council’s motorways and transport committee, Ian Bates, claimed the new roundabout would ‘improve safety at this busy junction’.

But shortly after, it had to be closed for three days when a car hit a zebra crossing.

Safety auditors also listed ten issues – and witnessed a car-motorcycle collision – during a visit months later.

Retired GP Neville Silverton, 95, the founder of the air ambulance charity Magpas, said yesterday that he found the two-ring roundabout “very dangerous” when he drove over it in his car and that he had witnessed accidents.

“I don’t think the design has safety features for the people it was intended for,” he told the BBC.

‘It is a very busy roundabout and motorists drive over it at a fairly high speed. It’s too much to take in even for an experienced motorist, with cyclists and pedestrians coming from left and right and vehicles coming from the right.

‘You then look at crossing vehicles while on your left a cyclist can approach at high speed.

“I’ve seen motorists make emergency stops and hit bumps from behind.”

Local Ken Riley, 86, added that the council had not taken into account the rising popularity of e-scooters.

“They go full speed into the roundabout and go straight onto the bike path,” he says.

“Motorists don’t have time to look around before they whiz over in front of or behind them.”

However, 69-year-old cyclist Peter French claimed that other road users “were on the lookout and stopped for you.”

He added: “As long as you approach carefully yourself and are vigilant, it’s fine.”

The intersection – which replaced a regular roundabout on a busy route near Addenbrooke’s Hospital and Cambridge Biomedical Campus – was developed in collaboration with Dutch consultancy Royal HaskoningDHV and is based on the intersections used in the Netherlands.

Around the perimeter, a bright red bike path is separated from vehicles using an inner ring through islands with Belisha beacons.

At four intersections, the cycle path has priority over oncoming traffic, forcing motorists to stop and give way.

However, the two traffic rings mean that approaching motorists should keep an eye out for both routes when they get to the roundabout, as well as pedestrian crossings. Roads also narrow towards the intersection to reduce traffic speed.

Locals were already rioting before it opened, after the cost tripled from £800,000 to £2.3 million.

The council blamed ‘unexpected utility work’ and pandemic delays, but critics called it a vanity project ‘boasting of being the UK’s first’ and predicted it would become an accident black mark.

In November 2020, the safety auditors who witnessed the collision between a car and a motorcycle concluded that drivers who left the complicated layout after giving way to a cyclist were at risk'[setting off when] they can’t see a second cyclist’.

The ten collisions since the opening involved eight cyclists, a pedestrian and a car.

The roundabout is just one battlefield in the UK’s cycling capital, where the Greater Cambridge Partnership – a group of local authorities including the County Council, plus Cambridge University – is trying to push through a congestion charge.

Motorists would be charged £5 on weekdays, rising to £10 for vans and £50 for lorries. At this time, there are no exemptions for electric cars or essential workers. Businesses have warned of closures as passing trade decreases.

Roads have also been narrowed with bollards to create bike lanes, creating traffic jams and delaying emergency vehicles. And trees were cut down to widen a major thoroughfare and build new bike lanes, despite vociferous campaigning from locals.

Alex Beckett, the chair of the Lib Dem of the provincial council’s highways and transport committee, said the number of cyclists and pedestrians using the Dutch roundabout has increased since 2020.

He added: ‘We have received compliments on the design and had a lot of interest from other municipalities who want to build their own Dutch-style roundabouts.

‘We have regularly carried out road safety audits and recently commissioned an investigation into the nature of the incidents. This will help us with any changes we want to make to this roundabout or future roundabouts with similar design features.”

Local authorities interested in the interchanges include Essex County Council, which has submitted proposals for them in Braintree and Colchester to the Department for Transport.