• Vine says a camera is safer than a wearing helmet in London

• Radio Two presenter says police told him to "keep the footage coming, we'll bust 'em all"

• Condemns "farcical lack of safety" at Bank Junction where newlywed Ying Tao was killed last week

• Said if London's roads were a hospital they would be shut down and an inquiry launched

Jeremy Vine has said he feels a video camera is safer than a helmet cycling in London, and expressed outrage at the deaths on London's roads, and a "farcical" lack of safety at Bank Station where hundreds joined a die-in last night.

The Radio Two presenter, who cycles daily in London, said at the London Cycling Awards last night,  if a hospital had the safety record of London's roads there would be a five year inquiry. Though he lamented having to dress like a "Navy Seal on his way to kill Bin Laden", he said wearing a camera "is the way to go".

Vine said had he not been billed as MC for the  London Cycling Campaign's annual event awarding contributions to cycling in the capital, he would probably have attended his first die-in, for Ying Tao, a 26 year old woman killed at Bank last week after a collision with a lorry.

 

Vine said: "If this event were not taking place tonight I might have, for the first time, gone to one of these die ins, because I feel very strongly about this."

He said he is "increasingly outraged" at the deaths on London's roads whose scenarios, he says, are sadly predictable.

"As soon as I say 'a cyclist has died' you can almost fill in the blanks, ladies and gentlemen: it's going to be a smart, professional woman in her mid-20s killed by a tipper truck turning left.

"It's going to be at a junction like Bank where there is a farcical lack of safety. Bank is a seven way junction, what is a tipper truck doing there at rush hour for God's sake? If a hospital had a death rate that London's roads are hitting with cyclists, the hospital would be shut down, the health secretary would resign, and there would be a five year inquiry."

Cameras "the way to go"

Vine described why he wears a camera when cycling and that, after a pang of guilt about sending films to police when they could be dealing with other crimes, he called them up, at which point, he says, he was told to "keep 'em coming".

"I was hit about 18 months ago by a guy who just decides that I can't be important or matter because I'm on a bicycle. I filmed him and we went to court, and he was fined £3,200.

"I thought: 'OK this is the way to go'"

"I thought the police are here to solve crimes, not to sort me out on my bike, and so I was thinking I'd call them, I said 'sorry if I'm submerging you in films', and she said 'keep em coming'…'that guy's got busted as well, and we'll bust them all'

"So I think a camera is safer than a cycle helmet, and the woman said to me 'we've got a guy who's going 20 miles each way every day and he's sending us six films a day and we're processing all of those as well', so they are actually quite interested in the footage."

Last year Vine filmed himself being caught in Hyde Park in a police speed trap for doing 15mph in a bike lane with a 5mph speed limit which, it turns out, isn't applicable. 

Women disproportionately vulnerable on London's roads

In the last 24 hours two more women were hit by tipper trucks in London, on Blackfriars Bridge, and Old Street.

Of eight cyclists killed on London's roads this year, seven were hit by lorries, six of those were women, and recent analysis by the Evening Standard shows in the last six and a half years, of 33 female cycling deaths in London 27, or 82% were hit by lorries. Where women make only a quarter of London's bike journeys, they are 39% of its adult fatalities.