Bespoke study - we need input from cyclists!

Well, I went to this.

Thoughts

The project majored on the fact that data on cycling accidents and cycling safety only really begins when an injured cyclist presents at a hospital. So the information available to found research on is largely fatalities and injuries worthy of going to the ozzy.
The research purports to seek a finer grain of information and majored on getting information on all the minor incidents that could have been bad but weren't, where no one reported it to the police or went to the ozzy.
This was stated as the primary motivation.

The study is split into two component parts.
1 - An app encouraging cyclists to report near misses and minor skirmishes on the bike. This is to address the mass of data on cycling activity that is never captured.
2 - A research study IN the hospital to capture a greater level of detail on the circumstances surrounding cycle accidents from the injured parties admitted.

We spent almost ALL the session talking about number 2.
To me, number 2 is a pretty straight forward and well established methodology in medical research.

Number 1 however has the potential to give HUGE insight, but the app is finished and no user involvement in its development was mentioned.
It strikes me that the success of the app hinges on the user uptake, yet there was no discussion of the promotion, dissemination or marketing of the product.
The app can be as awesome as you want, but if no-one knows about it and thinks to pull their phone out of their pocket shortly after they have had an off then it is about as much use as Anne Franks drumkit.

Other thoughts

• The stated aim was to put cyclists at the heart of the research where we shape the study. But the reality was us telling researcher whether their ideas were any good.
  
• No mention of extracting all the rich near miss and minor accident data out of the RoadSafe database.
  
• Cycling advocacy needs to be taken out of the hands of white men with grey beards.