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Earlier this month the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, passed a measure to ban heavy trucks which don’t have 'cycling safety' equipment such as side guards or proper mirrors from travelling on the city’s busiest roads. According to the Mayor, "There is a real problem with lorries. They make up about 4 per cent of vehicles in London and cause about 53 per cent of cycle accidents”.
This is a move that has been met with much appreciation from cycling activists, as HGVs have been involved in 53 per cent of London cyclist deaths in the last four years. The Transport Research Laboratory in Bracknell calculates that 50 to 74 per cent of cycle fatalities could be prevented with these side guards.
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This comes shortly after the Department for Transport (DfT) released figures revealing an 8% increase in cycling accidents from July-September 2013 compared to the same months in 2012, with the number killed or seriously injured (KSI) up 2%.
With the report presenting year-on-year data which shows casualties among other types of road users falling at faster rate than cyclists, the figures are likely to lead to renewed calls to improve cycling safety.
Looking at the Reported Road Casualties in Great Britain: Quarterly Provisional Estimates Q3 2013 in more detail it shows that in the year ending September 2013 there were, across all road users, 1,730 reported road fatalities, a 2% drop from the previous year. It also shows the number of KSI casualtiesfell by 6% and the total number of casualtiesfell by 7%.
And while the report showed that the annual percent of KSI casualties for pedal cyclists had decreased 2%, the figures for Q3 saw 1,090 cyclists were killed or seriously injured in the three-month period in 2013, against 1,065 the previous year. And some 6,380 cyclists were injured on Britain's roads, up from 5,902 in the comparable period of 2012.
The report notes that these increases are partly due to the different weather conditions in the third quarters of 2012 and 2013, with 2013 being markedly drier therefore seeing more cyclists on the road. Although conversely you could argue that wetter weather inhibits vision and means worse road conditions which would also likely see more cycling accidents.
Perhaps then with such variables it’s not surprising that the DfT often warn not to read too much into quarterly figures. So let’s concentrate a little more on the annual statistics. While they show that casualty figures for cyclists are falling, they are falling more slowly than other road users. And over the last decade it’s only cycling accidents which can seen an increase.
Also worth noting is that the figures are for July, August and September 2013 and as such do not include the two-week period in November when six cyclists lost their lives in London alone (see London blog post). The report also only show casualties which are reported to the police, stating it has “long been known that a considerable proportion of non-fatal casualties are not known to the police, as hospital, survey and compensation claims data all indicate a higher number of casualties than suggested by police accident data”.
So what else, apart from the dangerous lorry ban, is being done to tackle the situation? In April last year the government announced a £40 million scheme to improve 78 roads and junctions across England, (although many cycling groups, including British Cycling, the organisation responsible for organising the Olympic cycling stars, said that £40 million was not enough). And Boris Johnson was also in Brussels earlier in the month to join the mayors of Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Madrid in arguing for EU-wide rules to ensure lorries are designed more safely.
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