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Just quoting the numbers doesn't really put things into perspective, Ed. You need to compare the risks of cycling to other forms of travel. Compared with all other major forms of transport except motorcycling, cycling has more fatalities per hour and per journey.
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Wow that is basically saying the two forms of transport with the least amount of protection around the driver(+passengers) are the most dangerous.
Interestingly though I think someone has found a correlation (can't back this up, maybe someone else can?) with 4x4s and more deaths on the road. The people in the 4x4s are safer, but everyone outside of the 4x4 is in danger.
Basically if all road use was cycles, what do you think those numbers would look like?
(note, he doesn't say where his numbers are actually from?) -
Dont know if youve seen what this guy Neil Ellis did in Traf Sq on the 4th Plinth in July. Check out his vid:
http://www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Neil"After much careful thought I will be using my hour to highlight the unacceptable high levels of deaths involving cyclists within London by lorries, dangerous junctions, road conditions and the inadequate response to these issues by Boris and TFL.
22 Cyclists have died since Jan 2008 - 15 of which involved HGVs.
I have started a Facebook Group '4th Plinth Pedal Power' to encourage discussion and debate on this issue." -
Wow that is basically saying the two forms of transport with the least amount of protection around the driver(+passengers) are the most dangerous.
Not sure if you're taking the piss with that, but the table hides some other results which don't sit with that logic, such as that on a journey by journey basis, there are three times as many fatalities on air travel than walking.
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Just quoting the numbers doesn't really put things into perspective, Ed. You need to compare the risks of cycling to other forms of travel. Compared with all other major forms of transport except motorcycling, cycling has more fatalities per hour and per journey.
I've seen different figures in other places, so just quoting those ones isn't definitive: the ones I remember showed the per-hour risk of walking and cycling to be comparable.
There's a collation of (carefully chosen) stats at http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1026.html, among which are some US figures which put the risk of death in a car at 0.47 deaths per million hours, while for cycling it's 0.26 per million hours (that is, almost twice as safe).
Broadly, cycling (and in fact, all road use) in the UK is safe, but we still kill about 7 people on the roads every day: is that a price worth paying for personal mobility, free movement of goods and the like? That's 2600(ish) tragedies every year ...
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Dangers from HGVs to cyclists and pedestriansProposals to TfL for a campaign—AAT revised
Proposals
The proposals are organised [IS THIS THE RIGHT WORD? IMPLEMENTED IS BETTER?] by vehicle (HGV), road user, road environment, and safety management.'Arranged' rather than 'organised' or 'implemented'
**HGV **
3. Sensors and alarms. Operators should be strongly encouraged to introduce sensors and alarms, as has Cemex. [DO YOU KNOW ABOUT BALFOUR BEATTY’S “360 DEGREE MIRROR” AND THEIR ‘ZERO HARM’ POLICY? CARILLION ALSO HAS A ‘DRIVING FOR WORK POLICY’ WHICH APPLIES TO ALL SUPPLIERS – I HAVENT INVESTIGATED BUT COULD USE THESE AS CASE STUDIES/ LEADING BEST PRACTICE
Was behind a truck today (I think signwritten as Hanson) which had a 'vehicle turning left' loop playing as it was indicating left. Very noticeable, but I'm not sure how effective it was as a warning of the dangers posed by it turning ...
4. Warning signs
a. Cyclists. Every lorry should have a warning sign displayed on the rear nearside
b. Pedestrians. On the sides of HGVs at the front nearside, there should be warning signs about walking close to the front of a stationary lorrySaw one a few days ago, with 'You are in my blind spot. Please move' at the bottom of the passenger door. I thought that was pretty good, though of course there's an element of shifting responsibility to the vulnerable road user. Cab did look to have a full complement of mirrors though.
b. Foreign drivers. A special training course should be mandatory for drivers of foreign registered HGVs on London’s roads. [WOULD THIS BE CONTRARY TO EU LAW ON FAIR TRADE?]
Free trade rather than fair trade I think. (Proper jargon is probably 'free movement of goods and services.')
Road environment
19. Junction design. The indirect road danger from traffic speeds created by curves designed to accommodate HGVs could be reduced by tighter curves, with cobbled areas for HGVs
Some emphasis on the dangers of left-hand feeder lanes into the cycle reservoir at ASLs: the feeder lane should be to the right of any lanes from which motor vehicles can turn left.
On a related note, Newham seem to have an experiment running with ASLs shared between cyclists and motorcyclists. Saw this today (junction of Romford Road and Vicarage lane, E15) - northbound on Vicarage Lane there's a right-hand feeder lane marked for motorcycles. Is there any data from this yet?
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I certainly don't want to put people off cycling - But I do want the brutal reality of the dangers to come across like a sledge hammer. I weighed up the pros and cons and still believe they're worth sticking up.
Without seeking to diminish your loss or the individual tragedy of every death on the roads, I disagree.
I think such a statement overstates the danger, and does nothing to suggest what can be done to mitigate it. To the extent to which people pay attention to it, I think it will put them off cycling rather than making them think 'I'd better watch out.' More than likely, though, the message will be seen just as anti-HGV rather than as pro-safety.
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It comes down to trusted sources. The stats I quoted were from a railway expert and based on a DETR (now DfT) study. The original piece is here. We're talking about the UK so I guess we should limit ourselves to UK figures.
The UK government's latest fatality and accident statistics are here, though expressed per bn km rather than per hour:
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/modal/
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Not sure if you're taking the piss with that, but the table hides some other results which don't sit with that logic, such as that on a journey by journey basis, there are three times as many fatalities on air travel than walking.
My point was really that statistics showing fatalities of accidents without relating it to what they had an accident with is a bit pointless.
Basically your stats suggest that the safest way to travel is for everyone to be in either vans or buses. I don't think this would lower the number of road deaths.
HGVs are very safe for the people inside them, not so safe for the people outside, something your stats don't show at all... unlike the planes (which are a risk in of themselves) if the world was only full of bikes and peds the number of road fatalities would drop significantly, so showing the deaths per km/journey/hour of them is a bit pointless, it's not the cyclist that is a danger it's the road users around the cyclist that are.
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This logo is from a campaign in Australia.
http://www.amygillett.org.au/Amy was killed by a learner driver in Germany while trainin with the Aussie cycling team... very sad.
Maybe stickers with this on them would be less scarey?
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I do like that! But it's getting into the right hands...
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My point was really that statistics showing fatalities of accidents without relating it to what they had an accident with is a bit pointless.
Not really. It shows the intrinsic risk of that mode of transport, in the real world - on the road, in the air, whatever. Most governments monitor these statistics so I'm not alone in thinking they have some point.
Basically your stats suggest that the safest way to travel is for everyone to be in either vans or buses. I don't think this would lower the number of road deaths.
The statistics describe how things are, they don't make a recommendation about how things should be. No one in their right mind would think that just using vans and buses was a sensible solution to anything.
HGVs are very safe for the people inside them, not so safe for the people outside, something your stats don't show at all... unlike the planes (which are a risk in of themselves) if the world was only full of bikes and peds the number of road fatalities would drop significantly, so showing the deaths per km/journey/hour of them is a bit pointless, it's not the cyclist that is a danger it's the road users around the cyclist that are.
Again, I'm not talking about counterfactuals, I'm talking about the real world. It's not interesting to speculate how many fatalities there would be in a world where the roads carried only cyclists and peds.
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Not really. It shows the intrinsic risk of that mode of transport, in the real world - on the road, in the air, whatever. Most governments monitor these statistics so I'm not alone in thinking they have some point.
No it shows the statistical chance of being in a fatal accident. Not the same as intrinsic risk as your risk is influnced by a large number of factors over and above what those numbers take into account.
Also, if your government jumped off a cliff would you follow it? More to the point governments looking at stats (do they just monitor or do they do things about it?) is not the same as individuals making choices, as your next point points out:
The statistics describe how things are, they don't make a recommendation about how things should be. No one in their right mind would think that just using vans and buses was a sensible solution to anything.
No, but they are quoted suggesting that people should make vehicula choices based on them, which is the thin end of the wedge. I just took the arguement to it's illiogical extreme in an attempt to point out the flaw.
Again, I'm not talking about counterfactuals, I'm talking about the real world. It's not interesting to speculate how many fatalities there would be in a world where the roads carried only cyclists and peds.
but it's an important point when trying to convince people to ride, the more people on bikes the safer all cyclists (and peds) are. The less people in motorised transport the safer we all are.
What ever your choice of transport the chance of fatality is miniscule and it shouldn't influence whether you use it or not (hmm 6 in a billion or 4 in a billion... although I like the idea of puting distance and time into a chart and being told the safest form of transport for that journey! anyway I digress). But maybe more people should consider how their vehiclular choices affect those outside.
Why isn't there a statistic showing journeys/km/hours against the thing that did the killing? We have a very unscientific percentage gained from a very small sample of cyclists died in london of which over 60% were killed by HGVs, but I'd like to see a table of all road deaths and what the other object to kill them was? I'm aware of one individual in the last year killed by a cyclist... might be two... and at least 10 killed by HGV... how many by cars, stationary objects, pedestrians... do you think that would be a stupid statistic?
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Why isn't there a statistic showing journeys/km/hours against the thing that did the killing? We have a very unscientific percentage gained from a very small sample of cyclists died in london of which over 60% were killed by HGVs, but I'd like to see a table of all road deaths and what the other object to kill them was? I'm aware of one individual in the last year killed by a cyclist... might be two... and at least 10 killed by HGV... how many by cars, stationary objects, pedestrians... do you think that would be a stupid statistic?
I don't think it would be a stupid statistic but I suspect that classifying fatalities by what they collided into (if they collided into anything) might be a bit arbitrary. If someone has a fatal collision because they hit a stationary object the interesting further question is why did they hit that object? And the answer may involve some nearby, non-stationary object that they were swerving to avoid, which would be the cause of the collision, and the interesting 'statistic' for policymakers, but a collision with a wall is a collision with a wall, whatever causes it, and that is the statistic that would have to be recorded.
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True, both cyclist related deaths were actually head trauma from the peds falling...
Hmmm, maybe it's time to write to the ONS :-)
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Check out this on BBC News tonight at 6.30 ........this is the guy that did the 'installation' at traf sq on the deaths of cyclists since jan 08.
4th Plinth Pedal Power is this Friday, 21st, August at 6.30 p.m. on BBC news!
This week BBC is putting the spotlight on the two wheel debate; Cycling is one of the capital's most contentious transport issues after the congestion charge and Tube strikes.
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london tonight with buffalo bill etc...
http://www.vimeo.com/6249263
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There was a cement mixer lorry outside my house today which was turning left and while it was waiting at the lights there was a audio warning saying "beware, turning left" or something along those lines. This seems to be a very simple but good idea however it might not work as well when the lorry is not waiting at the junction.
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