London Cycling Campaign has just launched its Safer Lorries, Safer Cycling campaign calling for all councils, organisations and businesses to only use the very best haulage companies.
LCC's 2011 No More Lethal Lorries campaign ensured that directly employed or contracted lorry drivers used by Transport for London and five borough councils would all have on-bike cyclist-awareness training.
3000 Crossrail drivers also received increased levels of cyclist-awareness training.
As part of their new Safer Lorries, Safer Cycling LCC have written to every council leader in the capital insisting they commit to similar on-bike cyclist-awareness training conditions in new contracts for transport and freight suppliers.
LCC say "Councils are an obvious place to start extending the TfL procurement policy because council taxes pay for those operations and we shouldn't want to be paying for lethal lorries."
They want to ensure all companies wanting to do business with councils in the future will have to make sure they meet the new standards for training and equipment.
LCC have lauded the several councils that are leading the way and say pioneer Lambeth Council, along with Hackney and Hammersmith & Fulham stand out as providing the most comprehensive training schemes.
TfL has also made the process of incorporating training requirements in contracts significantly easier than it was a year ago. Working with Cycle Training UK, they have turned the first 'drivers on bikes' type courses into an officially approved training module that qualifies as part of every lorry driver’s Certificate of Professional Competency annual training requirement.
LCC stress that, as lorry-cyclist collisions are responsible for a disproportionate amount of serious injuries and fatalities to cyclists, staying away from the front-left of lorries is always a good idea.