We’ve spent years in Oldham campaigning to make our roads safer and tackle dangerous driving: writing to GMP in late-2023, getting a response in January 2024, campaigning on the issue in the election last July, pressing the GMP to make our roads safer in April this year, and throughout highlighting incidents and what we are doing to prevent them, including in March 2025. The 16% drop in incidents that followed was encouraging but it is now deeply concerned that the situation is seemingly worsening again.
To take this campaign further, last week I attend a roadside operation last week in Chadderton with officers from the GMP Oldham branch to see the work the Road Policing Unit do in tackling reckless driving in our borough. At this roadside check site, they concentrated on seat belt offences, mobile phone use, insurance/licencing checks, criminal use of the roads and speed enforcement.
The success was obvious on Broadway on the day with arrests being made for disqualified driving & drug driving, 7 vehicles being seized for no insurance, and 39 traffic reports/summons being issued for various offences. It was clear that they had commendably taken the stronger and more immediate action we had asked for, including increased visibility of road safety officers in hotspot areas, and more physical safety measures like traffic calming schemes & speed cameras.
The GMP have been proactive and forward-thinking and they share our desire to go even further by increasing outreach support & education in the community on the dangers of reckless driving – particularly targeted at young drivers – as well as doing more in response to reckless bike riding, another issue we have been working on.
While the progress is pleasing, we are not complacent. More needs to be done to make our roads safer and we will be working in lockstep with the GMP, the Council and local organisations to take the progress further.
Jim McMahon OBE MP 