Live blog: Who’ll be the 500,000th cyclist on the Embankment Cycle Superhighway? and much more

Eh? Does it make it 1.35% easier?

@Rendel Harris I think the reliability of the stats probably goes down the more specific we try and make things, but restricting the comparison to roads with speed limits of 40mph and under (as an imperfect proxy for urban areas) changes the stats from car drivers killing 2.5x pedestrians per mile vs cyclists to 3.3x. A notable increase, but I still find it surprisingly small given the generally higher speed and much greater mass of cars.

@AidanR Fatalities per billion miles overall isn't a very helpful metric though, given that generally cars will cover so many more miles than bicycles on roads that are de facto pedestrian-free even when you don't count motorways. So car drivers killed 364 pedestrians in 2025, cyclists killed two, but with 274 billion non-motorway miles motorists "only" kill one pedestrian every 752M miles, cyclists with 3.5 billion miles kill one every 1.75 billion miles, so yes, that comes out as motorists only 2.5x more lethal even though they kill 18,000% more pedestrians than cyclists. For a fair comparison you'd have to take out all the miles travelled by cars on roads where they won't encounter pedestrians, i.e. most inter-urban roads, dual carriageways etc, same for bikes obviously but the vast majority of cycling is in the urban environment whereas only 50% of motoring is. Additionally, with no lack of respect for the victims, the number killed by cyclists is so statistically negligible that you can't really draw any solid conclusions.

@AidanR I care less about them, yes it will be costly for society, NHS and benefits when they crash, but it only really affects the offender, it's the other fatal four that causes hazard to others.

@chrisonabike If AI is to be trusted: Cars and LGVs - 35% of pedestrian deaths at junctions Motorbikes - 40% at junctions Buses/coaches and HGVs - 45% at junctions Bicycles - 60% at junctions

@AidanR Buses: as others have pointed out not only are trams more efficient - and often money-saving over the long run, but their predictable paths mean they can be more safely mixed with pedestrians. The very flexibility that people like in buses * likely makes them more of a danger. Of course as an Edinburgh resident I should add that with sufficient ignorance/hubris/graft (take your pick) it's quite possible to make more dangerous tram line designs, very slowly, at an astronomical cost. Indeed if you cock up repeatedly you might even end up deciding to take back existing active travel infra (while sending the line away from destinations and housing concentrations...) "because that should mean fewer complaints". * I've also heard there's a fear of single point of failure / unions holding us to ransom.

If I was to spend £10,000 on a new bike, it most certainly would not have Mavic wheels on it. For that money I would have some nice hand built wheels built by a reputable wheel builder.

@AidanR like all these things though "how it's coded" is a lot of it - IIRC it's "involved in" with those figures. That may be mostly correct but we can't be sure (and the cycling numbers are so low that the stats may need care). More to the point would be "who kills who *where* / doing what". That might point towards eg. making some of the changes seen in NL around minimising interactions between different modes as the speed / mass difference goes up. I've never found the source but IIRC some stat about KSIs from cyclists being more common at junctions has been raised here. Also something done quite differently in NL (and they may have the figures so we can check).

Hopefully Active Travel England take a very careful look at what they apply for in the future. Unfortunately this is a "hurts us more than it hurts you" as AFAICS all they can do is not approve future funding, which of course will likely mean cycle infra doesn't happen. Or it does - but via a "council inventing it here" version of "ineffective or dangerous stuff, spread thin". On which "advisory cycle lane" sounds like they're already on it...

@Secret_squirrel *ought* to be ... But IIRC other enterprising local authorities have found ways to reframe "active travel" to include things like buses * or indeed divert it to (at least partly) help the poor motorist. (Potholes anyone?) * eg. Not to divert money here but as a fudge to apparently cover up a drop in funding - see Edinburgh campaign group Spokes' article "ScotGov draft budget 26/27: Active Travel obfuscation"