‘Roads are getting safer’

Aberdeen:

Four cars and a cyclist were involved in two separate crashes within minutes of each other on the same stretch of road. Police, who said there were no injuries, were at the scene for around two hours.

Non-injury crashes, by definition, don’t appear in the published annual road fatality and injury statistics by which ‘road safety’ is falsely measured. Every time fatality figures drop some dim-witted official spokesperson asserts that Britain’s roads are the safest in Europe and getting safer all the time. Which is complete garbage.

Britain’s roads are very, very dangerous places and getting more dangerous all the time. Cycling is in decline everywhere except London, largely because cyclists are being terrorised off the roads. And don’t believe the cycling stats, either. Although it is undoubtedly true that more people are cycling in London, all that is being measured is commuter cycling on cherrypicked major routes which no cyclist heading into town can avoid.

The London Borough of Waltham Forest does not measure cycle use on residential streets, or on its flagship prizewinning Orient Way cycle path, or at the Green Man, or at the waterworks underpass. The results might be too embarrassing.