Peter Hendy’s latest contribution to a toxic, uncivilised London

Oxford Street, choked with buses and taxis, and open to any motorist.



London’s top public transport chief has dismissed calls to rid Oxford Street of its “wall of red double deckers” saying it would require two vast “unacceptable and desecrating” bus stations to be built in the heart of the West End. The Mayor’s Transport Commissioner Peter Hendy was responding for the first time to growing demands from West End business that the volume of buses on London’s premier shopping street should be dramatically scaled back. 

One proposal put forward is for east-west bus routes to stop at either end of Oxford Street with a shuttle service or tram running its one and a half mile length. But Mr Hendy said while the option had been looked at it had been decided that “having the huge bus station you would need at Marble Arch would completely desecrate a very important place to people in Britain.” 

Of all the feeble excuses anyone can come up with allowing Oxford Street to remain a sewer for motor vehicles of all types, this has to be one of the feeblest.

In any case, if London was civilised for cycling far fewer people would need to use such a cumbersome, inefficient and high polluting mode as a bus.

London TravelWatch isn’t keen on getting rid of buses either, but, unlike toxic TfL, it at least puts forward a few modest reforms which would improve the situation:

‘We could improve efficiency of road space in this area by prioritising pedestrians and closing off more of the north and south side roads crossing Oxford Street, reducing the number of buses terminating in Oxford Street, and by restricting taxis. Taxis take up 37% of the road space, but only carry 1% of the passengers.
 

(Below) Pedestrian-friendly Oxford Circus. 

 

 

The problem with ‘British Cycling’

The problem with ‘British Cycling’ is partly that it goes outside its remit. If it stuck to sports cycling there would be no reason to criticise the organisation. Instead BC tries to pretend it has something valuable to contribute to the wider issue of utility cycling and to Britain’s lamentable modal share for cycling. I don’t think it does. On the contrary, its interventions are damaging to cycling.

The other problem with British Cycling is that when it exceeds its remit it adopts the orthodox British cycle campaign position of going for gold (froth) with a glittery dusting of empty statistics. I criticised its latest frothy initiative with reference to Tunbridge Wells, and just a day later came news of a Tunbridge Wells cyclist’s perspective on cycling in the area: he said he experienced "two or three" near misses every day on his commute.

British Cycling’s most recent PR push has also been roundly and more substantially criticised here by Mad Cycle Lanes of Manchester and by As Easy As Riding a Bike.

But let’s not forget this, from just a few weeks back. It contains all the clichés and claptrap which have been catastrophic for cycling in Britain, and the reason for this is that, despite expressing its support for better and worthy cycling policies at a national level, British Cycling’s core commitment here is to get people cycling in traffic:

let’s not forget that cycling is not an intrinsically dangerous activity. Cyclist deaths have more than halved since 1990 and, statistically, there is only one death per 32 million kilometres cycled. There is an established ‘safety in numbers’ effect as cycling becomes a more popular form of transport. Evidence from countries that have significantly increased cycling participation rates has shown that, as more people cycle, it becomes safer.

Like Bradley Wiggins, we want to encourage a culture of mutual respect among all road users. Cyclists are also drivers and vice versa and it is important that we look after each other whether we are travelling on foot, by two wheels or four, pedal-powered or motorised.

Helmets can help save lives in many incidents and we recommend they are worn.

Boris Johnson, Transport for London and the killing of Hichame Bouadimi

Yesterday’s Guardian carried a long piece about the recent killing of five year old pedestrian Hichame Bouadimi on St George’s Road, Southwark, asking Why are road deaths in the UK on the rise again? 

Unfortunately the journalist lets two major London agencies off the hook. One is the Metropolitan Police, which has always been institutionally car-supremacist. The Met is contemptuous of cyclists and pedestrians, and has only ever had a minimal interest in enforcing road traffic law. You can speed to your heart’s content in London, and chat away on your mobile phone, and your chances of being apprehended by a police officer are very, very remote. Nor is the Met at all interested in curbing the excesses of the out-of-control road haulage industry. The Met's slogan ‘Working Together For a Safer London’ seems like a calculated insult. Indeed

Drivers in London have a chance of being prosecuted once over a 50-year lifetime of driving.

This indicates that at present there is almost no chance of drivers who endanger cyclists (and others) being charged or prosecuted. 

However, in this particular instance the primary blame for this latest tragedy rests firmly with Transport for London. It was the infrastructure that created the conditions for the violent death of this child. And TfL is resisting all efforts to change direction. It remains firmly committed to the ‘smoother traffic flow’ agenda.

But Boris Johnson should not be exempted from responsibility either. His signing-up to the LCC’s ‘Go Dutch’ agenda was plainly a desperate piece of opportunism when he was struck by a last-minute anxiety that he might, after all, lose to Ken Livingstone. In spite of all Johnson’s rhetoric nothing tangible has actually changed yet. 

Take TfL’s proposals for the Lambeth Bridge roundabout, for example.

Southwark cycling blogger Charlie Holland even uncannily anticipated this latest fatality when back in January he denounced

the five-lane one-way motorstrosity that St George's Road has become

and remarked

Unfortunately TfL are using their time and energy on piddling interventions rather than on measures that will make a real difference.

This road, with three schools on one side and a park on the other, should swiftly be made two-way and cycle-friendly. 

Charlie Holland has also written about the aftermath of this fatal collision here.

Cycling noise: four new examples

Let me offer up a category: cycling noise.

Cycling noise is an initiative or campaign which purports to ‘encourage cycling’ or make it safer but which doesn’t reduce the presence of motor vehicles on the street, in terms of volume. The existing volume of motor traffic may be restrained or modified in superficial ways – by traffic calming, say, or a lower speed limit – but the volume and presence of the existing motor vehicles are not reduced, either in terms of traffic flow or parking. In other words, cycling noise initiatives are inherently rooted in vehicular cycling and as such ignore the core issue of subjective safety (on which topic there are interesting insights here). Or to put it another way, cycling noise campaigns never challenge the car-centric status quo.

1. Labour Party cycling noise 

This week Shadow transport minister Maria Eagle made a speech to the Labour party conference:

I congratulate The Times on their Cities Fit for Cyclists campaign. The Government should implement the campaign’s manifesto for change. In full. 

Ms. Eagle singled out

Separated cycle-ways. Redesigned junctions. Advance green lights for cyclists 

Whoever wrote Ms. Eagle’s speech for her plainly hasn’t read The Times Manifesto very carefully, since it nowhere mentions “separated cycle-ways”. If the Labour Party plans to make a manifesto commitment to the reallocation of road space on main roads through urban centres from drivers to cyclists through the medium of physically segregated cycle tracks, then that is very good news indeed. However, uplifting speeches made to enthusiastic party loyalists need to be treated with caution, or better still, extreme scepticism. I suspect it is nothing more than rhetoric.

If you have the stomach to read the complete speech you’ll see that Ms. Eagle also positions herself as the friend of the hard-pressed driver and wants cheaper motoring. Leaving aside the deficiencies of the Times Manifesto – you can find point-by-point critical analysis here, I felt that The Cycling Lawyer hit the nail on the head when he remarked a few months ago:

The trouble is that 'The Times' is not calling for infrastructure changes that may adversely impact motorists. 

In other words, the Times Manifesto is itself nothing more than cycling noise because it doesn’t engage with the basic reason why most people won’t cycle and it doesn’t campaign for the kind of cycling infrastructure that would. Instead it merely ameliorates some aspects of vehicular cycling.

And that brings us back to the core wisdom of Dave Horton:

We’ve got a cycling promotion industry in the UK which refuses to contemplate the act of deterring driving. It’s always promoting cycling around the edges, not seeking to dismantle the central system of mobility in the UK, which is the car. 

It’s also worth remembering the very long history of politicians pledging their support for cycling and promising to encourage it:

since Lynda Chalker’s encouragement of cycling in 1985 until 2010, [there has been] an increase in car, van and taxi vehicle passenger distance travelled of some 48%. All motor vehicle mileage (e.g. including lorries) has gone up by 57%. Cycling distance travelled nationally decreased by about 17%. 

Not very effective on the encouragement front. 


2. SUSTRANS cycling noise 

Among those overjoyed by Ms. Eagle’s slithery speech was this person:

Sustrans' policy adviser Joe Williams welcomed the commitment: "Slower speeds on our streets will make the biggest difference to getting more of us out walking and cycling. 

No they won’t.

As far as cycling is concerned the biggest difference can be made only through the principle of separation of cyclists from motor vehicles, particularly by creating bike grids in urban centres. That’s how the Dutch cycling revolution began. It did not begin with sticking up speed limit signs.

Everybody from car-centric politicians to the vehicular cycling campaign establishment loves ‘Twenty's Plenty’ because 20 mph zones in no way threaten to curb the presence or volume of motor vehicles on British streets. Obviously 20 mph zones are a Good Thing in so far as they reduce the seriousness of the consequences of collisions but they do not in themselves civilise streets. If you want to get more people walking and cycling you achieve it by creating a safe, pleasant walking and cycling environment. That’s what will make the biggest difference, not sticking up 20 mph signs in car-sodden streets. For both travel modes that means separation from motor vehicles, whether through pedestrianisation or segregated cycle paths. It requires a reduction in the presence of vehicles on our car-sick streets and pavements.

SUSTRANS more and more resembles an organisation which has completely lost the plot and exists only to perpetuate its own existence. It is quite literally a collaborationist organisation, which is happy to ally itself with a borough which is absolutely NOT a friend of either the cyclist or the pedestrian. Listen to this other fresh example of Sustrans cycling noise:

CYCLING shoppers who use their local high street will be rewarded in a new loyalty card scheme. Sustainble transport charity Sustrans has launched the scheme with Redbridge Council as part of the council's pledge to become a biking borough. 

More than a dozen shops in High Street, Wanstead have signed up to the scheme which rewards cyclists for shopping locally. 

Cycling promotion officer for Sustrans, Emilie Charlesworth, said: "Wanstead has got this local high street feel to it. Residents and shopkeepers want to preserve that feel. 

Redbridge Council is a viciously pro-car Conservative administration with an extreme reluctance to curb the use or parking of cars in the borough. It’s cycling modal share is risible. As for High Street, Wanstead. It’s about thirty feet wide and dotted with NO CYCLING signs. Redbridge Council could very easily create segregated cycle paths on the High Street, but as the council understands nothing whatever about cycling there’s little chance of this ever happening. This cosmetic scheme won’t get a single extra person cycling on the hellish roads which lead to Wanstead High Street, and for Sustrans to involve itself with this kind of fatuous and inane scheme shows that the organisation is not fit for purpose.

Footnote: Sustrans’s latest London Greenway is identified as being fundamentally misconceived.



3. Hampshire Constabulary and ‘road safety’ cycling noise 

In 2011, there was an eight per cent increase in cyclists as road casualties across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, with 190 seriously injured and one cyclist killed. 

In 2012, there has been another death, and the levels of cyclists being injured or killed on the roads of the UK nationally are increasing. 

Since in the majority of collisions the motorist not the cyclist is at fault, will there be a crackdown on reckless driving? Er, no.

Officers from Hampshire Constabulary's Roads Policing Unit have created the Steer Clear campaign, which is being launched across the county on October 1. 

New signs will be appearing on the roads of Hampshire today (October 1) to raise public awareness of the dangers posed to cyclists. 

Throughout October, officers will be carrying out initiatives to raise cyclists awareness of safety on the roads including knowledge of the Highway Code, basic road safety, and traffic awareness. 

The police spokesman masterminding this cycling noise says:

Our message to cyclists is very simple; be safe and be seen. Our leaflet highlights key safety tips, and gives you some discount vouchers to help get yourself kitted out properly; think high visibility, check your lights, and remember the Highway Code, it is really important. Things like cycling recklessly on the pavement, having no lights on your bike, cycling and driving under the influence of drugs and drink, or more than one person riding on a solo bike. We will be focusing on encouraging all road users to grasp the concept of mutual respect. We want to foster a culture of mutual respect between all road users to create a safer environment on the roads. 

Apart from the conspicuity crap (all about cyclists doing their best to shine a bright yellow in the hope of being noticed by the texting driver), and apart from the reality that the thrust of this campaign is focused on cyclists not drivers, there is not a scrap of evidence that ‘ mutual respect’ campaigns or education have the slightest beneficial result. This is not evidence-based 'road safety'. Crap campaigns like this are a substitute for road traffic law enforcement in a vehicular cycling environment. If the police were at all interested in making the roads safer they could start taking driver crime seriously, since the latest figures show that:

47% of cars exceeded a 30mph speed limit in 2011, while 49% went faster than 70mph on a motorway. The proportions of motorcyclists breaking the same speed limits were similar, at 50% and 49% respectively. 

The figures for articulated heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) were considerable higher, with 71% exceeding the single carriageway 40mph limit and more than four in five breaking the 50mph limit on dual carriageways. 

The road haulage industry is out of control, yet there is no shortage of cycle campaigning which hopes to make lorry drivers nice people who remember to watch out for cyclists at junctions.


4. PACTS cycling noise 

It is reported that

Annual road casualty statistics showed that overall cyclist casualties reported to the police rose by 12 per cent between 2010 and 2011. While the number of fatalities fell by 4 per cent to 104, the number of cyclists who were seriously injured rose by 16 per cent to 3,085 last year. 

The number of serious injuries has increased every year since 2004. 

Commenting on this Times story

Robert Gifford, Executive Director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, said: “Both central and local government need to do far more to make our infrastructure more suited to cycling with dedicated cycle lanes where appropriate, better signed advance stop lines and campaigns aimed at getting car drivers to look out for cyclists.” 

Nothing but the same old crap. Leaving aside the fact that cycle lanes alongside or amidst motor vehicles have demonstrably failed to bring about mass cycling in Britain, that weasel phrase ‘where appropriate’ is a giveaway. Cycle lanes very often fizzle out just before road junctions, so they won’t get in the way of ‘stacking’ motor vehicles in two or three lanes (in central London sometimes even more) to ‘smooth traffic flow’. To allow a British transport planner to determine what is ‘appropriate’ for cycling is to surrender before the battle has even begun.

As for ‘better signed advance [sic] stop lines’. Yes, perhaps we could make them even more conspicuous.

Here is a helpful design showing a traditional cycle lane leading to an ASL. It also happens to exactly match this lorry driver’s rather substantial ‘blind spot’.

Transport for London, where safety is paramount

A bicycle is a very dangerous object. If you see one which has fallen over on no account attempt to set it upright again.

A Transport for London spokesman said: “This bike was locked to the railings on an access path and had fallen over and was causing a safety hazard. As such it had to be moved immediately and we were left with little choice but to cut the lock. 

Transport for London is altogether more relaxed about the safety of cyclists on London’s roads, where the minimum London cycle safety standards have simply not been applied and where cycling casualties are increasing. 

There are

good reasons to adopt a target to reduce the rate of cycling casualties per distance travelled, and similar targets for other modes. But TfL have decided against such a target; in fact they have decided against having any target of any kind to reduce cycling casualties.

Just fancy that!

We can promote cycling without worrying that this will lead to more casualties. It is clear that ‘more’ and ‘safer’ cycling are perfectly compatible.

Research by CTC has found that cycling is safer in local authorities in England where cycling levels are high. 

[ Research based on comparing ‘Average serious injuries and deaths per 10,000 cycle commuters per year’ and modal share ]
 
York, the authority where cycling to work is most common, is, by our calculation, the safest place in England to cycle. 




The CTC defending York against the charge that it is a cycling-unfriendly city:

National CTC spokesman Chris Peck said: “You shouldn’t measure cycle safety by numbers of injuries, because if you do that you will simply find the places where cycle use is very high have more people being injured 

How not to design a junction to benefit cyclists

There was recently thrilling news from Ipswich with the revelation that

£22 Million transport package for Ipswich gets go-ahead 

Norman Baker said: “This innovative scheme will make a huge difference to the way people travel around Ipswich and will be a real boon to the local economy by making new business and housing sites more accessible by public transport. Strong transport infrastructure which helps to tackle congestion and reduce carbon will help the city achieve sustainable economic growth.” 

No it won’t. This new scheme will NOT make “a huge difference to the way people travel around Ipswich” because Ipswich is as car-centric as anywhere else and it’s a contradiction in terms to “tackle congestion” while purporting to discourage car dependency. In particular this scheme will not get anyone out of their car and on to a bicycle because it does nothing to make Ipswich into a town where cyclists are offered safe, direct routes without conflict with motor vehicles.

Back in 1995 cycling modal share in Ipswich was identified as being 6-7 per cent, with a potential for 30 per cent modal share if Dutch design was emulated.

By 2010 modal share had dropped to 4 per cent (“relatively high for the UK” enthused Sustrans, applying the traditional amnesia found in all branches of UK cycle promotion).

And if you want to know why Sustrans joins the long list of UK cycling promotion organisations which are not enablers of mass cycling but massive obstacles to it, look no further than this report, which asserts that “A wide range of practical interventions have been proven to increase cycling levels, and there is a growing body of evidence on the most effective approaches” – which turn out not to be Dutch practice and infrastructure but “notably from the Sustainable Travel Towns (STT) and Cycling Demonstration Towns (CDT) programmes” – where you encounter the usual percentage froth and spin which UK cycle campaigning adores.

Thrill to cycle-speak: “City-wide measures to increase cycling, such as those implemented in the CDTs, deliver substantially positive BCRs” – although sadly, as is acknowledged later on, “Despite the success of targeted interventions, the PTEs have seen limited impact on the overall mode share of cycling.” 

And there’s the rub. UK cycle promotion is always celebrating 40 per cent (or whatever) increases in cycling while in some mysterious alchemical way modal share remains stuck at what it always was, or even declines. This is not surprising when outfits like Sustrans get involved in promoting parochial vehicular cycling solutions with decades of proven failure behind them.

To put it another way Ipswich lost around 35 per cent of its cyclists in the period 1995-2010. This is consistent with the contraction in cycling elsewhere in British towns and cities.

This new £22 million package will do nothing whatever to shift modal share in Ipswich, because Ipswich remains a fundamentally car-centric town with nothing on offer for cyclists but vehicular cycling.

Look carefully at the detail of this new scheme and you will see that it involves the flavour of the month among transport planners, namely widening footways to push cyclists closer to overtaking vehicles and then using the widened footways for parking bays, to add a little extra twist of ‘dooring’ to the cycling experience - as shown here

In time-honoured fashion the local cycling group puts a lot of time and effort into attempting to ameliorate these vehicular cycling solutions and the usual suspects cheer with wild enthusiasm.

And now let’s look at the jewel in the crown of this new scheme, namely the treatment of what is currently a hellish roundabout where the A1022 (Civic Drive and Franciscan Way) meets the B1075 and Princes Street.

The new scheme removes the roundabout and replaces it with a signalled junction, as shown in the projection below (from the perspective of where Princes Street westbound meets the junction with the A1022).

This is not how you design infrastructure for cyclists if you are serious about making cycling a mass means of transport. 

In the first place there is nothing intrinsically wrong with roundabouts and the Dutch know how to design them to benefit cyclists.

And if you have to have a signalled junction you should be designing it like the Dutch do, so that Paths taken by cyclists and drivers do not cross. There is no conflict here at all, and that's why it's safe. 

This Ipswich “improvement” is no improvement at all for cyclists. Advanced Stop Lines and on-road cycle lanes alongside huge volumes of motor vehicles including lorries and buses are ineffective, subjectively and objectively dangerous, fail to prioritise cyclists and often slow them down, and do absolutely nothing to get non-cyclists cycling. It's predictable that when this scheme is built cyclists will be hopping on to the wide paved areas to take short cuts in order to avoid being delayed at the lights (which are there to manage vehicle flow, not assist cyclists) and because it may well be safer to do this than turn at the junction alongside large or carelessly or aggressively driven vehicles.

At a professional level transport planning for cycling in the UK remains suffused with an ignorant parochialism which is not remotely interested in outcomes, aided and abetted by a cycle promotion culture which is collaborationist to its core and which stubbornly refuses to learn from its own long history of failure.

Footnote - news just in

IPSWICH Hospital is to slash the price it charges patients to park their cars. 

Bosses at the Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust revealed yesterday that along with introducing lower charges for longer stays, patients will also be able to park free for 30 minutes in drop off areas. Some ticket prices will be reduced by as much as £1.40. 

Jeff Calver, Associate Director of Estate, said the new tariffs were introduced to reflect what patients and visitors have told the hospital in feedback. 

He added: “We’ve listened to what our patients, visitors and staff say about car-parking and hope these new changes will greatly improve people’s experience of using the hospital car-parks.

Segregation from lorries demanded

FIGURES released by Suffolk police reveal there have been more than 250 crashes involving lorries on the A14 in the past five years where people have been killed or injured. 

The statistics have been compiled following the pile-up near the Trimley interchange sliproad on the dual carriageway last month which claimed the life of a grandmother and her 15-year-old grandson. 

The figures for crashes on the A14 involving goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes shows there has been one a week on average since 2008. 

[ I suspect this statistic only refers to the Suffolk section of the A14, a road which actually runs all the way from Felixstowe to the A1/A1(M) via Stowmarket, Bury St Edmunds and Cambridge. In the Suffolk section there are hardly any speed cameras, whereas between Cambridge and the A1 there used to be more Gatso speed cameras than I have ever seen anywhere in Britain, which have since been replaced by average speed cameras. Unlike isolated Gatso cameras, average speed cameras are incredibly effective in ensuring drivers keep to the speed limit, which is why the Conservative Party loathes them and why pro-motor-terrorist speedophile Chief Constables show no interest at all in seeing them installed on main roads in their areas. ]

Interestingly, among other things, “Community leaders in Trimley St Martin and Trimley St Mary” are calling for improved separation of cars and lorries.

Crap journalism

Chris Gittins, from Streets Alive, a group promoting street sociability… says it is impractical to change the physical structure of our environment, so we should focus on changing our social habits. 

According to urban planner Garry Hall from TransForm Places, since the 1960s there has been a land-grab, with roads now the preserve of drivers. He would like us to follow the Netherlands' example where there are playgrounds on traffic islands. Nuts? 

Well, maybe. According to research by motoring organisation the AA. fewer children are killed or seriously injured by vehicles in the UK than over there. 

Where to begin?

Streets Alive seems to promote street parties. Its most radical infrastructural policy is 20 mph zones. The problem with the “Twenties plenty” policy is that in isolation it does nothing at all to reduce on-street car parking or rat-running.

As for TransForm Places. My anti-virus software shrieked that if I clicked on this site I’d risk downloading a Trojan. So I declined to do so. But one wonders where Garry Hall has actually been to in the Netherlands. The notion that the Dutch put children’s playgrounds on traffic islands is, well, nuts. Or to put it another way: bollocks, bullshit, and complete crap.

As for the suggestion that Dutch children are suffering genocide at the hands of drivers, whereas in Britain the kids are safe as houses. I mean WTF? Can we have some hard statistics please, as opposed to bland journalistic generalisations?

Great caution is required when comparing national road casualty statistics, as is demonstrated here. Far more old people die on bicycles in the Netherlands than in the UK, entirely because large numbers of elderly people cycle over there, whereas in the UK very few people over 60 cycle. In the Netherlands they bike till they drop; in the UK octogenarian and nonagenarian drivers are regularly involved in road crashes, and the only person required to certify fitness to drive is the drooling, stroke-paralysed, half-blind geriatric petrol addict. There is more about Dutch casualty figures here and here.

This is not dangerous

Photo: Paul Cowan 


It appears that no one was injured in this SVO crash (Single Vehicle Only) and so this will not appear in the government’s annual road casualty statistics, which are commonly regarded as an index of road danger. Air bags and rigid steel safety frames often protect drivers and their passengers from the consequences of a crash like this.

The blue Alfa Romeo smashed into a lamppost and turned over outside the William Morris Gallery museum in Forest Road, Walthamstow, just before 6pm on Friday (August 24). 

Police say the vehicle was being followed after it failed to respond to a request to stop a short distance earlier. Ryheem Gordon, 18, of College Close in Hackney, has been charged with dangerous driving, failing to stop, not having proper insurance and not having a valid driving licence. 

Although it isn’t immediately obvious from the photograph, the upside down car is lying on a zebra crossing.

You might say that In reality, it was only sheer chance that prevented a pedestrian from being seriously injured, or even killed, in this incident..

Footnote

The site of this crash has featured previously on this blog here and here.

The aftermath of another crash on this same bend is shown here

In the distance, beyond the zebra crossing in the foreground, you can see the bend where this driver lost control in the second photo here.

This is not a road fatality

A road fatality is defined as meaning any person killed immediately or dying within 30 days as a result of a road crash.

A man who never recovered after being knocked down by a hit-and-run driver six years ago, died after contracting pneumonia, an inquest heard. 

Paul Dix was hit by a car outside his Drayton Road home in Norwich on January 22, 2006, and spent almost six years in a persistent vegetative state. 

 A woman from Lakenham received a six-month driving ban and a £50 fine after admitting careless driving and failing to stop at the scene. Her driving licence had expired due to medical restrictions.

Are you safer on a Boris bike?

It is asserted that

bike hire cyclists are three times less likely to be injured per trip than other cyclists in London as a whole.

If true, this is an interesting statistic.

What conclusions can be drawn from this statistic?

Dr Robert Davis believes

they are more likely to be tourists (and have a carefree attitude), not wear helmets, and I would suggest that they are less likely to be aware of the road environment in central London. 

The point is that, yet again, we have evidence of adaptive behaviour by road users, in this case motorists. It backs up the evidence for Safety in Numbers (SiN) 

Does it really, though?

My immediate response to the assertion that bike hire cyclists are three times less likely to be injured per trip than other cyclists in London as a whole is that this may be because trips made using hire bikes are short ones, while other cycling journeys are longer.

If other cycling journeys are on average three times longer than those made by hire bike then the statistical difference in casualties becomes of no significance whatever.

Or to put it another way, it’s about exposure to risk. Measuring safety by individual trips is not a good way of measuring danger because some trips are far more dangerous than others. Exposure to risk involves the length of the journey, the kind of roads cycled on, and the prevailing conditions on those roads in terms of motor vehicle type, volume and speed. (It may be, for example, that Boris bikers cycle far less in the vicinity of lorries than commuter cyclists on certain routes.)

I am not particularly convinced by the argument that drivers treat Boris bikers better than other cyclists, or that the behaviour of Boris bikers is significantly different to that of other cyclists. But then I think that the behaviourist approach to cycling and “road safety” is doomed. Trying to modify the behaviour of drivers and cyclists on shared roads is the classically failed tradition of UK cycle campaigning. Danger reduction is best accomplished through re-designing road infrastructure to separate cyclists from vehicles on the Dutch model, not by attempting to shape the individual psychology of the driver or the cyclist.

My own personal observations also suggest another reason why Boris bikers may be less likely to be hit by a motor vehicle than other cyclists. See if you can spot what it might be.

Cycling casualties still rising

The latest road casualty figures are more bad news.

The new figures underline what is starting to look like a trend. The one road user group where casualty figures are rising – and rising in all categories (light injuries, serious injuries and fatalities) is that of cyclists. Pedestrian casualty figures (which are often worse than for cycling) continue to fall.

What is striking about the latest set of figures is that they occur both in the winter months, when there are fewer cyclists around, and against a background of falling car use. Recessions are usually good for road casualty figures, because people drive less. But cycling is dangerous.

Waltham Forest Council abandons ALL cycle monitoring

Until 2005, Waltham Forest Council carried out annual screenline cycle counts on twelve major routes in the borough.

The raw data for these routes is available in section 3.6 of the Waltham Forest Cycle Action Plan (2005, with subsequent updates).

The council then reduced its counts to ten routes, dropping monitoring on Grove Green Road in Leyton and Hoe Street in Walthamstow.

These counts were very valuable, and I was looking forward to seeing the July 2011 figures. I duly sent off a Freedom of Information request and with commendable speed and efficiency the council has responded. I am informed that the Transport Planning Team has been subject to severe budget reductions during 2011, as a consequence of which no cycle counts have been taken this year.

I confirm therefore that there is no cycle monitoring information for 2011.

I’d be interested to know if other London boroughs have also abandoned their cycle counts. If you live in one, do ask.

Dangerous Britain

I remember once reading somewhere that everyone born in Britain stands a one in seventeen chance of being killed or seriously injured in a road crash during the course of their lifetime. I wish I could remember the source of that statistic but I can’t. I remembered it when I read this sad story:

Dad-of-two Karl Austin, of Biddulph, died on June 30 in a collision with a lorry near Derby on the A50. Today his wife, Linda, and his parents Keith and Joyce paid tribute to the race-winning cyclist.

His parents also lost Karl's sister, Kim, in a car accident in 1986 when she was 19.

Dad Keith, of Semper Close, in Congleton, said: "Having lost Kim it was the last thing we could ever have imagined was to lose both children. It's almost unbelievable but it's happened."

Cycling injuries rise in East London – and there’s been another London cycling fatality

The number of cyclists being injured on Tower Hamlets roads has gone up by 12 per cent in the last three years.

Tower Hamlets fared better than other east London boroughs, as in Barking and Dagenham road accidents involving cyclists shot up by more than half and those involving pedestrians by almost a fifth.

Labour London Assembly member for the area, John Biggs, said the re-phasing of hundreds of traffic signals in the capital may be leading to increased traffic speeds which put cyclists and pedestrians at higher risk.

No surprise, really, since

What TfL have managed to do since 2004 is to preside over a road network so dangerous that it actually cancels out any safety benefit of the 170% increase in people riding bikes on the TLRN.

If TfL really want people to “catch up with the bicycle”, they have got to stop prioritising motor vehicle convenience at the expense of cycle safety.

Meanwhile last week, with almost no publicity at all (car-centric BBC London News characteristically ignored it) another London cyclist was killed:

A cyclist has died following a collision with a motor vehicle (Thursday 14th July) on Kew Bridge.

Eye-witnesses report that the cyclist was knocked off his bike whilst crossing the bridge.

Note the Comment of a local cyclist here.

‘the number of cyclists killed rose for a third consecutive year’

The road casualty figures for 2010 have just been published

As far as cyclists are concerned

Although deaths and injuries fell significantly for motorists, pedestrians and motorcyclists, the number of cyclists killed rose for a third consecutive year. Deaths rose by 7% from 104 in 2009 to 111 last year, although the DfT says the number of cyclists rose by just 0.5%.

In fact the figures rose in all groups for cyclists - killed, seriously injured and slightly injured. But, hey, don’t let that get you down. With the right approach to statistics you can see that this is good news, since

In 2010, the likelihood of being killed while cycling was 54 per cent lower than in 1990.

This is reassuring, is it not?

Sadly there are still some cyclists who go round in ordinary clothing. It’s time to knock some sense into the heads of these self-destructive fools with this expert advice:

"Cyclists can help themselves by making sure they ride appropriately and make use of safety equipment and clothing. Wearing high visibility clothing, even during daylight hours, can reduce the likelihood of a collision and if one does unfortunately occur, the use of a protective helmet can significantly reduce the extent of injury."

10,000 maniacs: how the courts indulge some drivers who are repeat offenders

Normally when you clock up twelve points you lose your driving licence. However if you can persuade the court that taking away your right to drive would involve you in “exceptional hardship” then you may be allowed to continue driving. After a recent BBC documentary exposed the case of one driver who continued to clock up points way beyond the 12 point maximum and was still allowed to go on driving, I used the FOI to ask the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency how many drivers were currently on the roads in the UK, legally driving with 12 points or more on their licence. This is the reply I received. What it reveals is that a tiny, privileged minority are allowed to repeatedly offend, with courts indulging the offender’s desire to maintain the right to drive a car while repeatedly breaking road traffic law.


The following table shows the number of drivers in Great Britain who currently have more than 12 penalty points on their driving licence and have not been disqualified from driving by the Courts. These figures reflect the information held as at 16 May 2011.

Current Pts  Total no. of drivers

12 7,014

13 804

14 881

15 1,093

16 296

17 147

18 245

19 38

20 49

21 38

22 13

23 16

24 24

25 3

27 3

28 1

30 4

33 1

36 1

Grand Total 10,671


Whilst DVLA maintains a record of all GB fixed penalties and Court ordered endorsements, the Agency has no responsibility or influence on Court imposed sentences. Magistrates' Courts use Sentencing Guidelines published by The Magistrates' Association that provide a framework setting out how to establish the seriousness of each case and the most appropriate way of dealing with it. This helps ensure that any penalty reflects the seriousness of the offence and the personal circumstances of the offender.

In a small percentage of cases where the driver has accumulated 12 or more penalty points, the Agency understands that a Court can exercise its discretion and not disqualify the driver. In the majority of these cases, Magistrates may have decided to allow drivers to retain their entitlement to drive where it is considered that disqualification would cause exceptional hardship.

DVLA’s drivers database changes constantly as the Agency receives driving licence applications and other information that updates the records of individual drivers. Therefore, it is possible only to provide a snapshot of the state of the record at the time of any request. It should be noted that there can be a delay between the notification of penalty points and of disqualification. These can update the driver record separately.

47,000 American pedestrians killed in ‘accidents’ (now go back to sleep)

A new report examining the number of pedestrian deaths over the last decade suggests that many American cities, including San Antonio, remain dangerous places for people who travel on foot.

The study “Dangerous by Design,” released this week by the Washington D.C.-based coalition Transportation for America, ranks San Antonio as the 24th most dangerous city for pedestrians, compared with 51 other cities and metropolitan areas.

More than 47,000 pedestrians were killed in the United States between 2000 and 2009, according to the study, and more than 688,000 were injured.

dangerous cycling in Toronto

Toronto’s streets are the most dangerous in the country to cycle or walk, according to a new study.

A report released Thursday by the city’s Traffic Safety Unit revealed Toronto had the highest rate of vehicles colliding with cyclists and pedestrians in the first nine months of last year.

For every 100,000 people, there were 42 vehicle-bike crashes in Toronto