BikeBiz

From this article, the report addresses cyclists safety, but not really how to grow cycling in the UK from the very low base it has at the moment. Segregated routes make new cyclists feel safe and therefore encourage them to cycle. That leads to the "safety in numbers" effect. The report is correct in that safety at junctions is the problem that really needs addressing - too often in the UK, you have a cycle along a straight road that doesn't really need one, which then peters out when you get to a junction, because that was too difficult/expensive for the road engineers to sort out.

Provision for cyclists - and pedestrians - in the UK is abysmal. I agree with TRL that a reduction in motor vehicle speeds will do a lot for cycling but if the traffic calming itself is cycle unfriendly (such as build out islands that lead to pinch points, and road cushions that are a jolt for cyclists) that wouldn't be so positive. As in all things in life, it's complicated and I don't think one simple solution will work. And by that I mean segregation. There needs to be a whole raft of pro cyclist and pro pedestrian measures put in place to make our country a better place to live. Sometimes that will involve separating cyclists from motor vehicles. There are lots of other measures, too. In London, there's a growing campaign to get cyclist and pedestrian measures put in place at Kings Cross, on Blackfriars bridge and at the Bow roundabout and other places. Focussing efforts on key locations is a good idea. Lobby to reduce danger at the most dangerous places.

Cyclenation believes you need the following factors to be in place before you can achieve true modal shift:- *Slower urban traffic speeds. We support the '20's plenty' campaign in the UK. * Stricter liability for drivers. In Holland and other European countries, the operator of the vehicle likely to do the most damage generally takes responsibility for a collision. Note that this distinguishes liability from culpability, and that it would also mean that a cyclist who collided with a pedestrian would be liable. The introduction of this rule has led to drivers being much more careful around cyclists. *Cyclists Priority. In Holland, Denmark and Germany cyclists have priority over traffic emerging from side roads even if they are on an off-road cycle track. This is not the case in the UK, and results in cyclists having to make many stops even over a short off-road journey. *The development of a high-quality cycle network in the UK.(That includes segregation where it's appropriate) *Bikeability Cycle Training *Choice not compulsion on helmet use.

The TRL work, as reported, seems naive. Or should that be uneducated? There are more verions of cycle lanes and cycle tracks and shared footway lanes than you can shake a stick at. There are unfortunately few Copenhagen examples. But this is about the "Most cyclist injuries in multi-vehicle collisions take place at junctions" quote. In research I worked on the DfT confirmed that this was not the case I had highlighted the relevant lines, lost in this version - HEALTH, RISK & SOCIETY, VOL. 3, NO. 3, 2001 A diary study of the risk perceptions of road users1 MARY SISSONS JOSHI,a VICTORIA SENIORb & GRAHAM PAUL SMITHc Extract - pp 274-275 ... ...Data from our previous study suggested that junctions and roundabouts were not perceived to be as numerically hazardous by the cycle diarists as would be expected from their prominence in local and national accident figures. A similar picture emerges from this study in which only 35.4% of incidents reported by cyclists, and 37.5% of incidents involving cyclists reported by other vehicles, occurred at junctions, excluding roundabouts. This contrasts with Oxfordshire Road Casualty figures (Oxfordshire County Council, 1993), which report that 68% of cycle accidents occur at junctions. It is well known that cycle accidents are under-represented in accident figures (Mills, 1989) but we are addressing here the pattern rather than the absolute number of accidents. National figures (Department of Transport, 1992) also suggest that at least two-thirds of cycle accidents occur at junctions. We suggest that these official figures almost certainly relate more to the classification of accidents than to the nature of what is happening on the road. The police STATS 19 records classify an accident as occurring at a junction irrespective of whether the manoeuvre of either vehicle concerned involved the junction or merely happened in the vicinity of a junction. With this query in mind, we asked the Department of Transport’s Directorate of Statistics to analyse national pedal cycle casualty figures by cross-tabulating cyclists’ actions with the actions of those involved in accidents with them. Of the 25,421 cycle accidents in 1991, 13.8% involved cyclists turning right or left and a further 28.9% involved other vehicles turning right or left. This suggests that only 42.7% of cycle accidents involve turns at junctions, which is considerably closer to estimates in the diary data than the usual two-thirds figure quoted. The major manoeuvre of other vehicles which cyclists reported in the current study was being overtaken too closely in a straight-ahead situation. It is notable that an Australian study, examining the characteristics of fatal as compared to total cycle accidents, finds that fatal accidents are less likely to be at intersections than are non-fatal accidents (Hoque, 1990). Our data also accord with the British Medical Association’s (1992) review, which comments that most adult cyclist fatalities are caused by a vehicle approaching from behind—which presumably includes errors in overtaking. The Highway Code (Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions, 1999b) informs motorists that they should ‘give [cyclists] at least as much room as you would give a car’ (p. 18), although the accompanying illustration suggests a less generous margin of overtaking than did the illustration in the 1993 edition (Department of Transport, 1993). The cyclists in our study clearly felt that they were not given the margin they required by passing motor vehicles, particularly buses. It is possible that buses overtake cycles with no narrower a margin than cars do, but threaten cyclists more on account of their greater size. A film record would be needed to establish whether cyclists’ perceptions of risk relate more to the size, speed or position of the passing vehicle.