CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
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RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
"This seems to show there are more factors than the gender of the person riding the bike behind why HGVs represent 5% of the traffic on London's roads, but cause 80% of the fatal collisions with cyclists."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-living-blog/2010/jul/02/cycling-lorries-women-roads
I would say that the main message taken from this piece ought to be that there are things other than 'educating female cyclists' that could reduce number of fatalities.
"I would say that the main message taken from this piece ought to be that there are things other than 'educating female cyclists' that could reduce number of fatalities."
Yes - it's a nice balance to the previous 'suggestions' that there was a particular gender element in the fatalities.
That got lots of publicity - will this?
Not sure it totally removes the gender element -- the point is more that there is much that truck drivers/owners could do as well. We would need more robust data on if women are more often found beside HGVs or not (or are found there disproportionately to their overall numbers). But the numbers of fatalities are thankfully so small, it is hard to know if they might be statistically significant or not.
"Transport for London is tackling cyclist safety around lorries with three measures, the department has revealed this morning. "
http://www.bikebiz.com/news/32466/TfL-cycle-safety-around-lorries-drive
The gender divide ought to be a huge lever to crack open the mystery of why these accidents happen in the first place.
8/13 fatalities when you represent something like 1/6th of the exposure is an enormous gulf. Since men and women are not significantly different looking on a bike, there is something fundamental to be learned (but what?!) about how they ride.
However un-PC, I can't see any other alternative explanation.
It is to do with road positioning, female cyclist are less likely to be assertive on the roads and more likely to gutter hug, which makes them more vulnerable to being left hooked by HGVs. There is no great mystery of why these accidents happen.
Why does this "gender issue" focus exclusively on the fact that the majority of the victims are female and completely ignore the fact that the majority of HGV drivers are male?
Well, I bet there would be focus if 1/6th of HGV drivers were female, but they caused 8 in every 13 accidents!
"Well, I bet there would be focus if 1/6th of HGV drivers were female, but they caused 8 in every 13 accidents! "
Please correct me if I am wrong but have you just implied that all of the blame for all of the deaths lies with the victims?
If you bear with it for a moment, the proportion of people who are left-handed is roughly the same as the proportion of cyclists who are women.
Now suppose that we discovered that 60% of victims of muggings are left-handed, despite being such a small proportion of potential victims. That would in no way indicate that left-handed people deserve to get mugged!
But, it would surely be something that would be examined to understand what is going on. Unfortunately the fact that it is gender, as opposed to say iPod or high-viz use, which differentiates the deaths it is proving a bit of a hot potato!
"That would in no way indicate that left-handed people deserve to get mugged!
But, it would surely be something that would be examined to understand what is going on."
Indeed but what seems to be happening in this case is that (to use your analogy) 60% of the muggers are also left handed but this is being completely ignored to concentrate on the left handedness of the muggee's. Why?
Why does it HAVE to be the case that the victims are throwing themselves under the wheels of HGVs in some pathetically female way but the drivers could not possibly be mowing down female cyclists in an overly aggressive male way?
In my (limited unscientific) experience the gender of commercial drivers is not nearly as important a factor in their driving style as the attitude of management and pressure of deadlines. Witness the general standard of Post Office drivers as against Edinburgh bus drivers for example
(yes I know I'll upset some Posties saying that and there are some ok PO drivers, but the general standard is abysmal and aggressive in the extreme, and that is from the perspective of an (ex) commercial driver!)
some ok PO drivers, but the general standard is abysmal and aggressive in the extreme,
And that is why the should reduce the number of vans and switch to bikes to reduce the hazard to the general population...
I'm no statistician, but there is no way that this number of cases could possibly generate statistically significant data on which to base any arguments, about gender or anything else.
statistically the difference is significant (using a simple chi-square test, which is the most basic stats test but if it ain't significant with a chi-square then not worth pursuing). 1/6th of the cyclists sadly have 8/13ths of the fatalities. Such a result is way out of line with null hypothesis which would predict 1/6th cyclists take 1/6th of fatalities
However, the numbers are too small to conclude anything beyond the numbers, for instance that the effect must be female riding style. Or any other explanation (when a driver sees a woman he subconsciously swerves to hit her, especially if she is wearing a helmet [this is a reference to previous research on the H word]). Something can be statistically significant but still meaning free.
A high proportion of car/lorry collisions with bicycles have driver of the motor vehicle as culpable regardless of gender and this is what should be focussed on.
Are you sure that it is significant - even given the very small N? As I said I am no expert, but I would not take that data seriously if I came across it in my research (which is mostly qualitative, but occasionally requires me to consider quants). I take your point about chi square etc, but am not convinced 'sample' if we may call it that is large enough given numbers of cyclists and HGVs all charging around London (much less the UK).
Is it worth remembering that we are looking at social circs where 'accidents' and 'deaths' may result from very different conditions/actions/events related to human action, and not 'comparable' in the way that lab results might be, especially in the hard sciences?
yes chi-sq with that number of n (less than 15) not so robust but the actual p is huge. The point I am making is that you can manipulate stats but cannot make the conclusion stick
Nobody has (seriously) proposed a conclusion though. Not from any sort of research, at least.
We only have the observation that every year out of hundreds of millions of bike journeys (according to TfL there are over 500,000 bike trips every day in London), women consistently account for far more casualties than you would anticipate.
I think it's certainly possible to find out interesting things about the drivers too, if you have enough information. For example, it would be interesting to look at the proportion of killer drivers who were being paid per-delivery rather than per-hour, versus the overall proportion.
Suppose we established that 1/6th of drivers are paid per delivery but 6/13th of killer drivers are paid per delivery - warning bells anyone?
Nevertheless this doesn't detract from the fact that something is going on with women cyclists that we can learn from. Any given driver, especially in London, will encounter dozens if not hundreds of cyclists on their route but somehow they are mainly killing women, despite them being a small minority of road users. It's not because men are more likely to survive being run over by an HGV, it's because they aren't run over as often.
Surely that's worth investigating.
"We only have the observation that every year out of hundreds of millions of bike journeys (according to TfL there are over 500,000 bike trips every day in London), women consistently account for far more casualties than you would anticipate."
Ah. You are obviously privy to information that I don't have. The recent bout of victim blaming has centered only on the deaths that occurred in 2009 and so can't possibly be called "consistant".
I'm just glad that TfL seem to be taking a sensible view, from the bikebiz article a few posts above-
"The measure include the trial of on-street cycle safety mirrors, a new awareness campaign warning cyclists that undertaking lorries at junctions can be fatal, and the signing of an agreement with the Freight Transport Association (FTA) to improve cycle safety in London."
Obviously there is a lot of variation because the number of deaths is so small to begin with. But in the period 1999 – May 2004, females made up 43% of cycling deaths (and 86% were killed by drivers of goods vehicles). That's from the London Road Safety Unit.
Last year 10 out of 13 (75% of) deaths were women, and 80% of those were killed by drivers of goods vehicles.
However I don't know where I got the figure of 5:1 from, apparently the true ratio in London is now 3:1, so we'd expect women to account for 25% of deaths (which is still far less than 75%!).
What I think would be productive for starters would be to rig cameras high above a road junction, set to photograph the position of all players every time the lights changed. After a few thousand revolutions of the lights, you could then look at whether there was a significant variation in the positioning of men and women (for example).
"What I think would be productive for starters would be to rig cameras high above a road junction, set to photograph the position of all players every time the lights changed."
THAT is an interesting idea. It's already possible in some places.
http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/package/tfl-live-traffic-cameras
There IS an app for that -
http://download.cnet.com/London-JamCams-ease-your-journey/3000-12940_4-10904279.html
- presume there is a desk/laptop version too.
(Grr, work wrap problem again. Apologies for formatting)
ADMIN EDIT. Sorted - but I still can't identify problem.
Could do. So long as if it is found that IF road positioning is a factor, then something is done to discourage motorists from mowing down any cyclist deemed to be in the wrong place rather than putting pressure on cyclists to ride fast and aggressively at all times.
Because you can either have cycling only for people who are fast and assertive enough to get themselves in to the flow of traffic and stay there. OR you can have cycling for everyone even if they are a bit slow or do not have the balls of steel needed to keep themselves in the middle of the road, especially in the face of HGVs -
and that includes all the women in floaty dresses on 3 speeds that we are all supposed to worship and emulate.
But you can't have both.
You can if you have seperate cycle lanes. It would be interesting to find out how many deaths like this there are in the netherlands and denmark.
Yeah, but the 'out in traffic' folks that Min captures so brilliantly don't want separate cycle lanes....
So let them ride in traffic.If they are predominantly male road warrior types then they won't be killed by HGV's then the cycle chic flowery dress chaps can have more cycle path room. Nothing's ever gonna shut the idiot motorists who can't see past thier ever growing bellies up. So turn the ipods up!
Yeah but since we don't have these separate lanes then I guess cyclists, particularly women, will continue to be blamed for their own deaths due to not riding assertively enough whilst cyclists in general will continue to be blamed for putting "ordinary" people off cycling by riding too assertively. The motoring skills of those who mow down anyone not directly positioned in front of the drivers seat will continue to not be questioned.
Ranting you say? Yes. Yes I am.
(Chdot-It is fine now but was doing the same thing in gmail earlier on. Definately something funny at my end I reckon. So to speak.)
Yup that's about the size of it.
Part of the problem is the way in which cycling has been marginalised. It is not seen as being a main stream activity, so the level of investment in it is very low, but there is a also a lack of joined up thinking. We are in the position where there is no money to provide separated cycle lanes on main roads to go the places people want to get to when cycling as a means of transport.
Most off road provision is intended for leisure cycling and not therefore not very useful for getting to work or getting to the shops, etc. There is no segregated provision on major routes in the city.
The other problem is that overs many years transport policy has centred on making it easier to get places by car and no there is no will to restrict car usage. We are forces to cycle with the motorised traffic. The limited money that is available is insufficient to provide proper segregated on road provision, all we get is a wee bit of paint on the road. If segregated provision is given at all, it takes space from pedestrians, which is already inadequate and leads to conflict.
How to move forward?
There are many things that need to change. One that wouldn't cost would be to have a law of strict liability which would make it clear to drivers that they have a responsibility to drive safely.
Next, moves to restrict car parking in towns and cities, and so discourage car usage. At the same time increase intensives to use other forms of transport. This would include better cycling infrastructure such as on road segregated cycle lanes.
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