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DfT statistics reveal that the biggest single contributory factor in cycle deaths is the cyclist failing to look properly (25% of fatalities), followed by failing to judge the other person's path or speed (10%), the cyclist entering the road from the pavement (8%), and careless or reckless behaviour (8%).
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They asked the victims??
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/dec/27/cyclist-deaths-rise-recessions
"contributory factor" of course, not cause...
Of course, car and taxi drivers seem to be far more "careless" than cyclists - with far worse results. More details on contributory factors in road traffic incidents in Tables M,N and O, Pages 84-88 of "Reported road casualties Scotland 2010" at:
http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/files/documents/reports/j199237/j199237.pdf
If you have the time, this also explains how the police attribute contributory factors to each incident.
That is a massive tome that it might take me a while to get through but it is interesting to note that while the majority of the deacrese in deaths are due to fewer motorists being killed (as you would expect since cars have been made safer for people to drive) also pedestrian deaths have gone down by a similar proportion. I wonder what could cause that?
Pedestrians being even more scared to death of crossing busy roads? Railings at busy junctions? Even, fewer people actually walking anywhere (except from their parked cars to the shop/work/home)?
"also pedestrian deaths have gone down by a similar
proportion. I wonder what could cause that?
Partly the same thing you mentioned:
"(as you would expect since cars have been made safer for people to drive)" because they've also been made safer to be hit by. Possibly also the increasing use of 20mph zone; and yes, also the fact that the pedestrian is probably excluded from more potential places of conflict than before, plus less pedestrians than there used to be (remember the days when, ooh, 90% of kids walked to school?).
"because they've also been made safer to be hit by."
So why haven't cyclist deaths gone down as much?
More cars = more traffic = everyone going slower by default = fewer pedestrian deaths?
However cyclist deaths largely caused at junctions or things like left turning lorries so not so much affected by the lower average speeds in towns?
Or, is it...
During recessions, fewer people drive, more people cycle, so traffic speeds actually increase and there are just more cyclists out there for cars and lorries and taxis to drive over?
because they've also been made safer to be hit by
Yes this is true I think a lot of research and expense has gone into designing the front ends of cars to specifically reduce the damage caused when hitting a pedestrian front-on. However it is specifically just for that and will have no effect I don't think on how "safe" it is to hit cyclists, sideswipe them, T-bone them, run them off the road, drive over them, clip them, reverse into them, pull out infront of them, crush them into another vehicle, turn across them, open a door in their path...
"So why haven't cyclist deaths gone down as much?"
Partly for what Kaputnik says above. Indeed the last cycling death in Edinburgh was the lady being 'clipped'. What 'killed' her was striking the ground. A clipped pedestrian does not/will not fall in the same way.
And yes, many of the cycling deaths involve being turned over or across rather than striking head-on, which I'd wager (though I have nothing to back this up) is how the majority of pedestrians are struck. The difference really comes from bikes effectively sharing the road with cars, and so using it, and moving along it in a different way to pedestrians.
So as an example of one change mandated over the years, front impact zones which have been designed to strike a pedestrian lower so that they go up and onto the bonnet, rather than down and under the wheels, will have a positive impact (if you'll pardon the pun) on pedestrian caualty rates, but the change does nothing to improve the lot of cyclists.
Searching for the specific laws on car safety, came across this link which ends:
"The European Union’s legislation, when fully implemented, is expected to save some two thousand lives a year — hardly an insignificant number, particularly if one of them happens to be me or someone I love. But we wonder how many of those two thousand could be spared the short, sharp shock of death-by-bumper if they’d only do what our moms and dads tried to teach us: Look both ways before you cross the street."
The piece was all about whether new safety laws will stop cars being beautiful. The aesthetic being more important than the life of course (it's also utterly absurd, something can quite easily be safe and pretty).
If you thought EEN comments were bad, try having a look at the Wired ones.
Still all this "car safety by design" could really be improved by building cars that are lighter, accellerate slower and have lower top speeds...
remember the days when, ooh, 90% of kids walked to school?
I was thinking that too. It seems anything over a quarter mile has to become a motorised school run these days. Somehow I managed to walk to primary school in the 1970s and back, (1.6 mile round trip) with my younger brother, on my own. Then later on I managed to walk 4 miles a day to secondary school as a teenager, on my own. It was completely normal for most kids, unless they lived a lot further away.
I wonder what percentage walk (or cycle) to school nowadays?
Yep, I was in primary from 1981 to 1987 and walked something like a mile each way. Not a massive distance, but in secondary it was then about 2 miles each way either walked or cycled, after doing a paper round.
By the time I left secondary in 1994 cars were getting 'normal' for dropping people off, and I still worked in the same newsagent, behind the counter now, and a few of the kids would be taken round their paper rounds by their parents in their cars.
Go figure.
Yes I guess it makes sense that cars designed to kill peds more gently would not make much difference to cyclists.
I am still surprised by the reduction in pedestrian injuries though. Getting hit by a "safe" car would still hurt and if it really worked you would see the KSI rate go down but the injury rate would not, or not so much.
It seems to be KSI 997 to 502 50% reduction
All casualties 3604 to 2014 45% reduction
Not really that much of a difference. So it seems as if car design has had a very minimal impact on ped strike rates.
(That is if I am reading this properly which I might not be)
"By the time I left secondary in 1994 cars were getting 'normal' for dropping people off, and I still worked in the same newsagent, behind the counter now, and a few of the kids would be taken round their paper rounds by their parents in their cars."
Yes I think that driving everywhere and never walking, especially for children had already become "normal" by 2000 which is when these stats start, which is why they are still a bit puzzling for me.
According to the stats, road transport (to work) has basically shifted from buses (and rail) to cars. Buses were 42% of all transport journeys to work in 1952, and are now only 6%. Rail was 18% and is now 8%. Cars, vans, taxis were 27% and are now 84% (down slightly from mid-1990s high of 87%, these 3% of travellers seem to have switched to rail). Private motor vehicles reached 'critical mass' (ie. more than 50% of journeys) in 1961 and grew relentlessly for 32 years. Cycling was 11% of journeys in 1952, but declined catastrophically and has been at 1% on average since 1968! There may have been a decrease in folk walking as a result (eg. the last half mile or less of a bus journey), and a decrease in walking in general, but that doesn't show in the stats.
Basically, since 1952, every transport mode except cars has declined, though rail has shown modest growth in the past decade. Only around 11-12% of people walked to work in 2010.
Stats are below, I'm pretty sure Scot Gov has more detail on things like travel to school, etc. but only recent figures if I recall (can't find the link just now).
http://www.dft.gov.uk/statistics/releases/tsgb-2011-modal-comparisons
Oh, the stats (at least at UK level, do not seem to support the thesis that numbers of cyclists increase during recessions. The only weird blip that coincides with recession is a slight growth in motorcycle travel between 1979 and 1984! Well it does have the phrase 'cycle' in it I suppose...
Also, the growth in cycling in cities like London, Bristol, Edinburgh, may be counterbalanced by a decline in cycling in other places. Or, just possibly, the DfT statistics are not accurate...
I work in a school with around 1400 pupils. There is one occasional cyclist in S3. He is also the Eco Committee. Some of the pupils stay far enough away to be bussed.
There were two staff cyclists but the other one retired.
The school I went to from '78 to '84 had around 1000 pupils, about 6 of us travelled by bike, no staff did but the French PT ran 2 miles each way from the centre of Ayr. That was the RC school for south Ayrshire so the catchment area had a radius of about 20 miles (some of that was the sea).
The other weird thing is that only 79% of the UK population lived in urban areas in 1950; Now it is 90.1%.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/aug/18/percentage-population-living-cities
Which means that the huge increase in car travel to work is primarily an urban phenomenon. Urban areas, even today, usually have quite good public transport. Yet the main excuse motorists use for not abandoning their cars for the commute is lack of transport alternatives.
Somewhere along the line someone is not telling the truth, methinks.
Probably the best source of travel to school data is the Hands Up Survey. It has walking to school at 46% and cycling to school at 2.8% (higher in primaries, lower in secondaries).
Other data fromTransport Scotland shows, amongst other things, that the total vehicle distance travelled per year has been falling since 2007.
Looking at the three Sheffields which make up the parking facility of the school I work at, I'd say there's one teacher, two afterschool workers(I'm one of them), three children on their own bikes and one tagalong that regularly cycle in. It's around 630 pupils.
I dunno how many other kids are on mounted seats or taglongs that I don't see.
I'll take a count of parent cyclists after the new year.
Which means that the huge increase in car travel to work is primarily an urban phenomenon. Urban areas, even today, usually have quite good public transport. Yet the main excuse motorists use for not abandoning their cars for the commute is lack of transport alternatives.
What's changed since the 50s though is the dispersal or workplaces and homes to places where the expectation is that travel will be by car. In the 50s if you'd built a workplace out on the edge of town half of your staff wouldn't have been able to get there. Whilst urban areas may have good public transport, this tends to be organised radially - good for getting to the centre and back but no good for the suburb-to-suburb traffic that is so common now. My work is only four miles away from home but, on a bad day, can take an hour on buses to get there - about the same as walking. Which is, of course, why I cycle it.
Schools are usually tricky to get to by public transport for exactly the reason you mention. They tend to be situated where people live rather than in city centres.
A few years ago someone asked me how she would get from her home in North Lanarkshire to a school on the north east of Glasgow. She couldn't drive for medical reasons. It was going to take her a bus, two trains and a half mile walk to get there. I suggested cycling but she didn't seem to think that was on the cards. I cycled to that one most of the year but it was 19 miles each way.
I'm not sure what could be done about this situation. The obvious solution is to get on a bike but apparently some people find this impossible.
What's changed since the 50s though is the dispersal or workplaces and homes to places where the expectation is that travel will be by car. In the 50s if you'd built a workplace out on the edge of town half of your staff wouldn't have been able to get there.
Surely folk were living in suburbs well before then? Much of the semi-detached housing stock dates from the 1920s and 1930s. Think also of factories like Wills tobacco in Glasgow, or even the old Madelvic factory in Edinburgh: hardly city centre locations.
I agree that in the post-war period planners designed in roads rather than railways but this still should not stop buses from working.
The obvious solution is to get on a bike but apparently some people find this impossible.
There's something else going on here and the only explanation I can think of is ideological: people signed up for the American Dream of owning a car, and basing their lives around it. The car is such a symbolically important bit of technology: a lot of this has to do with public display of status, hence the silly competition over who has the newest, most expensive, fanciest, most luxurious, etc. You can't parade around the street with your designer kitchen or leather sofas, but you sure can show off your car!
This I think is why more folk don't get on the bus. They don't feel special on the bus, they're just like everyone else, they're not in control of the schedule, they have to wait, they can only go where the route goes, etc. Even poor people can get the bus. Similarly if they get on a bike they're badged as an eccentric or a loser, someone who can't afford a car, or there is something wrong with them, mentally ill, banned driver, etc.
The allure of the car is that it cocoons the people inside, makes them feel important, massages their egos. Folk are so blinded by this psychological effect that they choose to ignore the consequences of everyone being an egoist: traffic jams, pollution, hollowed out town and city centres, ever slower journey times, etc. Just relax, put some music on, or listen to Drivetime radio, maybe ring a friend on the mobile, complain that the government needs to do more to ease traffic flow, etc....
"You can't parade around the street with your designer kitchen or leather sofas, but you sure can show off your car!"
I think you see a bit of this with mahoooosive flat screen televisions - seems those with the biggets and shiniest like to watch tv at night with the curtains drawn and the blinds up just so everyone can see how special they are by reason of their television.
Scrutinising the UK stats still further, my summary of the trends is as follows.
1. Up until 2009, people were travelling more and further every year. Passenger kilometres have more than tripled since 1952, and kilometres travelled by road more than quadrupled. 2010 marked the first decline in total kilometres travelled, by some 24 billion.
2. The proportion of private motor vehicle journeys may have decreased since 1996, but the total kilometres driven continued to rise, falling for the first time since 1952 in 2010.
3. People were switching to rail and air travel through the 1990s and 2000s. Domestic air travel has declined since 2007 but rail continues to rise, adding 3 billion passenger kilometres in 2010 when total kilometres travelled declined.
4. Cycling had a brief renaissance in kilometres travelled from 1982-87, declining again through the 1990s and 2000s, but increasing modestly since 2007 or so.
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