On tonight’s regional news was an item about the new UK legislation on dangerous cycling, shortly to be introduced.

The focus was a tragic case of a man whose wife was killed by a cyclist 9 years ago and he has been campaigning for the law change ever since.

I don’t have a problem with the law change but I do have a problem with the way it’s being reported by the BBC et al…

…The BBC quotes a government estimate that “of 1,600 deaths on UK roads last year, 4 were caused by cyclists”.

Updated:
I looked but could not find the estimate’s source.

I thought that 4/1600 (0.25%) seemed suspiciously high and strongly suspected the government of *making shit up*.

But Mark’s reply below points to the source.

Meanwhile, on average in the UK, more than one pedestrian is killed by a motorist every day and a cyclist is killed by a motorist every 4 days or so

#bikeTooter

…The legislation was brought forward by The Irritable Foul Syndrome known as IDS (AKA Iain Duncan Smith), a man with all the probity of yer average Tory MP

@urlyman

This sounds like the nonsense surrounding the story, "I don't have anything against bicycling but..." Irish Cycle did a fantastic rebuff against that stupid article.

https://irishcycle.com/2025/05/29/ive-nothing-against-newspaper-columists-but-do-they-all-have-to-write-about-cycling/

I’ve nothing against newspaper columnists, but… do they all have to write about cycling?

Comment & Analysis: Honestly, do Irish Times columnists take turns having good old cycling rants? With no sense of inory, the latest article runs with a standfirst (or subheadline) of “Wh…

IrishCycle.com

@urlyman

https://www.cyclinguk.org/sites/default/files/document/2017/10/pedestrians_4r_brf.pdf

May be useful, if you haven't seen it already. It has references.

@Cameleopard thank you. I hadn’t seen that.

The study says that from 2011 to 2015 cyclists “were involved in just over 1% of pedestrian fatalities” which, unless I’m missing some nuance, is 4x the estimate the BBC and others are citing (but not linking to).

So:

a) the basis of the “government estimate” is no clearer
b) I need to eat my words with regards to 0.25% being “suspiciously high”
c) I’m frankly astonished it’s been as high as ~1%
d) but also a 75% drop is a less tragic outcome

@Cameleopard

and:

e) if 98% of pedestrian deaths were coming from motor vehicles, and just over 1% from cyclists, what of the remainder?

Doesn’t sound like it’s neatly covered in the “around” that precedes “98%”? 🤔

@urlyman @Cameleopard I have traced the source of the 4 deaths figure to an additional table linked from the last annual road casualties report (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-annual-report-2023/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-annual-report-2023).

1/2

Reported road casualties Great Britain, annual report: 2023

GOV.UK

@urlyman @Cameleopard The table ‘Vehicles and drivers (RAS05)’ linked from https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/reported-road-accidents-vehicles-and-casualties-tables-for-great-britain#vehicles-and-drivers-ras05 has a tab covering causes of pedestrian deaths. This is the only one that links deaths to specific types of vehicle. In 2023, there were four such deaths, out of 405 in total. As you might expect, given the low figure, it varies considerably from year to year. There were zero in 2022, and the highest in recent years was 6 deaths in 2019.

2/2

Road safety statistics: data tables

Detailed statistics about reported personal injury road collisions for Great Britain, vehicles and casualties involved.

GOV.UK

@markgould13 thanks so much Mark. Great diligence. On a phone now but will look at the .ods sources tomorrrow

@Cameleopard