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news
Broken bike (CC licensed image by garryknight, www.flickr.com)Sharp rise in cycling casualties revealed by latest road safety statistics - Government safety record slammed
The government's record on road safety has come under attack after new figures revealed nearly 25,000 people were killed or seriously injured on Great Britain's roads in the year to September 2014, a 4 per cent rise over the previous year.
The sharpest growth was recorded among cyclists, with 3,500 killed or seriously injured, a year-on-year increase of 8 per cent, while the number of riders suffering slight injuries was up 11 per cent to 17,650.
Compared to the 2005-09 average, the number of cyclist casualties, including slight injuries, was 28 per cent higher during the latest 12-month period, but the number of cyclists killed or seriously injured was up by 38 per cent.
According to the Department for Transport (DfT), among all road users 24,360 people were killed or seriously injured during the year to September, a 4 per cent rise over 2013/14. Some 168,540 people were slightly injured, a 5 per cent year-on-year increase.
Within that, there was a 3 per cent increase in the number of children killed or seriously injured, and 6 per cent in child casualties of any severity, the first rise in rolling year-on-year comparisons in two decades.
The figures have seen the government criticised for cutbacks to roads policing, with the reffects of the economic downturn believed to have masked the true underlying picture, leading to politicians becoming copmplacent about road safety.
Neil Greig, director of policy and research at the Institute of Advanced Motorists, said: “It is disappointing that after many years of solid falls in the numbers of people killed and injured on our roads, the Government has taken its eye off the ball.
“These figures reflect our view that cuts in visible policing and road safety spending has had an impact, with a third successive quarter of increases. We have had pretty much two decades of falls in the KSI (killed/seriously injured) figures, and while these new figures can in no way be regarded as a trend, they are a big concern.
“Recent transport ministers have been lucky. The recession had slowed traffic growth, new car technology has delivered safer roads year on year and most accident black spots have now been engineered out of existence.”
According to Greig, their needs to be a change in attitude among motorists before the situation would improve.
“This is an opportunity for us to prove the key underlying part that driver skills and behaviour play in road safety,” he said.
“Most crashes are caused by human error, and technology can only deliver so much. If we don’t change policy we will still be killing 1,000 people a year in 2030 – that is unacceptable. Driver behaviour, skills and training will be the key focus for our future research and policy work.”
Austerity measures have caused police forces across the country to slash the number of road policing officers by 12 per cent.
Last week, the Police Federation’s lead on traffic, Jayne Willetts, told The Independent: “Police officers are absolutely frustrated by the rise in fatalities because, at the end of the day, we need more officers in marked cars acting as a deterrent.
“We welcome hi-tech developments, including the emerging smart motorway network, but the increasing reliance on automated technology and cameras can’t compensate for the decline in traffic police, who are the most effective way of combating dangerous drivers, drink drivers and people using mobile phones while driving,” she added.
Road safety charity Brake said that the rise in deaths and serious injuries among cyclists and children were “of particular concern.”
Julie Townsend, the charity’s deputy chief executive, said: “These casualty increases are the tragic result of a failure of ambition.
“They come on the back of three years of flat-lining road death and serious injury figures, during which the government congratulated itself on having ‘some of the safest roads in the world’, rather than making forward thinking decisions and setting targets to secure further reductions.
“We need a commitment to a long-term vision of nobody being killed or seriously injured on our roads, rather than settling for the status quo. Every road casualty causes appalling suffering, and everyone can be prevented, but only if we make the right moves.”
Brake called on political parties to make three key commitments to road safety in their manifestos for May’s general election.
Those are making 20 miles an hour the default speed limit in urban areas, bring in graduated licensing of drivers to help new motorists acquire the skills to drive safely over time, and introduce a “zero-tolerance” limit for drink driving of 20mg per 100ml of blood.
“We’re in no doubt these measures would put us back on the path of stopping needless loss of life on our roads, and creating safer streets and communities for all,” added Townsend.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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17 comments
Instead of a twelve point system,
1st offence = 3 month ban
2nd offence = 12 month ban
3rd offence = life ban
Sure that would reduce casualties pretty quickly.
IMHO the government are full of empty sound bites and SHIT when it comes to a truly sustainable transport policy.
They are all chicken livered and run scared of the motoring lobby, and/or are too interested in their kick backs to give a shit about the safety of anyone using the public roads without crumple zones and air-bags
They're a bunch of two faced bastards!
GrahamTDF wrote:
"If you look at the total number injured without also looking at any increase or decrease in road users these stats are just click bait".
You're right to point that out Graham!
Unfortunately though, cyclist casualty numbers - and particularly those for serious casualties - have been rising more sharply than cycle use since around 2008. So the risk of a cycling injury, per mile cycled, really is now going up, reversing a positive trend over the previous decade or so.
Cycle use figures aren't yet available up to September 2014 (which is what these latest casualty stats show). However, on the basis that cycle use has risen by about 20% since 2005-9, these latest figures suggest that the risk per mile of a cycling injury has risen by around 14% over that period, and the risk of a serious injury by around 22%.
For more info - including sources and CTC comment - see https://www.ctc.org.uk/news/20150205-ctc-urges-action-cycle-safety-casua...
Roger Geffen
Campaigns & Policy Director, CTC
I think everyone knows this Govt and probably the next one will not fork out billions of pounds on redoing major roads in and around our cities because they wont get anything back from it.
Yes you will get small schemes but nothing like whats needed.
Simple things which wont cost anything other than the gripes of business owners is to ban all wagons / lorries / HGV etc from the city centres during the day. How many articles has road.cc published about cyclists being hit or killed by these vehicles, all of which could have been avoided.
I think everyone knows this Govt and probably the next one will not fork out billions of pounds on redoing major roads in and around our cities because they wont get anything back from it.
Yes you will get small schemes but nothing like whats needed.
Simple things which wont cost anything other than the gripes of business owners is to ban all wagons / lorries / HGV etc from the city centres during the day. How many articles has road.cc published about cyclists being hit or killed by these vehicles, all of which could have been avoided.
I think focussing on driver distraction in general and cellphone use in particular would help. There is new technology available that will identify if a driver is on the phone. For back streets where there is a lot of housing, 20mph speed limits would help too. There are also a lot of drug using drivers out there. On my commute I generally pass a couple of vehicles/day where the driver has the window open and is puffing away on some weed. Those new drug testing kits you cops are being issued with have been needed for a while.
Given the pressure to develop London's infrastructure, housing and commercial properties, bans on HGVs in the city are impractical as they would boost construction costs to even more stratospheric levels. A ban is not going to happen - you read it here. There is technology available to alert truck drivers to the presence of cyclists and this needs to be made compulsory, now. There are haulage firms that are repeat offenders with regard to traffic offences and more action needs to be taken against them. There are good haulage companies with good safety records and more notice needs to be taken of how these firms have achieved this.
Agree, we need more technology, more policing andmore addressing of attitude. My concern is driving and all forms of travel becomes more'wild west' when all thesocalled minor infractions are ignored because no one got hurt( this time). I think thatbreeds more of the feeling that anyhting goes if you can get away with it.
We have them in all our vehicles, both marked and unmarked and they are spot on, they cant be abused and the info can be downloaded straight away.
one thing i do wonder about, HGV and PSV are on Tachos, why aren't taxis, why aren't reps?
These are all places of work so shouldn't they all be subject to tighter regulation?
It won't stop every accident, but it might make some think twice before speeding or driving excessive hours.
To be honest as all drivers are on licence, i don't really see the issue with making a black box of some description compulsary, in the event of an accident it just provides a bit more evidence,
mrmo - couldn't agree more. More Police are needed. But they aren't the only answer. Never mind speed cameras, the driver slows for them and then accelerates again which negates their use.
Average speed cameras are the best because ultimately speeding wont get you there any quicker unless you want points and a fine.
Giving insurance companies access to the PNC which would allow them to check for points as people dont declare them is another way.
Banning all vehicles over a certain size and weight from city centres during the daytime.
There are lots of ways to ease the problem without spending a fortune in my opinion.
More seriously, drivers need to feel that they will get caught, that what they are doing is wrong.
If someone doesn't believe they are doing harm and that they won't get caught they will carry on.
The answer is more police.
Where's the call for driver visibility aids and active collision avoidance systems and GPS tracking on large and commercial vehicles?
Shift the onus of enforcement from at-a-point (speed cameras) to universal with a black box data recorder in the car.
There needs to be a concerted effort to attach criminality and moral objection to traffic offences. Most of us wouldn't consider stealling a chocolate bar from a local shop but we'll happily creep above the speed limit - whether intentionally or through not paying enough attention (particularly on the motorway). Until society can agree that breaking traffic laws is as 'wrong' as other instances of petty crime, people will continue to be affected by the actions of those who don't care enough about being caught, either because they don't fear the consequences or because there's no stigma attached to having points on your licence.
Looking through the figures for previous years from the DfT seems to rule out the effects of the recession and total km travelled and traffic volumes didn't decrease that much. I do think policing is an issue, and particularly the over-reliance on speed cameras in recent years. I also think driver distraction is an increasing problem. We've all seen drivers using phones for calls or texting or whatever, and this problem could well be on the increase since the penalties are very low and policing lower still.
Of course if you look at the total number injured without also looking at any increase or decrease in road users these stats are just click bait.
Well DfT numbers show virtually no change in traffic volumes over the last few years but the level of cycling has gone up.
So that's ok, more cyclists so more dead people it's to be expected.
Now if we ban cycling and walking just think how many less people will die.
Very sad news but not surprising considering that there are 20,000 less officers under the current Govt.