Il Lombardia winner Paul Seixas forced to pose with “idiot” mayor who banned all cyclists from city centre and called for bike licence plates; Lachlan Morton breaks Pony Express record; Healy on Pogačar-less racing; Safety protest + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
“He has a face like a…”: Il Lombardia winner Paul Seixas forced to pose with “idiot” mayor two months after he banned all cyclists from city centre and called for bike licence plates and insurance
If you hadn’t realised by now, Paul Seixas is the real deal.
On Saturday, the 20-year-old Frenchman became the youngest ever winner of the Tour of Lombardy (or Il Lombardia, if you must), clinching his maiden monument victory with a devastating long-range solo attack along the shores of Lake Como.
In the absence of five-time Lombardy winner Tadej Pogačar, Seixas put on his own Pogi-esque display, casually burning everyone off his wheel on the Civiglio, before building a commanding advantage over the final 19km. By the finish line in Como, in-form Vuelta winner Enric Mas was the only rider within a minute of the flying French wonderkid.
The Decathlon star’s triumph at the Race of the Falling Leaves makes him the fourth youngest winner of any of cycling’s five most prestigious one-day classics, just two weeks on from his 20th birthday.
It’s also his eighth victory of a season that also saw him win atop the Mur de Huy at Flèche Wallonne, clinch the overall at the Tour of the Basque Country, finish second to Pogačar at both Strade Bianche and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and finish fourth overall at his debut Tour de France. The future is here.
But if Seixas is to continue his precocious, mind-bending run of success in 2027, he’s going to have to get used to all the obligations that come with it. Like posing with local, publicity-hungry politicians.
Around three hours after he raised his arms in triumph at Il Lombardia, Seixas was still fulfilling his post-race duties, which included a photograph with Como mayor Alessandro Rapinese, as captured here by Domestique’s Barry Ryan:
If you’re wondering why Rapinese’s name rings a bell, he’s the mayor who just two months ago announced a ban on all bicycles in the historic centre of Como, after he was hit by the rider of an ‘electric bike’ earlier this summer.
“People act based on their own experiences and I know what it’s like to be hit by one of these beasts,” the independent politician said back in August.
According to Rapinese, the ban applies to all cyclists because the Highway Code won’t let him differentiate between electric and non-electric bikes. Nevertheless, he also hinted at the possibility of bringing in mandatory licence plates and insurance for bikes in the northern Italian city.
“I think it’s madness to have required scooter owners to insure their vehicle and equip it with a licence plate, but not to have done it for bicycles which are perhaps even more dangerous,” he said.
The irony of Rapinese posing proudly alongside Seixas (and his bike) a matter of weeks after he banned cyclists from the centre of Como hasn’t been lost on some online observers.
“That guy just banned bikes from the centre of his city because he was hit by one. Rapinese is an idiot,” Magolly wrote on X.
“He has a face like a…,” Gianluca added, leaving you to fill in the blanks.
“Imagine winning a race, then you’ve got some political obligation. Must be pretty corny,” noted Omar.
He’ll have to get used to it, however, if he keeps riding like that.
“Given what’s happened this week, especially this summer, I think there’s a consensus in the peloton that not enough is being done, particularly by the UCI, and we’re standing together to show we’re not happy”
Away from Paul Seixas’ history-making solo raid, the other big news from the weekend at Il Lombardia was the rider protest held on the start line, as the peloton united to call for greater safety measures at races.
The protest, which saw the start of the final monument of the season delayed by around 15 minutes, was organised by Ben Healy and Tom Pidcock, after drivers entered the course during three of the four Italian one-day races last week, with one member of the public crashing into two of Pidcock’s Pinarello-Q36.5 teammates at Tre Valli Varesine.
Those incidents came just weeks after the tragic death of Finlay Tarling, who was killed by a van driver who made his way onto the race route at the Volta a Portugal, sparking heavy criticism of the safety measures currently put in place at many events and the lack of progress made by the sport’s stakeholders.
During the protest in Bergamo, which I witnessed from the side of the road, Remco Evenepoel was handed a microphone, the European champion telling the crowd that “we cannot accept the fact that people are dying”.
“Given what’s happened this week, especially this summer, I think there’s a consensus in the peloton that not enough is being done, particularly by the UCI, and we’re standing together to show we’re not happy,” Pidcock, who helped orchestrate the protest through a rider WhatsApp group, told Daniel Benson after the finish in Como.
“Three of the last four races have had a car on the course, and today was the same. There was a group of sixty riders off the back at one point, and there was a car on the course again,” he added.
“It’s a joke. We understand the risks of what we do, descending, crashing, but we don’t need anything added to that, like cars on the course.
“The environment should be secure so we can take the risks we know are involved. I think it was really powerful that all the riders came together and agreed. We all did something together, and we have a voice.”
Speaking to Cyclingnews, race organiser Luca Guercilena was generally supportive of the protest (despite only learning about it half an hour before the start), but suggested it could have been “done better”.
“We can all agree on the content of the action, it was very fair. We all support what the riders are asking for, and for us the safety of the riders is important as well,” Guercilena, now RCS’s cycling general manager after leaving Lidl-Trek, said.
“For sure we would have loved to have coordinated better and given them more voice. But more than fine with how it happened. It was very fair and correct, so we respect the riders.”
Guercilena said the organisers’ one request was to ensure a rider was given a microphone to inform the crowd of what was going on, arguing that the protest – which also didn’t involve the CPA riders’ union – could have had an even bigger impact.
“First, I would get a clear statement, and on top of that, instead of organising a straightforward microphone, we would have loved even to have them on a stage, to express their concern about safety,” he said.
“We are all in favour of supporting safety. My concern was simply ‘just let us help you make it better’.”
“Everyone’s racing with the belief they’re going to win”: Did Tadej Pogačar’s absence change how riders raced this autumn?
It may have been dark and drizzly in Bergamo on Saturday morning, but one hitherto omnipresent cloud was not, for once, hanging over the Il Lombardia peloton.
For almost the entire 2020s, Tadej Pogačar has made the Race of the Falling Leaves his own, winning every edition between 2021 and 2025. And in typically oppressive fashion, too. In 2025, the Slovenian’s winning margin over second-placed Remco Evenepoel was 1.48. The year before, that gap (again over Evenepoel) was 3.16.
Let’s face it, when Pogačar turns up at the start line in Lombardy, everyone else resigns themselves to racing for second. Which is what made the build-up to this year’s final monument so intriguing.
The UAE leader’s season-ending crash at the Vuelta created a Pogi-shaped hole in the autumn calendar, one in which outsiders and underdogs could seize the initiative.
That was certainly the case at the world championships, where Pogačar’s own trade teammate Brandon McNulty took advantage of the newfound tactical conundrums thrown up by the Slovenian’s absence to pick his moment and solo to a career-defining rainbow jersey.
Pogačar’s dominance and relentless, aggressive style have reshaped how bike races are tackled tactically in the 2020s. He attacks from afar, blowing the race apart and leaving scraps for his rivals. It’s basically a case of hang on until you can’t any longer, and then hope for the best.
That brutal, almost simple approach means the strongest rider tends to win. And the strongest rider is almost always Pogačar.
The Pogi-less Montreal worlds on the other hand was almost a throwback: an open affair with nuanced, complicated tactics and an array of viable contenders, won by a plucky – and smart – underdog.
The Giro dell’Emilia, and the other Italian one-dayers, were the same. So too was Lombardy. Until Paul Seixas performed his best Pogi impression and simply rode away. Before that moment on the Civiglio, however, the race’s outcome was still very much up in the air. There have been only a handful of times in recent years when that’s been the case with Pogačar in the peloton.
But has the absence of one of cycling’s greatest ever riders changed how his rivals approach each race? I caught up with Ben Healy in Bergamo before the start of Il Lombardia to find out. EF’s Irish leader was an ever-present during this open autumn season, constantly at the pointy end of affairs in both Canada and Italy.
And while he was forced to settle for 10th in the worlds, sixth at Emilia, and 12th at Lombardy, despite aggressive rides in every race, Healy told me that the lack of an overwhelming favourite upped his self-belief a notch or two.
“It changes things one hundred percent,” he said, when I asked how the five-time Tour de France winner’s absence has impacted the racing style of the peloton.
“Everyone’s racing with the belief that they are going to win, and that motivates a lot of guys. It makes the races unpredictable and you can get an unpredictable winner.
“And what I learned at the worlds is that in the right situation I can win a race like this, and that keeps you motivated.”
Of course, the emergence of the new Pog in Paul Seixas will change things once again. Although it will certainly make things interesting when the Slovenian returns in 2027.
SD Worx rider Valentina Cavallar hits out at “disrespectful” anti-doping test carried out in room next to deceased mother, hours after her death
Austrian rider Valentina Cavallar has criticised what she describes as the “disrespectful” conduct of anti-doping officials, claiming she was forced to carry out a drug test at her family home just hours after her mother’s death.
In an emotional Instagram post, SD Worx-Protime rider Cavallar, who finished ninth overall at this year’s Giro d’Italia before her season was abruptly ended in a crash at the Tour de France, revealed that her mother passed away in September.
“Losing my mum in September has changed the way I see life forever,” the 25-year-old wrote.
“You can spend so much of your life chasing goals, pushing your limits, measuring success in results, victories and achievements. But losing someone you love makes you realise how little of that truly matters in the end.”
View this post on Instagram
She continued: “What made this experience even harder was that just a few hours after my mum had passed away, I had to undergo a doping control at home, in the room next to where she lay.
“I understand the importance of clean sport, and I have always respected the responsibility that comes with being a professional athlete. But in that moment, I was clearly not thinking about cycling, competition or my responsibilities as an athlete. I was a daughter who had just lost her mum.
“Having to navigate a doping control in those circumstances felt deeply painful, profoundly out of place and disrespectful towards my family. It was a moment that made me reflect on how easily we can forget that behind every athlete, there is a human being with a life, a family and emotions that do not simply disappear when the responsibilities of professional sport begin.
“I believe in clean sport. But I also believe that humanity, compassion and respect should never be forgotten.”
We have approached the ITA and the UCI for comment.
From police cars on one-way streets to sustenance for domesticated canines: The adventures of Thomas the Cyclist continue
It looks like Thomas (he of ‘police vehicle challenging my direction of travel’ viral video fame) is now devoting his time to riding around Skegness handing out dog treats:
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Any fans?
“We’re heartbroken for the team and all the staff that call this place home”
‘So, what’s this soccer thing all about Remco?’
Did you know Remco Evenepoel used to play football? Oh, you did? Alright…
Anyway, after signing off their 2026 campaigns at Il Lombardia, Remco and his buddy, and newly minted world champion, Brandon McNulty took a break from lounging in their lakeside hotels yesterday to pop down to the very lovely Sinigaglia stadium to watch Cesc Fàbregas’ Como side play Roma in Serie A.
The duo also took a pre-match stroll on the pitch, where they were represented with some personalised Como jerseys:
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We all know Evenepoel was a handy full back who could also do a shift in midfield during his teenage years at Anderlecht, so the number four shirt fits. Not sure I’d have put McNulty down as a flying winger, though. I’d say he’s more a six, a holding midfielder who keeps it simple, knits everything together, and occasionally pops up with a spectacular goal from distance.
Let’s just say Il Lombardia was a lot more entertaining than the football on offer in Como, as ten-man Roma hung on for a drab 0-0 draw. Manchester United are set to play both teams in the Champions League over the next month – I wonder if Ineos will ask Remco and Brandon for a scouting report?
“I wasn’t desperate for it to end, which was odd”: Lachlan Morton officially faster than 197 horses as Australian breaks Pony Express record, covering 3,217km route in six days, 21 hours, and 15 minutes
A few hours ago in California, Lachlan Morton completed his latest long-range exploit, breaking the record for the Pony Express – proving once and for all that he is, in fact, faster than a horse.
In what may well be his final cycling adventure in the pink of EF, as he leaves the team at the end of the year, Morton decided to pay homage to the riders who carried post on horseback from St Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California back in the nineteenth century.
After riding for 3,217km riding on the trail, which included some stiff headwind sections, mud in the Nevada mountains, and a tough, cold slog across the Sierra Nevada, Morton reached Sacramento at 11.19pm last night.
His time of six days, 21 hours, and 15 minutes meant he covered the distance 19 hours and 45 minutes faster than the previous record, apparently set by the 197 or so horse riders who delivered Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address on the Pony Express in 1861.
Which isn’t the kind of sentence you write every day on the live blog. But I suppose that’s kind of the point for Morton and EF, who peppered their press release with somewhat overblown references to the American west and its constant state of becoming (or something like that). There aren’t many Morton pressers to come, they need to strike while the iron’s hot.
“I had an amazing time,” Morton said in his statement. “I wasn’t desperate for it to end, which was odd. I was really just having a great time.
“It was something I’d been dreaming about for years, so it’s great to be here. It’s great to have the community out here, too. It’s such a big route that it’s always hard to know what to expect.
“You look at a map, but you just see a line. You don’t really see what that line is going to mean. There was a lot that was intimidating, but I felt like I was able to enjoy it a lot more than I expected, even though it was really hard. There was so much riding that I loved, and it was a combination of the kinds of riding I really enjoy doing.
“On top of just being hard, it was really satisfying. I didn’t think I’d be able to enjoy the route as much as I did, given how challenging it was. It’s very satisfying.”
Giulio Ciccone’s move to Pinarello Q36.5 on three-year deal confirmed after Italian’s early departure from Lidl-Trek
It was one of the worst kept secrets at Il Lombardia, but this morning Giulio Ciccone’s move to Pinarello Q36.5 was finally confirmed, in another transfer coup for the ambitious Swiss squad.
Ciccone, who finished third in Como on Saturday, had another year left on his Lidl-Trek contract, but as we reported last week that deal was ripped up amid some internal strife following the squad’s managerial overhaul earlier this summer.
Things have been tense between Ciccone and Lidl-Trek since the Giro, where the Italian reckoned the team’s questionable tactics on stage five resulted in him prematurely losing the race lead after just one day in the pink jersey.
And now, after eight years at Lidl-Trek, the former Tour de France King of the Mountains – easily the most popular current rider among the tifosi, who filled the streets of Bergamo on Saturday with cries of ‘Giulio!’ – is set to join the Pinarello revolution, where he could form quite the partnership with Tom Pidcock.
The 31-year-old and Pidcock were two of the stars of the autumn classics, lighting up the Italian one-day races with their attacks, Ciccone following up his second place at the European championships with third at Lombardy.
“After eight years with the same team, this is a big decision, but one I genuinely wanted to make. I feel I still have a lot to give, and I needed a new challenge, fresh motivation and an environment where I could feel at home,” Ciccone said in a statement today.
“From our very first meeting, I felt something different. It wasn’t just about numbers, results or technical discussions. I felt real trust and appreciation, and that the people behind this project genuinely wanted me here. For me, the human side of a team comes first. I race with my heart, and the people around me are what give me energy.
“I’m also really looking forward to racing alongside Tom Pidcock. I’ve always admired him, not only because of his talent, but because he’s a rider who thinks differently and isn’t afraid to do things his own way. I hope we can bring something extra to each other and build something special together.
“To all the fans who have supported me over the years, I want to say that this is a change I truly believe in. I still have the same passion, the same hunger and the same desire to give everything on the bike. Now it’s time to take that energy into a new chapter, together.”
road.cc Recommends, autumn edition
There’s my next cycling holiday sorted
As you may have noticed, I haven’t been on the live blog for a while. That’s because I got home yesterday afternoon after 12 glorious days traversing our way up Italy’s spine, eating a lot of pasta, meats, and cheeses (always pleases), drinking a healthy amount of very fine wine, and watching some bike racing (you can never accuse me of turning down a busman’s holiday when it’s on offer).
And just as I made my way, slightly bleary-eyed and foggy-headed, back to the peaceful, circadian rhythms of the live blog, VecchioJo went and posted this on our group chat, and the Italian withdrawal symptoms started kicking in. I may have to get booking:
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Or maybe that’s one for Lachlan Morton to do next year?
Oh, and while I’m here, shout out to our Aussie Lombardy-watching pals Shane and Lari. I reckon I owe you some Flemish beer next spring…
Undermarked!
It’s fair to say Callum’s been holding the live blog fort rather nicely since I’ve been away. However, I’ve noticed a glaring omission in his recent Monday blog coverage.
You see, Callum’s a Gen Zer, which means he’s very cool and hip. Which means he doesn’t watch much light entertainment programming on television. Or much normal television for that matter. So he definitely doesn’t watch Strictly Come Dancing.
And that’s where I come in, with my fusty sensibilities and lack of weekend plans. Because there’s a cyclist on Strictly this year and – just like I did with Nico Roche and Peter Sagan and Jody Cundy – I’ll be damned if I don’t cover it extensively on the live blog.
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So, here’s a quick recap of Dame Sarah Storey’s Strictly ‘journey’ so far (because I can tell you’re all buzzing with excitement). The Paralympic legend and South Yorkshire active travel commissioner has had a fairly good, low-key start to her Strictly experience, scoring 15 for her Quickstep and 24 for her Mary Poppins Charleston during the first two weeks.
Her marks dipped on Saturday, however, as she scored just 20 for what I thought was a very passable Paso Doble, following some unnecessarily harsh criticism from the judges (looking at you, Anton). However, despite lingering just above the drop zone, Sarah was saved by the public vote and will live to dance another day. Which means I’ll be back with another Strictly recap next Monday. This is what you’re here for, right?
This dockless car parking is getting out of hand…
I see Newcastle’s new Dot Bikes hire scheme are causing controversy by being left on pavements.
Thankfully drivers are fighting back with their dockless vehicles.
— Mike Cookson 🔶 🇪🇺🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ (@mikecookson.bsky.social) October 9, 2026 at 7:12 AM
Gravel and a GOAT
The European racing season drew to a close yesterday with one of my favourite events of the entire calendar, the gravelly, punchy Paris-Tours (though I’m still undecided whether I preferred the older sprinters’ course).
At the end of a dramatic, attack-filled finale, which saw a super-strong 11-rider group battle it out for the win, Visma’s Per Strand Hagenes timed his move to perfection in the last kilometre, holding off Jasper Stuyven and teammate Christophe Laporte for a big, morale-boosting win heading into the winter:
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And speaking of gravel, the gravel world championships were on in the wee, wee hours down under, with Magnus Bak Klaris taking the men’s race ahead of defending champion Florian Vermeersch and Connor Swift, while Marianne Vos secured the 15th rainbow jersey (15th!) of her career with a dominant solo win:
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They don’t call her the GOAT for nothing.
If you love 31-inch wheels and delayed gratification, Newmen have just the release for you…
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Latest Comments
If anyone reading this article is looking for reasonable alternatives Decathlon sell a range of bum bags including one with a bottle holder that comes with the bottle all of which are less than £20. I've got a bum bag I bought a few years ago to replace a North Face bum bag that has lasted really well including commuting and cycle touring that was only £10 and that doesn't seem to have any of the drawbacks of the pack on review.
@Borisface The frameset is similarly priced to e.g. Condor aluminium framesets such as Italia RC Integrato so it doesn't look too far off the mark. Obviously if you dress any old frame up with Campag Record 13 wireless and some decent wheels the final price is going to be somewhere north of £5k.
@Freddy56 @hotspanners Hi, just for for starters I didn’t boycott the race, if you read to the end of the article you’d have seen that I decided I was going to attend and try and implement a positive change… Just for clarity, if it helps with the credibility of my words and something I didn’t include in the blog for brevity and fear of willy-waving here’s an incomprehensive list of cycle events I’ve helped organise over the years - all Brighton Big Dog MTB events (about 12 i think), three league CX races and one Singlespeed CX Euro Champs (niche, i know), a few SAMS MTB races - maybe three or four it was a while back now, a Morvelo City Cross, I’ve stood on a corner in a high-vis vest at quite a few MTB, CX and road races too, and just helped wind up tape at last weekend’s CX race. I’ve also had the privilege to design logos, draw images, and create one-off pieces of artwork and give away prints as prizes for enough races and events for me to forget how many, all for free as part of ‘doing my bit’… Also if you made it through to the second half of the article you’ll have read that I have every sympathy for event organisers because of the experience of all the above and also from having conversations with various organisers on a regular basis so I am acutely aware of all the challenges faced. I chatted today with the future local CX race organiser mentioned, face to face in a field, and he has a similar hatred of AI and is more than happy for me to create a hand-drawn image to promote that race and also help out on the ground where possible… Might even draw a duck in there somewhere for giggles…
@Borisface Not entirely sure why some alleged good times set in the last century validate the silliness and ignorance of your rejection on the grounds of materials and weight of a bike that the reviewer (who, if you look at his bio above, has rather a lot of experience himself, not only of riding bikes but of engineering too) describes as "absolute perfection in every aspect". Thanks for the unrequested permission but I'm not actually looking to spend 6k on a bike at the moment; if I was, on the basis of this review and the photographs I'd certainly be putting this on my shortlist and looking for a test ride. But then in this area at least I have an open mind, you see.
@Freddy56 as the article says, Jo boycotted our race because he thought we’d used AI to design our flyer. I’m with him 100% but he got the facts wrong. People don’t like AI slop. It’s lazy and generic. But you’re right - these grassroots events run off volunteering. I wave flags, design kit and artwork, ferry things to our lockup etc - perhaps Jo could be the change he wants to see. He could volunteer to the London and SE CX league that he races in to help them out with artwork - he created Mint Sauce!
Currently riding home powered by this for the last 6 months after someone stole my SeeSence beam, LOVE it. super durable and batter life gets me home on full beam for 55 minutes
Comments and an article by people who organise NOTHING! Promoting an event is mostly by volunteers and an AI poster done at midnight after sorting the British cycling insurance, the toilets, the Marshalls, the council and a landowner is so draining. The effort is massive for usually a small team. Grab a flag and help rather than moaning about a generated image...o look the image is eye catching so it must work .
I have Wizzard works bag from 2018 (bought for my 30th) and this is a complete rip off it!!
6 times division champion, 1st cat road man, semi-pro for 3 years. Sub 21 min 10 and sub 55 min 25 on a steel road bike. Forty five years riding. Forgotten more about riding bikes than most on here will ever know. If you want to pay £6k for an aluminium road by all means go ahead.
@Borisface Probably for the best, if you're as ignorant about bikes and materials as your comment suggests you wouldn't appreciate it anyway. Go and buy something on the UCI weight limit made out of the latest space age super carbon and wobble around on it looking daft and feeling uncomfortable and to hell with aesthetics, practicality and real-world use cases, at least you'll have the right numbers ("6.85 kg, awesome!") and words ("Yeah, it's UHM 12k carbon, actually") for the cafe. Enjoy!
21 thoughts on “Il Lombardia winner Paul Seixas forced to pose with “idiot” mayor who banned all cyclists from city centre and called for bike licence plates; Lachlan Morton breaks Pony Express record; Healy on Pogačar-less racing; Safety protest + more on the live blog”
“AI spots nearly 19,000 ‘shocking’ road offences”
But cyclists.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c39wzpegqgd9o
As I’ve said previously, when it comes to road safety enforcement…
“We have the technology.
We just don’t have the political will to make it happen.”
—
ETA, it is interesting that the headline is “road offences” not “driver offences”…
@mitsky The number of mobile phone offences doesn’t surprise me – I see these multiple times a day when commuting – but the much greater number of people failing to wear seatbelts is frankly baffling.
@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.
Re Seixas at Lombardy.
It was an absolutely brilliant performance by the young man! He seized his opportunity to make the break and never looked like getting caught. A brilliant talent and an hopefully lots of exciting racing to come from him in the future as he develops.
Re “mayor Rapinese who … announced a ban on all bicycles in the historic centre of Como, after he was hit by the rider of an ‘electric bike’ “.
We must remember that it is people being hit or fearing being hit by cars that caused them to call for banning them from many town centres. We can understand this fear and therefore, responding to this particular excessive reaction, we must understand its cause.
@lawrence18uk Bet you a Euro if he’d been hit by a car and tried to ban all cars from Como he wouldn’t have succeeded. The cases are not comparable, cars in the UK kill 1750+, seriously injure 25,000 and injure 125,000, whereas cyclists injure a tiny proportion of that, even when adjusted per capita or mileage, so the reaction against cars is not an excessive reaction whereas the one against bicycles is and nearly always is supported by “I was nearly hit” or “I got bumped”. Apples and oranges.
@Rendel Harris the stats per billion miles travelled are surprisingly close for cars and LGVs compared to bicycles – much more so than I would have thought.
Stripping out motorway miles, cars have 2.5x the pedestrian kill rate per mile travelled than bicycles, and LGVs are a little lower at 2x.
HGVs and motorcycle rates are 10x bicycles, and buses and coaches are by far the worst at 27x.
Stats are from DfT over a 5 years period, and I used AI to help so this quickly (although I did it myself a few years back and got similar results IIRC).
@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).
@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 It’s not a perfect metric for sure, just trying to find something less biased towards cars than incidents per miles travelled which is a somewhat absurd way of calculating relative dangers, in my opinion, given how much further cars travel for a given time. Using distance, if a driver averaging 60kmh and a cyclist averaging 20kmh both log 100 hours on the road and one incident in that time, cycling becomes one incident per 2000km and motoring one incident per 6000km, so motoring looks three times safer even though we have the same number of incidents in the same amount of time travelled.
@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.
@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.
@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 I wonder how it would change the stats if one looked at deaths per trip? According to the NTS the average person makes 15 cycle trips a year and 357 as a car driver, so 23x more driving trips than cycling ones but 182x the pedestrian deaths so by that calculation cars are 8x more lethal. Take out the 20% of car trips on motorways and you have one death per 51M trips motoring and one death per 487M trips cycling, so motoring becomes almost 10x more lethal. I know one can make statistics do anything one wishes by changing the metrics but that figure seems a more realistic approximation of relative lethality to me. All this of course is before we count all the other deaths caused by motorists that cyclists almost never cause, i.e. motorcycle riders, car passengers etc, almost five times the pedestrian numbers, cars then become 50x more lethal than bikes…
Stepping back, given that humans operate both cars and bikes maybe a *qualitative* “what differs” might be instructive?
(Putting to one side for a moment what may be mostly a motornormative prejudice: that drivers are in some way “more responsible”. Variations “more to lose because they’ve paid for a car” / “but trained and licenced” / “more accountable because number plates” / “only (man)children and crims who can’t afford cars cycle” etc).
A key one is “speed” as obviously injury is strongly related to that, and the 20-30mph region is where IIRC “mostly injured” crosses over to “mostly killed”. Cars would be expected to be at higher speeds, for more of the time.
That may be reduced in some places however eg. congested rush hours, and where “mixing” may be most likely the environment may cue lower speeds (narrow streets).
I’m not sure about the “60% of pedestrians killed at junctions are killed by cyclists” number, but i *could* believe it’s relatively high. Why? Other “qualitative differences” – “noticeability” and “expectation”.
In the simplest sense cyclists are smaller and quieter than motor vehicles. (There’s a lot of “looking with our ears” when eg. crossing roads believe).
But more: in the UK we *expect* cars. We’ve learned to deal with cars both by formal teaching and daily experience. We know “how drivers behave” – where to expect them.
I strongly suspect it’s not just drivers “only looking for the motor vehicles”.
We don’t *expect* cyclists. And (if taken at face value) there’s a lot of quote anecdata that people are genuinely surprised by them / completely unfamiliar with cyclist behaviour on roads (except “they all jump red lights”…) – “came out of nowhere” / “never saw them” / ” they were down the road, then suddenly they were right there” / wasn’t expecting them to”…
Finally (on cyclists and junctions) cyclists may not be as observant themselves there. While junctions are high-mental-workload spaces (or should be…) for all road users I suspect cyclists – mixing with the motor traffic – are going to be focusing strongly on that for obvious reasons.
Which is again why in places which are more advanced in this respect not only are junctions given better designs *, but network-level thought goes in to routes for each mode, the better to minimise the need for interactions. Especially when speeds might be higher.
* Separation in space and/or time when modes cross, explicit space for different modes so it’s clear who goes where / what to expect…
@chrisonabike Indeed, you put your finger on another problem with the fatality statistics in that we don’t know in how many of the fatal incidents the driver/cyclist was to blame. If the two cyclist-caused-pedestrian fatalities the pedestrian was drunk and fell off the pavement into the path of the cyclist that could obviously change the lethality ratio considerably if factored in. Perhaps lethality should be measured as drivers/cyclists found guilty of causing death per chosen metric, rather than simply numbers killed?
@Rendel Harris I’m not sure why trips made is a better metric than miles travelled, but yes, that does yield a 9x difference for cars vs bicycles in pedestrian deaths. The real anomaly using that basis, though, are motorcyclists, who are a staggering 72x more likely to kill a pedestrian per trip than a cyclist. That suggests that speed, more than mass, is the real danger. And that young men are the greatest danger of all.
@Rendel Harris “Perhaps lethality should be measured as drivers/cyclists found guilty of causing death per chosen metric, rather than simply numbers killed?”
Given the filter of the court system that would a) likely only introduce another source of bias and b) mean the cycling numbers had dubious statistical meaning relative to the motoring ones since after removing e-motorbikes (unless we didn’t? But even then…) that is … one or two in the last 5+ years?