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Are drivers and cyclists just as dangerous to pedestrians?

The Times thinks so, but there's another way of looking at it...

Cyclists are just as dangerous to pedestrians as drivers. That’s the claim made by an article on The Times website today.

According to transport correspondent Phillip Pank, analysis of the 2012 road accident figures published by the Department for Transport reveals: “When serious injuries are measured as a proportion of distance travelled, cyclists injured 21 pedestrians per billion km travelled in 2012 compared with 24 pedestrians injured by drivers.”

To steal a phrase from debunker of Bad Science Ben Goldacre, we think you’ll find it’s more complicated than that.

What you really want to know here is how much of a risk different road users pose to pedestrians. It could be therefore misleading to take as your starting point the distances travelled by the those road users. You want the distances travelled by pedestrians.

road.cc doesn’t have an in-house statistician (applications are open, but be warned: the pay is lousy), so no doubt there are serious flaws in what follows and we expect smarter people than us to point them out in the comments.

The national travel survey says the average person travelled 6,691 miles in 2012. There 60 million people in the UK, so that's just over 400 billion miles.

Of that distance, 3 percent is walked so that's 12 billion miles of walking. For the sake of argument, let’s say that half of that is in the kind of urban environments The Times is talking about.

That’s 6 billion miles of walking which would get you out to Pluto’s orbit, if the frigid outer reaches of the solar system are your thing.

There were 79 pedestrians killed or seriously injured (KSI) by bikes in urban areas in 2012, so that’s one KSI per 75 million miles walked.

By contrast, there were 4,679 pedestrian KSIs involving motor vehicles - one KSI per 1.25 million miles walked.

That means for every mile you walk, you are 60 times more likely to be killed or seriously injured by a driver than a cyclist.

Another criticism of The Times’ analysis, and one that the paper touches on, is that the injuries sustained by pedestrians who are hit by cyclists are likely to be less severe than injuries to those who are hit by drivers.

The DfT’s classification of serious injury is:

Serious injury: An injury for which a person is detained in hospital as an “in-patient”, or any of the following injuries whether or not they are detained in hospital: fractures, concussion, internal injuries, crushings, burns (excluding friction burns), severe cuts, severe general shock requiring medical treatment and injuries causing death 30 or more days after the accident.

An injured casualty is recorded as seriously or slightly injured by the police on the basis of information available within a short time of the accident. This generally will not reflect the results of a medical examination, but may be influenced according to whether the casualty is hospitalised or not. Hospitalisation procedures will vary regionally.

So a broken collarbone or mild concussion comes under the same heading as multiple broken bones and severe brain damage.

On the basis of its pedestrian-injuries-per-billion-vehicle-miles analysis, The Times concedes that “drivers are five times more likely than cyclists to kill a pedestrian.” It doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect that they are also far more likely to inflict the most severe injuries.

After all, what would you rather be hit by, a Mondeo doing 30mph, or a skinny cyclist doing 20mph?

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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59 comments

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northstar | 10 years ago
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exceed? maybe you should check the stats first, hilarious.

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TimC340 | 10 years ago
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Has RoadCC approached The Times for a comment having had its science discredited?

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stevengoodfellow | 10 years ago
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I find it incredible that anything in a News International paper is taken seriously. We know that often their stories are simply a means of self promotion, write something outrageous and watch the interest grow. Treat them with the contempt they deserve, just ignore them, they don't deserve serious debate.

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bwpearre | 10 years ago
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"What you really want to know here is how much of a risk different road users pose to pedestrians."

Why?

I don't think that's what you want. At least I don't want that. I'd be much more interested in whether encouraging cycling is likely to make roads safer, whereas your question is about what's likely to have happened if I find myself lying in the middle of the road with a broken bone. I want to know whether a given trip is more dangerous to some group of people (e.g. pedestrians) depending on whether it's made by car or by bike, because the answer leads to a difference in policy--either individual ("I want to kill someone today. Should I drive or bike?") or societal ("Should we subsidise parking and petrol as they do in the USA?"). So the article you criticise is asking the important question: What's Pr(hurt | hit by bike), whereas the question you're asking is What's Pr(hit by bike | hurt)?, which is only interesting for storytelling purposes.

Since far more miles are driven by cars than by bikes, obviously cars will kill more people. That's not interesting because it doesn't answer the question "Would encouraging cycling lead to safer roads?"

On the other hand, your criticism of "serious injury" is correct and important--even if hospitalisable injuries are similar, Pr(death | hit by car) > Pr(death | hit by bike).

Another way of looking at it is this: what you really want to know is which form of transportation kills more _people_, regardless of how they choose to transport themselves on any given trip. (You could maybe argue that people driving cars are knowingly choosing to put the lives of others at high risk and thus deserve to die, and so we don't care if people in cars kill people in cars, but actually let's not do that.) Bikes are more dangerous to other people than pedestrians are, but nobody on a bike ever kills anyone in a car (AFAIK), and people in cars kill people in cars all the time.

(And then there are the personal health benefits of cycling and the personal and societal health drawbacks of driving...)

If the original article shows something that you wish it didn't show (and who likes to hear that cycling hurts others?), perhaps we should be arguing for better integration of cycling infrastructure and better civic planning, rather than trying to ask misleading questions.

If you must question the statistics, perhaps you could argue that "per distance" is flawed, since cycling trips tend to be much shorter than driving trips, and more urban, resulting in higher exposure of pedestrians. The analysis in the Times may merely show that long-distance highways are efficient, pedestrian-death-wise: cars can rack up many billions of kilometers without coming anywhere near pedestrians (no kinetic endangerment, at least, although endangering them through toxins and political instability and climate change still occurs). Normalising _per_trip_ rather than _per_distance_ would arguably make more sense. This would also take into account the behaviour change caused by cycling: cyclists presumably tend to travel less distance per year, but to go out at roughly as often.

Cheers!

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Sedgepeat | 10 years ago
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I am delighted that cyclists agree with me that stats are crap after all  21

But you miss two vital points. Accident records show that with drivers involved 75% are the pedestrians fault.

And of course,because drivers keep us all alive and provide basic essentials, they save far more people than they kill or injure. Yes it can't all be perfect.

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ronyrash | 10 years ago
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Jjkuvbgd36788&£

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kie7077 | 10 years ago
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"(he actually chased me in his converted golf cart)."

Lol, so you cycled slow and waited for him too catch up right?  21

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ronyrash | 10 years ago
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Hi it's me again using the word Save is a code word for Send (previous post) must remember that.
23 pedis killed by cyclist? If you believe that you'll. believe anything.when I returned from a 2 year cycle tour abroad a few year ago I was shocked to learn of 20,000 cycle accidents,3000 fatally,in the previous year.
It turned out that these figures were entirely fictitious.theres a good few loonies round cycling but these will be eventually sorted out in the fullness of time by the shear weight of of numbers in the coming flood of cyclist who are going to bring this planet back to its senses.
You lucky young people, enjoy the ride!

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Simon_MacMichael replied to stevengoodfellow | 10 years ago
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stevengoodfellow wrote:

I find it incredible that anything in a News International paper is taken seriously.

So we should dismiss the entire Cities Fit For Cycling campaign from The Times, which raised the profile of cycling on the political agenda, secured a parliamentary debate, and helped pay for the Get Britain Cycling inquiry, then?

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joemmo replied to | 10 years ago
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ronyrash wrote:

Jjkuvbgd36788&£

+1

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hairyairey | 10 years ago
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I hope you guys realise that the prevalence of hybrid vehicles is only going to increase the number of accidents. >10 tonnes of metal going down the road silently is very scary. Pedestrians in London don't look when they cross the road already (is this some kind of Islamic fatalism at work?) - it won't be long until deaths and serious injuries from hybrids exceed those from 'cycles

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PhilRuss replied to hairyairey | 10 years ago
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hairyairey wrote:

I hope you guys realise that the prevalence of hybrid vehicles is only going to increase the number of accidents. >10 tonnes of metal going down the road silently is very scary. Pedestrians in London don't look when they cross the road already (is this some kind of Islamic fatalism at work?) - it won't be long until deaths and serious injuries from hybrids exceed those from 'cycles

[[[[[ Yup, silently-approaching hybrid motors may well cause more collisions in the short term, but perhaps other road-users will therefore begin to use their eyes instead of their ears.....surely a plus for them, and a boon to us cyclists?
P.R.

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joemmo replied to PhilRuss | 10 years ago
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PhilRuss wrote:
hairyairey wrote:

I hope you guys realise that the prevalence of hybrid vehicles is only going to increase the number of accidents. >10 tonnes of metal going down the road silently is very scary. Pedestrians in London don't look when they cross the road already (is this some kind of Islamic fatalism at work?) - it won't be long until deaths and serious injuries from hybrids exceed those from 'cycles

[[[[[ Yup, silently-approaching hybrid motors may well cause more collisions in the short term, but perhaps other road-users will therefore begin to use their eyes instead of their ears.....surely a plus for them, and a boon to us cyclists?
P.R.

or this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13416020

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johndonnelly | 10 years ago
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Over the last few years I've had exactly the same problems as (it seems) everyone else with pedestrians not looking before stepping out, but over this winter (mainly for a laugh) I've been running the bike with Schwalbe ice spikers. It sounds like a half track and I've never failed to attract the attention of all pedestrians (even with headphones). Everyone gets out of my way and I'm thinking of running them into the summer as well.

I love finding a technology solution to problems.

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ChairRDRF | 10 years ago
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Whoops: I wrote:

1. A tiny proportion of pedestrian KSIs involve cyclists. When walking you are far, far, far more likely to be hospitalised (let alone killed) in a collision involving a cyclist than a motorist.

One of you spotted that ti shoudl read "less" rather than "more".

I was just testing you.

Honest.

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Michael5 | 10 years ago
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I'm a pedestrian, a cyclist, a passenger on public transport and a motorist.

Fortunately, I have appropriate insurance and have written a will. Sounds like I could be needing one or other soon!

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matthewn5 | 10 years ago
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Let's put this in perspective.

In the 10 years to 1997, guess how many people were killed on London's pavements by cars? = 37.

By bikes? = Zero.

Clearly there's infinitely much more danger of being killed by a car on the pavement than on the road.

Data source:
http://www.ctc.org.uk/news/goodwill-reiterates-footway-cycling-guidance

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DNAse | 10 years ago
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Per minute spent travelling should be used as the measure rather than per unit distance.
Typically motor vehicles travel much faster than bicycles. If, for example you assume a steady rate of pedestrians crossing the road, a cyclist will be exposed to more pedestrians per km than a driver.
Additionally, as mentioned already, shared use foot/cycle paths increase exposure for cyclists.

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Sam Saunders | 10 years ago
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No one is impressed by data analysis alone. The question is "what can be done?", The answer is "improve the design of streets so that the most vulnerable get the most help".

Cycling will do very well from such a plan, and so will walking. Driving will have to take quite a lot of restriction, but can continue to be useful and convenient where necessary.

The problem of bad behaviour will have to wait for Judgement Day.

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arfa | 10 years ago
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Saw the Times today which had half a page celebrating Top Gear's 21st birthday and the fact that Clarkson has no plans to "grow up". Go figure as the Americans say.

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antigee | 10 years ago
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from the Times article
"Analysis of the past ten years of road casualty data by CTC showed that cyclists killed 23 pedestrians in the decade to 2012 and seriously injured 585.

In the same period, 3,330 pedestrians were killed by motor vehicles and 46,081 were seriously injured. "

ok so simple maths assuming a linear relationship to kms travelled (not proper stats  3 )
so if you doubled the number of cycle-kms ridden
then the number of people killed per year by pedal bikes could be as many as 5 give or take with around 120 people seriously injured
if you halved the vehicle-kms driven then that would be 150 pedestrians killed per year by vehicles and 2300 seriously injured per year

that seems a pretty big gap to me think I know where effort to improve skills and change attitudes needs focussing

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harrybav | 10 years ago
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Couple of references to daft pedestrian behaviour - long may it last, I say, in urban areas, as it helps to slow cars and enforce the correct priority of feet, then bikes mingling in with care, then motorised vehicles going at a crawl to limit the danger the vehicles introduce. Blame-shifting talk of lemmings is misjudged, I think. Anyone going too quick in town needs to swap their long drop cantis for some disc brakes - an excuse for a new Croix de Fer maybe?  36

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Paul_C replied to harrybav | 10 years ago
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vbvb wrote:

Couple of references to daft pedestrian behaviour - long may it last, I say, in urban areas, as it helps to slow cars and enforce the correct priority of feet, then bikes mingling in with care, then motorised vehicles going at a crawl to limit the danger the vehicles introduce. Blame-shifting talk of lemmings is misjudged, I think. Anyone going too quick in town needs to swap their long drop cantis for some disc brakes - an excuse for a new Croix de Fer maybe?  36

bring back the "red flag" for motorised vehicles? Make it compulsorary for all motorised vehicles to be dayglo yellow? After all they keep trying to get high-viz mandated for cyclists...

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arfa | 10 years ago
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I have yet to collide with a pedestrian but boy do some of them try in London. Everyone makes mistakes but it is the ones who see you and make no effort to clear off the road and usually have a shitty remark to make as you swerve/jam on the brakes.
Sad that the Times has gone down this route but it does employ Clarkson.

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goggy replied to arfa | 10 years ago
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Strange fact. I have a very fast car that my wife normally drives. Yet the more I cycle - 4x as much as last year, at least so far this year  3 - the less I care about Top Gear and Clarkson.

Bring on my Tacx trainer and Strava goals!

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Paul J replied to arfa | 10 years ago
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To be fair, if the pedestrian is already crossing the road, they may well have right of way over you. This is certainly the case if you turned onto the road they were crossing. When a pedestrian has right of way, it is incumbent on you to not impede them (e.g. stop, or go behind them).

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PhilRuss replied to Paul J | 10 years ago
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Paul J wrote:

To be fair, if the pedestrian is already crossing the road, they may well have right of way over you. This is certainly the case if you turned onto the road they were crossing. When a pedestrian has right of way, it is incumbent on you to not impede them (e.g. stop, or go behind them).

[[[[[ Really? And do road-crossing pedestrians also have right of way over cars, buses, trucks, etc? If so, it must be in the Highway Code, and every time a pedestrian is KSI'd by a motor vehicle it must be the driver's fault. N'est pas?
P.R.

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goggy | 10 years ago
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Pedestrians don't see & hear cyclists, or under-estimate their speed. That's the issue we face, honestly.

In the beautiful place that is Canary Wharf last week, a private plod there decided that me yelling at a "not-looking-before-crossing-the-road-and-reading-my-smartphone-with-headphones-in" pedestrian that I was in danger of hitting was "startling" for him and uncalled for (he actually chased me in his converted golf cart).

My response was surprisingly docile - "go and shout at a motorist that hoots, then come back and I will agree with you".

I see so much hysteria since November, and more tension between motorists, pedestrians and cyclists. Enough with stupid articles - let's all just be courteous and aware.

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MarinaLim replied to goggy | 10 years ago
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I totally agree with goggy's last statement. I try to give as much warning to pedestrian as they walk out onto my path without looking and the worst case is when they walk 2 to 3 abreast on the path in the park on won't budge!
On the other side, I see some cyclist who still thinks they can cycle across red lights or won't stop for pedestrains when it's the pedestrains right of way!
Let's ALL just be courteous and aware of other road users!

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spen | 10 years ago
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The most obvious problem with this statistic is that there are no accurate figures for the number of cyclists or the number of miles they travel! Also, given the title of the piece, this, from near the end seems a bit at odds with intent of the article

"Research by the City of Westminster Council last year found that, in collisions between pedestrians and cyclists, 60 per cent of the crashes were caused by the pedestrian. "

Perhaps it should have been "Pedestrians create army of cycling wounded"

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