2012-02-10 09:25 - Rider Down, Gordon Square, Bloomsbury

Passed by immediately after an RTI this morning going west on the cycle lanes to the south of Gordon Square into Byng Place. Car was stopped across the green bicycle lanes and cyclist picking himself up. Appeared that the driver had not yielded to the cyclists and gone straight over.

Cyclist looked ok but a bit shaken.

I got knocked off in the same place a couple of years ago. Van driver turning right, and didn't realise he needed to look for traffic then look again for bikes - as the cycle lane runs paralel to the road traffic.

I hate this stretch of cycle lanes for these reasons:
1 The road layout is confusing for drivers, peds and cyclists. They don't always know you have to look twice at parallel lanes.
2 It is intersected by side streets so you get vehicles cutting across, and they have poor sight lines along the lane
3 It is hard to stop safely at the zebras or junctions as the sheer weight of cycle traffic behind you allows no stopping room.
4 Road works and delivery parking shut sections of the lane often, spitting cyclists out into on-coming traffic
5 Hard to switch your brain from the "I'm a London cyclists kill or be killed" mentality to "I'm on a cycle track I can be slow and gentle"

PLUS, I am sad to say, extra problems due to cyclists behaing inappropriately. As you are jammed in a lane you can't avaoid them!

6 Brompton riders seem to love doing dangerous overtaking, squeezing into impossible spaces and looking damned smug (and some of my best friends are Bromptonists ...)
7 Really pretty girls/boys on pretty bikes with no traffic sense who push in front, jump lights and weave in and out without any warning. Their youth and beauty protects them from danger, but they cause danger to less beautiful or youthful cyclists

HOWEVER: the lanes may still be safer than the open roads, as I asked Camden Council for accident statistics for this stretch of road pre- (2001) and post- (2009) cycle lanes.

The stats are:

Collisions involving motorised vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians - 2001: 26 2009: 13
Pedestrian casualties - 2001: 6 2009: 7
Serious pedestrian casualties - 2001: 1 2009: 2
Pedestrian fatalities - 2001: 0 2009: 0
Cyclist casualties - 2001: 9 2009: 4
Serious cyclist casualties - 2001: 1 2009: 1
Cyclist fatalities - 2001: 0 2009: 0
Motorised vehicle driver or passenger casualties- 2001: 17 2009: 2
Serious motorised vehicle driver or passenger casualties- 2001 : 3 2009: 2
Motorised vehicle driver or passenger fatalities- 2001: 0 2009: 0

Explanatory note from Camden Council: "Please note that Camden follow a national reporting system for road casualties, which gives a breakdown by slight, serious or fatal classification. Ambulance attendance is not recorded and therefore I have provided information for serious or fatal casualties only. Data reported by the police only captures collisions on the carriageway and not on the footway."

My perception is that this stretch of cycle lane gets busier every year as the number of cyclists increases.

I hope the cyclist who had the smash last week is OK and back on the bike

Really interesting reply! Have to say I totally agree with you; vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians all get squashed together around there. They're all in their own separate spaces so I suspect they all feel safe but then they all end up together at the same spots. I never ever trust that vehicles will stop for me over those junctions and am assuming they haven't seen me. On an almost daily basis vehicles cross without checking the cycle lanes and pedestrians step out into the cycle lanes without looking. For me it's ok as I just deal with the situation as it is but there's always something going on, especially as the cycle lanes cross junctions and then onto a paved pedestrian area. Always amazes me at the amount of cyclists blasting down there straight across the zebra crossings and angrily ringing their bells at pedestrians.

This bit of infrastructure is a right mess though—think it could almost be safer just as a road without bicycle lanes.

And there are also these related threads which splat posted earlier:

http://www.lfgss.com/thread8083.html
http://www.lfgss.com/thread12352.html

Isobel, bare crash stats are a poor guide to what actually goes on; you need cycle counts, too, plus a good deal of junction observation (if you make a junction really complicated you'll either get safer conditions because people are confused or are really worried about the junction even before they get there, promoting safer behaviour, or more unsafe conditions because you increase the number of points at which people can crash into one another).

It would certainly be interesting to see the slight casualties here, too. As these are minor side streets (notwithstanding the fact that they currently attract wildly disproportionate amounts of motor traffic, as in many places like this in London), and as the proportion of slight injuries is normally much higher on side streets than on main streets, they will be far more relevant.

"Bare crash stats" - is that Bare like my son says when he is being big-up Hackney?

But, yes, totally agree that these Big Accident figures are only part of the picture, and that the jumble of these cycle tracks makes them feel far less safe than a normal side street.

I'm not terribly familiar with kiddie slang these days. :)

Are you keen to follow up on asking them for the data on slight crashes?

I'm not terribly familiar with kiddie slang these days. :)

Oh Oliver you old fogie!

Yes, good idea. I will follow up with trhe same question for more recent figures (2010 or 11 if they have them) PLUS query about more minor accident figures.

I think I asked for all accidents originally, but they only recorded the more major ones...

Peke (no idea what hackney-kid-slang means - but it seems to mean "that is a bit rubbish")

Oh Oliver you old fogie!

'fogey' :)

Yes, good idea. I will follow up with trhe same question for more recent figures (2010 or 11 if they have them) PLUS query about more minor accident figures.

I think I asked for all accidents originally, but they only recorded the more major ones...

DId you ask for 'crashes with ambulance attendance originally'? That may mean why the person at the other end would have concluded, quite sensibly, that you weren't interested in slight injury crashes, as most of those don't tend to attract ambulances. Slight casualties are certainly recorded (as they explain), but there is a high level of under-reporting, i.e. people fall off their bikes or are slightly hit by another vehicle, details are exchanged (if not, that probably results in a report to police more often), and then they go to A&E under their own steam without getting their entry into the database.

Peke (no idea what hackney-kid-slang means - but it seems to mean "that is a bit rubbish")

Do you pronounce that as 'peaky'? Is this it?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=peaky

Neither of these seem to be Hackney slang:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/peke

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=peke

'fogey' :)

^Innit.

OK request for info submitted to Camden. so we should hear back within 20 working days, which means 40 cycle lane journeys for some of us ...!

It's pronounced "peak" or "peek" and I have no idea if it is widespread, or just in my son's school playground. I'm worried I will use it at work one day ... which will be peak.

I did ask for ambulance attendance: you are right. So this time asked for slight, serious and fatal.

Usually we try to avoid having debates in rider down threads because of possible insensitivities towards friends and families of victims, and normally I'd move such debate.

However, because the cyclist in this incident appeared OK but shaken, I'm not going to move the debate. But please, in future... avoid the debate in rider down threads. It's not uncommon for such threads to take a bad turn and end in a fatality, and then the friends and families find the thread and instead of respect for the victim, they get contentious debate that sometimes implies the cyclist was at fault (without any evidence to that end).

So... fine on this occasion, but show far more consideration for the victim, friends and families in reports in the future.

Thanks Veolcio

Sorry - didn't think straight, and won't do this in future.

I hope - again - that the rider involved is OK