Significant culture change is needed if Leeds is to eliminate all road deaths over the next two decades, local councillors have been told.

Leeds City Council formally adopted an ambition to reduce fatalities on the city’s roads to zero by 2040, at a meeting of senior leaders on Wednesday.

Results from a public survey, which were published last week, showed just a quarter of people feel safe using Leeds’ roads.

Pedestrians and cyclists are, predictably, more likely to feel unsafe than drivers.

Adopting the ambition means more cash is likely to be invested in traffic calming measures and enforcing speed limits over the coming years.

But the council has admitted the ambition won’t be achieved without buy-in from the public.

Speaking at a meeting of the council’s executive board, the authority’s chief officer for highways, Gary Bartlett said : “It’s down to all of us – all of our communities and partners to join together and get behind this strategy in various ways.

“Some of it will be physical infrastructure. Some of it will be enforcement. Some of it will be be persuasion, education and training.

Addressing councillors directly, he added: “It’s down to you in your areas of responsibility and influence to try to persuade people to change their behaviours.

“It requires everybody, not just the highways department to do it, otherwise we’ll fail, because we can’t do this on our own.”