Going Slow
Julian Sayarer
Last Thursday the Times launched a campaign to ‘Save Our Cyclists’. It was also the first anniversary of the death of 28-year-old Dan Cox, killed on his bike by a lorry at Dalston Junction. A memorial walk traced his last journey across the city. A ‘ghost bike’ near the spot where he was hit has been painted white and adorned with flowers and a copy of Kafka’s The Trial.
On Friday, a cyclist in his sixties was killed by a bus on Bishopsgate, the first fatality of 2012.
On Monday, Bikes Alive organised the third ‘go-slow’ of cyclists and pedestrians at the King’s Cross gyratory. Last October, Min Joo Lee, a 24-year-old fashion student, was the third cyclist to be killed outside King’s Cross in five years. William Perrin, a community activist, is lobbying for a corporate manslaughter charge to be brought against Transport for London, who ignored their own expert’s warnings about safety at King’s Cross.
Both TfL and Boris Johnson are as eager as ever to boast their cycling credentials, but the figures tell a different story. According to TfL, there were 19 cycling deaths in London in 2006, 15 in 2007, 15 in 2008, 13 in 2009, 10 in 2010 and 16 in 2011. Last summer, Tory members of the London Assembly walked out on a cross-party motion to impose a permanent 20 mph speed limit over Blackfriars Bridge. When the Tories returned to vote later in the summer, the Assembly agreed unanimously that a review of safety on the bridge was needed: TfL ignored them.
Long-established pressure groups such as Sustrans and the London Cycling Campaign, which have developed relationships with government and TfL over the years, have more recently been joined by grassroots movements like Londoners on Bikes, set up to encourage people to ‘vote for the mayoral candidate who will do the most to make Londoners safe on bikes’. A recent YouGov poll puts Ken Livingstone narrowly ahead of Johnson: if the race stays that close, the votes of cyclists could swing it.
Comments
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7 February 2012
at
8:22pm
Keith Claxton
says:
Statistics are always contentious. And any traffic death - pedestrian, car, bicycle - is never to be taken lightly. But I'm surprised at how low the figures are, to be honest. Going by 2005 stats in the Tfl 2007 Travel Report, on an average day the number of cyclists entering London just in the morning peak is 17,000. The 2006-2011 stats average out at one cyclist death a month, unless I've messed up the calculation. That's hardly a bloodbath. The hyperbolically titled Times campaign stinks of self-promotional bullshit.
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8 February 2012
at
1:57am
Amateur Emigrant
says:
@
Keith Claxton
Hmm. So forgive me if my grasp of probability is inadequate, but am I right in saying a London cyclist's chance of dying in any one year is about 1 in 1400? If you were told you had a 1 in 1400 chance of dying in the tube this year, would you be taking that train? Sounds like pretty high odds to me.
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8 February 2012
at
7:45am
alex
says:
@
Amateur Emigrant
Your grasp of probability is indeed inadequate. You seem to be weighing the number of cyclists travelling in a morning against those dying in a year.
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8 February 2012
at
1:05pm
greg
says:
@
alex
On those figures, each cycle journey has a one in a million chance of death. If you cycle to and from work every day for a year you have a one in two thousand chance of death. If you do that for thirty years it's one in sixty eight - though that's still a 98.5% chance that you won't die, and at least you won't get heart disease.
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8 February 2012
at
4:41pm
alex
says:
@
greg
I'm not sure if I follow your calculation. The following figures give a lifetime chance of 1 in 240 of being killed in a motor vehicle accident, and a 1 in 5103 lifetime chance if you are a cyclist.
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13 February 2012
at
5:46am
Dominic
says:
@
alex
These figures are simply raw "per head" of population, not adjusted for number of journeys taken or distance covered or anything else. Notice for example, that on this basis the lifetime chance of dying in a road traffic accident in the UK as a pedestrian is 1 in 1104, and as a motor cyclist is 1 in 1244.
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13 February 2012
at
9:28pm
alex
says:
@
Dominic
I'm sure you're right, that's why I renounced my pretentions to being a statistical wizard. (I should probably also apologise to Amateur Emigrant, although the logic behind his calculation didn't seem right either.)
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13 February 2012
at
10:01pm
alex
says:
@
Dominic
...apart from the point that it is drivers (and urban planners) who should be considered murderous before cyclists are dismissed as 'risky'.
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7 February 2012
at
10:02pm
Harry Stopes
says:
Despite the Times campaign, coverage of this issue in the press is shoddy. Simon Jenkins in today's Standard quoted the 2009 to 2010 reduction in deaths, neglecting (deliberately, one presumes) to mention the rise the following year which you cite.
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8 February 2012
at
1:25pm
Sid Smith
says:
I work at The Times. The campaign was provoked by the serious injuries suffered by a colleague. Another colleague has suffered a broken ankle and then, separately, a shattered wrist. Another was off work for weeks after being swept off her bike. These are only among the people I happen to know.
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8 February 2012
at
9:57pm
Harry Stopes
says:
@
Sid Smith
I welcome it too. I was just pointing out that generally the issue of cycling safety is covered really badly in the press - Jenkins, to whom I referred, made out that cycling was getting safer by selective use of statistics, and dragged up the tiresome argument that cyclists' ignorance and/or recklessness are what causes the accidents.
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8 February 2012
at
9:57pm
Harry Stopes
says:
@
Harry Stopes
To clarify, we've been talking about deaths so neglected injuries. Does anyone have statistics for injuries/accidents?
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9 February 2012
at
1:45pm
alex
says:
@
Harry Stopes
468 in London in 2010. That's 18% of the national figure of 2558. A bit higher than London's share of the national population, but then there may also be proportionally more cyclists in London.
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9 February 2012
at
1:46pm
alex
says:
@
alex
Sorry, forgot to indicate source:
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10 February 2012
at
2:07pm
SNissan
says:
@
alex
I am also glad of the campaign, but don't entirely agree with its focus nor its tone.
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10 February 2012
at
2:21pm
SNissan
says:
@
SNissan
Apologies - didn't mean to provide the above link by tagging a specific comment.
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14 February 2012
at
4:26pm
AitchGee
says:
Jaysus, the smugness of cyclists. What are these wheeled vehicles they ride on made from? Compost? Recycled (sic) copies of Sustrans Annual Review? For what its worth, I feel far more at risk, as a pedestrian, from cycles, whose drivers rarely pay any attention to red lights and frequently drive on pavements at speed, than I do from cars, which are at least large, loud, and obvious. It is only the cycling lobby that is large, loud and obvious. Oh, and insufferably smug. or did I mention that already?
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15 February 2012
at
12:35am
Harry Stopes
says:
@
AitchGee
Are you referring to the large loud and obvious cycling lobby that has the DfT wrapped round its little finger? Nice one.
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15 February 2012
at
10:52am
alex
says:
@
AitchGee
People dislike cyclists because
Read morehttp://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/Risk/trasnsportpop.html
I'm not sure whether the former are included in the latter. In fact I'm not sure generally, so at this point I'm going to quickly switch from being a statistical wizard to being a dispenser of parish-pump wisdom and just say I like cycling and I figure that a) the more people do it, the safer it becomes, and b) if you survive, you'll survive for longer.
Based on current knowledge, is there any way of arriving at a meaningful estimate (not necessarily in percentage terms) of the riskiness of cycling regularly, weighed against the obvious advantages of good health, wealth, wellbeing and generally massive smugness at the thought that you're not contributing to toxic pollution and despoiling the earth's natural resources?
I cycled everywhere in London for 20 years. I've abandoned the bike after staring up at the front bumper of a Volvo which had pulled out of a side street.
I welcome the campaign.
Also your post has highlighted another issue we haven't touched on, since we've talking about deaths - injuries. Does anyone have statistics for these?
http://www.dft.gov.uk/statistics/tables/ras30044/
A good disucssion of some of London's most experienced cyclists' views can be found here on the London Fixed Gear and Single Speed Forum's thread on the subject. http://www.lfgss.com/thread79432-9.html#post2685801
Many express their discontent (qualified usually with gratitude for the exposure) with a campaign that is focusing on a supposed inherent riskiness to cycling, thereby obscuring the responsibility not only of BoJo and his policies, but above all of drivers.
This maybe reflects the desire of many of london's riders to see more people, and less vehicles, on the streets and I tend to agree with them.
Should've been http://www.lfgss.com/thread79432.html
I'm not smug, I just don't like other road users routinely taking my life into their careless hands every single day.
a) they are healthier and get where they want to go faster for less money;
b) they have a better view of the road, being positioned higher, so to the lower-slung motorist their manoevres look riskier than they really are;
c) they ride on the outside of their vehicle, so more likely that the envy becomes personal;
d) they wear different clothing, so easy to stigmatize as aliens;
e) widespread misconception that motorists' payment of excise duty means they 'own' the road (this tax pays not for roads but for costs of pollution).
This doesn't stop some cyclists being smug twats but at least they aren't murderers, noise-and-air polluters, and fossil-fuel-destroyers.