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