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news
Broken bike (CC licensed image by garryknight, www.flickr.com)CTC says rate of deaths among cyclists not falling quickly enough as DfT releases casualty stats
The number of cyclists killed on Britain's roads rose in 2010 after declining in each of the previous four years, according to latest casualty statistics published today by the Department for Transport. While there was also a rise in the rate of fatalities per billion kilometres travelled, the long-term trend according to an analysis of the data by CTC shows that cycling is still much safer than it was 20 years ago, but the national cyclists' organisation insists that the rate of casualties is not coming down quickly enough.
CTC Campaigns Director Roger Geffen commented: “Despite months of ice and snow in 2010, cycling is still growing. However, casualties remain high, and there are many areas where Britain is falling farther behind our European counterparts in providing for cycling We still have only a tiny fraction of our residential streets covered by 20mph while hostile roads, bad driving, and weak law enforcement remain serious barriers to getting more people cycling.”
Total distance ridden in 2010 was 5 billion kilometres and registered a slight increase over the preceding year to reach its highest level since 1991. In London alone, there was a 15 per cent increase in levels of cycling during 2010, outpacing cycling injuries in the capital which rose by 9% over the previous year.
The latest road casualty statistics from the Department for Transport can be found here.
Year kms cycled (billion) Deaths Deaths per billion km 1990 5.3 256 48.3 1991 5.2 242 46.8 1992 4.7 204 43.1 1993 4.0 186 46.4 1994 4.0 172 42.8 1995 4.1 213 51.4 1996 4.1 203 49.8 1997 4.1 183 44.8 1998 4.0 158 40.0 1999 4.1 172 42.2 2000 4.2 127 30.5 2001 4.2 138 32.6 2002 4.4 130 29.4 2003 4.5 114 25.3 2004 4.2 134 31.8 2005 4.4 148 33.4 2006 4.6 146 31.7 2007 4.2 136 32.4 2008 4.7 115 24.5 2009 5.0 104 20.8 2010 5.0 111 22.2 Source: CTC/Department for Transport
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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12 comments
Road deaths, along with the thousands that die from stress-related and pollution-related illneses, are collateral damage in the pursuit of wealth or 'prosperity'.
It could be argued that civilian casualties in the wars we have initiated in Afghanistan and Iraq are the same. We have oil-hungry industries and weapons manufacturers to support. Jobs could be lost if we don't keep making bigger and nastier killing machines to sell to repressive regimes around the world - the Frogs or someone else might do it instead. It's about jobs and 'prosperity', you see.
(and if you work in manufacturing/selling weapons then you are the lowest of the low. You might as well plough your 4x4 into a flock of schoolchildren every day).
You need to be careful with these statistics. Even if nothing changed, you would still expect year to year fluctuations in the number killed. Statistically those natural fluctuations on a number of 104 is +/- 10.2 So a change from 104 to 111 is well within that natural variation and not statistically significant.
Two cyclists every week.
Put another way, more cyclists killed in one year, more road deaths overall in a single month, than deaths from terrorism in the UK in the last decade.
We spend squillions on anti-terrorism, and our civil liberties are significantly eroded, by the "war against terorism". Funny therefore that we are not more robust in dealing with dangerous road behaviour.
How do our stats compare? The Netherlands certainly has proprtionately fewer cyclist or pedestrian deaths than we do. So does France, although interestingly their roads are rather more dangerous than ours if you are a motorist.
I wonder how these stats compare with our european counterparts - France, Belgium and Holland for instance?
Two cyclists killed every week. I wonder how many cyclists' deaths could be prevented by drivers driving more considerately. In the meantime… I just want more cycleways - more safe space for cyclists! How else do we get Britain cycling? Please. Thanks.
Two cyclists killed every week. I wonder how many cyclists' deaths would be prevented if drivers drove considerately. In the meantime… I just want more cycleways! Please. Thanks.
Yes, stop telling us to stop getting ourselves killed and start telling people to stop killing us.
But... but... it's "safety in numbers". *splutter*.
Or could it be the safety of Dutch cyclists is more to do with the infrastructure than the sheer numbers?
No, safety in numbers is more than adequate to explain the greater safety in the Netherlands and its a well established factor. The safety benefits of cycling infrastructure OTOH are disputed with most research finding they reduce safety.
What is missing to set this in context though is the fact that the risk to pedestrians is 50% higher than to cyclists (and that's despite pedestrians having a nationwide segregated network aka pavements)
Yeah - interesting to note that cycling has only just come close to the 1990 figure again - are we seeing the effect of economic boom-&-bust cycles at work here?
And the error bars in the kms cycled are? Because that makes a difference. But we'll probably only know what the difference is in another 5 years when we have more data.
Yes things are better than 20 years ago. But we aren't cycling as much. Which is a shame.
You can say that there is a long term trend towards a reduced number of deaths per distance travelled by bike, but I think the numbers killed are too small to make statements about individual years relative to previous ones.