"Shared space" streets have been called into question after a taxi ploughed into museum-goers on Exhibition Road, a broad boulevard shared by pedestrians and vehicles in London's South Kensington.
The driver of a Toyota Prius veered into a crowd of visitors in South Kensington's semi-pedestrianised road on Saturday 7 October, injuring 11 people. Nine of the group, as well as the driver, needed hospital treatment.
Originally believed to be a terror attack ? like those that have taken place London and Westminster bridges, and across Europe in recent months ? the incident was later confirmed as an accident. A 47-year-old man was arrested on dangerous driving charges, but later released under investigation.
While temporary barriers are being erected across the capital to combat the risk of vehicular attacks, Exhibition Road was one of London's first experiments in the removal of separation between cars and pedestrians in 2012. But following the accident, Labour Party MP for Kensington, Emma Dent Coad, said it was time to rethink the design of shared spaces.
"It would be a huge shame if changes to our public realm, made to improve pedestrian experience, has instead made people more vulnerable," she wrote in a statement issued following the incident.
Dent Coad, a design writer and architecture historian, said there has been a marked rise in accidents since the area's redesign, which was carried out by Dixon Jones.

Incident at South Ken 'an accident, not t...