Jeremy Vine slams ‘garbage’ Telegraph article that claimed cycling injuries have surged since bike lane installed

Just shows what a bit of gumption and a can do attitude can achieve. Keep plugging away and you'll be a six footer before you know it.

Thanks, that's the target. Or I could get a big hat.

With you!  When will all the cyclists - whose companies and industry bodies have deep ties to the government and all parties, who run adverts before every movie, who have a lot of influence over the media...  I say, when will this hugely influential group wake up to the fact that we're all in it together and stop forcing this "tribal" thing?  Everyone's being radicalised by road.cc posters, Cycling Mikey or Jeremy Vine!

Apologies - I've calmed down now.  I don't know London but it would seem that cyclists are now particularly visible there.  It may even be that that particular population of cyclists is less keen to obey some laws.  Apart from "because people" it would be worth to investigate that further.

As you've noted - there are a lot of asymmetries here  Main one "the convenience of someone driving  vs. the wellbeing of someone cycling / walking / wheeling".  I'm not aware that fear of death and serious injury is a common experience for people when driving.  I'd bet approximately zero people driving have experienced the same from cyclists or pedestrians.

This idea that somehow it's on an inoffensive minority* - not a union by the way - and many of whom drive quite a bit too! - to abase themselves into respect I find... troubling.

Meanwhile just a couple of hundred miles away this is much rarer...

* Many cyclists are making some life choices which effectively make things better for the majority of people.  They and their vehicles take up much less public space.  If they pay tax and drive less or not at all they're effectively subsidising other drivers (everyone who pays tax is in part paying for the costs of driving).

Oh - and if you're bothered by footage criticising people's driving you might also be interested in the the large motoring dash-cam footage groups and channels.  (You may already be aware of them).  I don't know but I'd suspect they may outnumber cyclists posting footage by quite a lot!

Define "seriously"?  Examples on this very forum of various deaths and injuries not involving large motor vehicles.

Here's a road defect leading to a death (reported road.cc).

There have been injuries from crashes due to the Edinburgh tramlines enough for some millions in compensation to be payed by the council (cumulatively).  (The cyclist death at the West End was the result of someone going under a minibus though, however most likely due to a fall caused by the hazards of the tramlines).

People come off and then hit stuff - there are certainly more "recreational" examples reported here where people have lost it on descents / brakes "failed" and e.g. hit walls and died.

People can hit other cycles (and probably die in collision with pedestrian).  Example: Head on collision between bike and e-bike leads to death (road.cc again).

Was that what you were looking for?

chrisonatrike wrote:

Define "seriously"?  Examples on this very forum of various deaths and injuries not involving large motor vehicles.

Here's a road defect leading to a death (reported road.cc).

There have been injuries from crashes due to the Edinburgh tramlines enough for some millions in compensation to be payed by the council (cumulatively).  (The cyclist death at the West End was the result of someone going under a minibus though, however most likely due to a fall caused by the hazards of the tramlines).

People come off and then hit stuff - there are certainly more "recreational" examples reported here where people have lost it on descents / brakes "failed" and e.g. hit walls and died.

People can hit other cycles (and probably die in collision with pedestrian).  Example: Head on collision between bike and e-bike leads to death (road.cc again).

Was that what you were looking for?

Those are some great examples, thank you. Any idea if there are statistics available?

The only ones I'm aware of are ones you're almost certainly familiar with.  Depending on your purpose these may very well not be fine-grained enough - all sets I've seen are rather coarse in that they're not much better than the favourites with the unhelpful "involved in" text.

(A sad note that Bez isn't keeping up the major labour of "beyondthekerb" and recording some of this...)

It'd be really interesting (to me at least...) if the Dutch / Danes had some stats - you'd expect them to be better resourced for that and they've the largest "population".  I'm not aware of anything much more detailed than we have though.  From this "overview" from 2018 (nicely summarised by BicycleDutch here) I did find this research paper (older - 2014 and before):

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1369847816300699

For the UK PACTS (2020) is probably the one I'm thinking of (source DfT stats 2019):

https://www.pacts.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/PACTS-What-kills-most-on-the...

Dunno if anyone has anything better?

In particular the "what kills whom" - again it's not clear how "cyclist dies after hitting a pedestrian" would be classed (I've not dug the original data...), but all the "non-large motor vehicle" ones noted.  (Also note the "other" column at the end has some significant numbers with it - any careful dive into this would need to grapple with what that is about):

This is really interesting and scratches my itch very nicely. So from that report, it seems that for every cyclist killed by a car, 0.29 cyclists are killed without any other vehicle involved.

I would have thought it would be much lower, but I stand corrected.

Thank you for sharing

Maybe surprising.  Next question then: who is cycling in the UK?  Definitely a different population than "pedestrians" or "drivers / passengers" (even though people cycling are very likely to use both those modes).

Next question again: what type of cycling?  Note that according to this zero pedestrians died on the streets with no other vehicle involved.  (Unless this is in the "Other" column).  Presumably a few of the pedestrians were out for a run?  None of them had medical issues?  For the purposes of *these* numbers it looks a lot like they've just taken this as zero - so no "trips and slips" either.

So I'd want to know whether / how they've screened out all the heart attacks, strokes, seizures etc. (and crashes resulting from these) from the "Cyclist" column. I suspect they haven't tried.  Cycling is physical activity carried out by humans and it may even be vigorous apparently!  So some of the "death on bike" could well be "and would have died if walking / out for a run".  Even more with "trips and slips" - pedestrians die from falling but - apparently - that's not in the table either (again - unless in "Other"?)

So more comparitive data might be interesting e.g. from NL or indeed Sark!  How all that is "coded" (like the "involved in ..." table) is important.

To answer a couple of your questions:

The underlying data are police reports using the STATS19 reporting system for "road accidents". So medical incidents that occur whilst (or even as a result) of walking/running would simply not make it in to the statistics because a police officer would not normally be called, or would not normally record it as a "road accident". This does leave open a grey area - if a cyclist has a medical incident whilst cycling and crashes as a result, that is more likely to be recorded as a road accident. (I suppose it's fair to say "drop down dead" medical incidents are rare, and I can imagine various medical episodes that are not especially serious in and of themselves are far more likely to lead to serious injury or death if they occur to a cyclist travelling at speed and/or on a road with traffic around).

Where a cyclist hits a pedestrian, and the cyclist themselves is killed (but the pedestrian is unharmed), as far as I can tell that would be coded as a cyclist casualty with no other vehicle involved. I think this is a quirk of the way the data is collected and analysed. The STATS19 form essentially collects three pieces of information: casualties (which can include pedestrians); vehicles involved (which cannot include pedestrians); and other relevant factors. This analysis only considers the casualties and vehicles involved. Where an incident occurs involving a pedestrian, but that pedestrian is not themselves a casualty, then the involvement of the pedestrian would not be picked up by the analysis. (The STATS19 form does have an option for a pedestrian to be a hazard relevant to an incident, but that would not be picked up by the analysis carried out).

Thanks for taking the time!  It is very useful to know some details of how figures were collected and categorised.

I did see four cyclists crash simultaneously last winter where a leaked water main had formed a film of black ice on a bend at the bottom of a downhill: one broken arm, one broken collarbone, one concussion and one heavy bruising (all suspected, once I'd helped pick their bikes up and the paramedics had come I left them to it).

Off road riding has a fair few.

NL has stats showing e-bikes in particular are horrifically dangerous - because 70+ year olds are still able to ride them when frail (and no longer capable of riding normal bikes), with the same problem they have when walking -  a minor fall for a 20 year old can break bones at 70+ and is far more common. (Of course this ignores that there is evidence that transport cycling is one of the reasons they have both a long average lifespan and high quality of life in old age (because they retain mobility/fitness longer))

Indeed - I'd say this is effectively a "problem of success".  Although we have heard recently of some older cyclists dying we're a long way from most younger, fitter people considering this a "mode of transport", never mind older people.

Lots of effects factor in here.  Quality of life is a massive one - more social engagement - feeds in to health!  That is definitely aided by (local) mobility.  Which is of course in NL is much improved by provision not just for "cycling" but "social cycling".

There is the effect of having more older drivers.  IIRC the UK figures show that they are not too bad?  Of course with age people are less likely to be equipped to notice serious decline in their ability.  Also if people have a "medical event" in their car they're at more risk to others than on a bike.  Of course it can be argued they're personally much more likely to then have worse outcome when they crash their bike / fall than in their car...

Few of these things could be applied in the UK yet sadly.  We simply don't have networks of convenient, accessible cycle routes which feel safe.  It's not even about the quality (although that is woeful in the UK); connected networks scarcely exist here yet.  Traffic volumes and speeds where modes interact are both too high.  Our current design goal is "maximum motor traffic throughput".  Cycling will inevitably share with cars at some points.  Finally social cycling is so much the exception that this is seen as a problem rather than people recognising that humans naturally travel side-by-side and this needs to be accommodated, just like walking, driving, taking the bus, the train, flying...

I broke my wrist, damaged my rotator cuff, and did my ligaments in my ankle, and achilles crashing without motor vehicles. Addmittedly I was on th eBMX track, but yeah, pretty seriously injured. Off all excercise for 6 months

IanMSpencer wrote:

Much though I appreciate Vine for efforts on the cycling cause, he is on thin ice bemoaning garbage journalism. We even fast forward his link on the Ken Bruce show to avoid deleterious health effects of accidentally listening to his Radio 2 show.

I agree. I can't stand listening to him on the radio. Even when he seems to be trying to be sympathetic/considerate, he sounds (to my ears at least) argumentative and contentious.

I think Liz Truss herself claimed that the economic establishment is left-wing...

I've just edited my original post to put quote marks around the entire thing, thus making it not my opinion, but just something I am reporting.

Poor Truss ... brought down by those blasted woke right-wing Tories hand-in-glove with the communist bankers and the shadow-nanny-state of the capitalist system.  Crypto-remainers, the lot of 'em.  It wouldn't have happened in Thatcher's day...

brooksby wrote:

I think Liz Truss herself claimed that the economic establishment is left-wing...

So Liz, is the left-wing economic establishment in the room with us now?