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Broken bike (CC licensed image by garryknight, www.flickr.com)Worst January for cycling deaths since 2008—and it's only halfway through
In a grim start to 2015, this January has seen more cyclist fatalities on Britain's roads than in any year since 2008.
Thirteen riders have died so far this year, the most since 2008, when the whole of January saw 14 cyclist fatalities.
Since 2003 the Department for Transport's annual report on road casualties has included a breakdown of casualties by month and road user type.
Those figures reveal that the average number of cyclist fatalities in the first month of the year is 9.8, so by the middle of the month you'd expect five or so deaths.
It's worth bearing in mind that the average masks a large variation, from 16 in 2006 down to just 3 in 2010.
Nevertheless, it's hard to avoid the feeling that there's been something unusual about the first two weeks of 2015. Only an expert statistical analysis would reveal if that's the case though, as happened when six riders lost their lives in two weeks in London in 'Black November' 2013.
In a paper for the Royal Statistical Society journal Significance, Jody Aberdein and David Spiegelhalter concluded that in an eight year period there was only a 1 in 40 chance that 6 riders would die in a fortnight in London. There really was something unusual about that spate of deaths.
The relatively mild start to the year may be a factor, with the general lack of snow and ice perhaps enticing more riders out to risk the short days and long mornings and evenings.
Prof Spiegelhalter made the mathematical tools he and Dr Aberdein used to analyse the London spate of deaths available on his blog. If anyone who's a lot better at maths than us would like to apply them to this latest series of fatalities, please let us know.
Cyclist deaths in January
| Year | Deaths |
| 2013 | 9 |
| 2012 | 11 |
| 2011 | 9 |
| 2010 | 3 |
| 2009 | 6 |
| 2008 | 14 |
| 2007 | 14 |
| 2006 | 16 |
| 2005 | 7 |
| 2004 | 7 |
| 2003 | 12 |
The first two deaths of the year occurred on January 1. In St Leonards, East Sussex, Jamie Murray, a 23-year-old scaffolder from Hastings, died after being involved in a collision with an orange Ford Focus on the A259 at around 4am.
Later that day 32-year-old James Stephenson, a father of two young girls who worked as head chef at Applegarth Farm near Grayshott, died on the A3 in Hampshire at 7.30am.
On January 2, 49-year-old Karen Clayton was involved in a collision with a pedestrian in Altincham. She died from her injuries two days later.
The following day, Thomas Goodwin, 72, was taken to hospital with head injures after a collision with a silver Ford Ranger on Walwyn Road, Colwall, Worcestershire. He died from his injuries on January 5.
No other vehicle is believed to have been involved in the death of storyteller Andy Hunter on January 5. The Hereford Times reports that the 60-year-old was found by the side of the road in Michaelchurch Escley. He died from heart failure.
On the same day, 47-year-old Darren Schofield was riding on the A650 in Tingley, West Yorkshire at 4:10pm when he was in collision with a black Vauxhall Corsa being driven in the same direction. He died of his injuries on January 14.
On January 6, Andrew Wolfindale, 35, from Walgrave in the West Midlands was struck by an HGV on Tollbar Island in Coventry at around 6pm and died from his injuries in hospital later that evening, according to West Midlands Police.
Paul Miller, a 46-year-old primary school headteacher, was pronounced dead at the scene on January 8 after a collision with a black Fiat on the B3147 near Dorchester.
The next death came at around 10:00pm on January 12 when an as-yet-unnamed 43 year old man from Gloucester was killed in a collision with a lorry and several cars on the Golden Valley Bypass near Junction 11 of the M5.
The following day, January 13, Artur Piotr Ruszel, 45, died after a collision with a Honda Jazz travelling in the same direction on Upper Brook Street, Manchester at around 7.36am.
Later that day, an as-yet-unnamed woman was found suffering from head injuries on Old Bath Road, Cheltenham shortly after 11.30am. The 52-year-old was taken to hospital and later discharged. The ambulance service was called to the woman's home on the morning of January 14 and she later died.
At 2.35pm the same day, 59-year-old Robert Betteley died after a collision with a coach on the A530 Middlewich Road near Nantwich, Cheshire. He was taken to Leighton Hospital but died a short time later. Police arrested a 57-year-old man n suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving.
At 7:40am today, January 15, an as-yet-unnamed man died after a collision with a bus on the A1231 slip road from Spire Road. No further details have been made available.
Editorial note
We are aware that some readers find reports of death and serious injuries to cyclists distressing. We will continue to report them from police reports, but unless there is something unusual about the particular incident, we won't promote them through social media.
We believe every cycling death is one too many. The number of deaths and serious injuries has declined in recent years, but the Dutch experience shows that the rate could be much lower. We encourage readers to join organisations such as the CTC, LCC or your local cycling campaign group to fight for a safer environment for cycling.
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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25 comments
The most explicit statement on it is paragraph j in section 4.1 (p9) of this document.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/fil...
It is so very sad to read this... in Australia we are having our issues too (government attitude and in deaths and injuries) which has finally led us to create a political party to represent cycling - and the many benefits it can provide - at State and Federal levels. The Journey is young but the support is growing for a voice in government that truly can begin to change the conversation and priorities. Our next election is only a couple of months away and we plan to contest with 20 candidates.
To an earlier comment, we have researched our data to find the attached table of transport related serious injuries. It is revealing of the scale of the problem and puts our often highly disproportionately publicised cyclist-pedestrian accidents in perspective. Other data suggests in motor vehicle-cyclist collisions, the motor vehicle is found to be at fault 3/4 of the time.
We do often scan road.cc for inspiration and information as we see the UK as further down the path than us. Perhaps one day we might find other ways to collaborate?
If you are curious to learn more about us we call icycleivote.com home and also appear on FB /cyclistsparty
Now corrected. Thanks.
Accident statistics vary tremendously. It was a ruse to introduce speed cameras. They would introduce a camera where one year there was a high accident rate and then claim the camera reduced accidents when the rate fell the next year, however if you looked at a comparable site without the speed camera the same decrease in the rate was seen.
Obviously weather and the increase in cyclists will be variables that affect the rates but apart from analysing each accident to see if road improvements can help there is no magic cure.
I assume figures for injuries are unknown, after all the difference between an injury and a death can be very small. The actual number of incidents may be lower than normal but "chance" has resulted in more deaths.
I guess The Greens are the best bet for real progress in cycle safety. And today they announced decent membership numbers...
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-30829222
Did I read that correctly in 13 incidents there were only 2 arrests?
Three in total, as far as I've been able to find out. Arrests could follow for more; we'll see. Part of the reason I'm maintaining the list is to be able to refer back once legal proceedings are underway (or, in some cases, are abandoned).
Indeed. In fact, if a high fatality rate continues, this is one of my hypotheses: I don't believe there is any convincing reason to suspect a higher number of collisions (at least not significantly so) but it's notable that a number of the deaths occurred either later in hospital or post-discharge. No doubt people are aware of the media attention on current problems in NHS A&E departments, and to my mind a potential reduction in trauma care seems more plausible than anything related to road user behaviour. The default assumption, though, has to be simply statistical noise.
Unfortunately it'd be practically impossible to keep details of all serious injury cases, otherwise I'd do it.
A grim start to the year and as you say we will need to learn from the Dutch experience if we are to safely cater for increasing numbers of people on bikes.
Could road.cc not do more to bring this about, for example by actively supporting and promoting the Space for Cycling campaign?
.
Really we should discount Andy Hunters death, a heart attack is one of those things and not a huge amount you can do to stop that.
Beyond that, that is a pretty shameful list!
Allow the year to continue and watch the government (of any party political variety), courts, police and road building authorities continue to not care.
There could be a bike rider death every day and they would do nothing at all.
There could be 5 every day, it matters not, to them.
Our lives are unimportant to national-level politicians. All that matters is which way we vote. If no significant party proposes a solution, then nobody else loses votes over the matter.
Politicians want power. Anything that may influence their getting or holding power is all that matters to them (this is what democracy is, in practice). Anything that cannot influence their hold on power is absolutely, completely irrelevant to them.
Their solidarity in ALL not caring is what will keep killing us.
The Green party is the only pro-cycling national political force; regardless of whether you think they are a "good" or "desirable" party (in whatever way you wish to define these words), they stand little chance in forming a majority or even coalition government. Therefore there is NO pro-cycling voice at national level which will be listened to at all.
The future holds continuing death and maiming, plus of course irrelevant pittances of spending and no meaningful national standards to aid the situation in our favour.
My sympathies are with the victims and their families, and also for those in the near future who will meet their end in a similar manner.
I agree with everything you say. The political elite see us as tax payers and consumers, not citizens per se. A citizen should actively and willingly engage in the political process taking a critical view of society in the true Socratic tradition, but over the decades since WWII many of us simply do not see how voting changes anything, nor how a small clique of privileged ex-public schoolboys represent us and our concerns, so ultimately we fall into a state of apathy and disengage. Thus, the position of apathetic tax payer and consumer becomes the default position. If I was more of a conspiracy theorist fan, I'd swear it has been done by design.
For us bike users, the Greens are the only party who feasibly could effect positive change should they manage to win enough seats beyond a token few. They will get my vote this year for sure.
When are we going to say enough is enough? All the more reason for a big turn out at Pedal on Parliament and similar protest events. The struggle must go on.
Well so far, the election campaign has seen both Labour and the Tories rushing to assure voters that they won't be spending any significant (or even minor) amounts of money on cycling. So it's nice to have that clarified so quickly.
Thanks for changing the social media approach to these stories. Especially having non-cyclists (but potential cyclists) seeing these all over Facebook etc must be putting them off! Good on you for stopping it.
I have written to the Guardian asking them to make this a national story. It's totally gut wrenching.
I've emailed my MP regarding this article (Yvette Cooper) I really hope she reads it and decides to make something of it. With Cameron's Cycling revolution in full swing and an election year, there's never been a better time to make sure this doesn't turn into a record year.
Welcome to Tory Britain.
When Labour lead the next coalition we can obviously look forward to cycling nirvana as the country's drivers instantly transform into saints.
There isn't a single major political party who is proposing the scale of investment we need in this country to make cycling a safe, convenient and practical mode of transport for all. This government might have failed to recognise what's needed but there is no guarantee that a Labour-led government or a different coalition would do anything different.
Idiot.
There's one more, I'm sorry to say: Robert Betteley.
https://beyondthekerb.wordpress.com/uk-cycling-fatalities-2015/
Not terribly important in the circumstances Bez, but Washington is in Tyne and Wear. It's in the Northumberland police area though.
Probably a bid for the pedant of the year award but it's the Northumbria police area, to distinguish it from Northumberland, which is the bit that's mostly north of Hadrian's Wall with a lot of empty roads and no motorways.
As penance for the pedantry I'm emailing Vera Baird, the PCC, and Nick Forbes the transport lead on the North East Combined Authority, to ask them to if they feel there's a need to do a combined scrutiny review on casualty rates and enforcement practice in vehicle / cycle incidents to see if they're happy with how it's working.