Major rise in cycling deaths and injuries

Collision incidents may be a small % of the overall total but are they not much more likely to result in serious injury or death?

Dear Injury Prevention Manager - can we have your views on compulsory cycle helmet wearing? It would be very interesting to know what they are. Thank you kindly

Cycling is probably safer than it has ever been, but during 2009-10, 15,940 cyclists were admitted in an emergency to a hospital bed, (see http://www.hesonline.nhs.uk/Ease/servlet/ContentServer?siteID=1937&categ...). This does not include people treated in Emergency Departments who were not admitted to a hospital bed.

The police collision database(STATS19) that provides the statistics reported is known to underestimate incidents involving single vehicles. The interesting fact is that 10,812 admissions resulted from cyclists involved in "non-collision incidents".

What causes non-collision incidents? The survey into non-collision incidents is posted here http://www.betterbybike.info/non-collision-incidents please take a look.

You may find our initial findings surprising. http://www.avon.nhs.uk/phnet/Avonsafe/Cycling%20Injuries/Cycling%20Injur...

NHS Bristol and our partners do all we can to promote cycling and make cycling safer. The majority of non-collision injuries are not serious.

bikeandy61 - well, first, I didn't write the article.

Second, the DfT give two figures in the quarterly stats - one for killed/injured (any), the other for killed/ seriously injured (KSI). So those are the two sets of figures we have to work with.

Without the number of fatalities being reported separately, we have no way of knowing whether that has gone up or down.

Bear in mind though that with the latest full-year stats showing 111 cyclist killed in 2011, we are probably talking about well under 1% of the last quarter's KSI total being fatalities.

Steady on, folks.

Wasn't there an apparent increase in cyclist KSI for Q1 in the previous year (accompanied by some flapping)? Yet when annual figures published the figures still dropped. Or am I remembering it wrongly?

Simon - so were you actually trying to say that serious injury rose by 5%? Number of killed/(Any) injured declined slightly while number killed/seriously injured rose by 5%. So the second part surely should have simply said but serious injury rose by >5%. It just didn't scan well IMHO.

Sory to be a pedant.

BikeAndy61: "So while the total number of people killed or injured on Britain’s roads fell, the number killed or seriously injured rose by 5%"?

Number of killed/injured (however slightly) fell; but just looking at the number killed or *seriously* injured there was a 5% rise.

Joemmo: "killed or injured is a pretty broad category isnt it? Is there no figures on death / serious injury / minor injury?"

Paragraph 2 gives killed/all injured; paragraph 3 gives just killed/seriously injured. DfT quarterly stats don't go into any further detail unfortunately.

Kaptnkrunch: "ah, this is total nonsense unless you take into account the increase in cyclists. The numbers of pedestrians and car users will have stayed fairly constant"

Yes, point re more cyclists is made in penultimate paagraph. And there's been a slight decline (0.7%) in all traffic over the past year.

So, frustrated at the continued drive to encourage them to share the road space, Britain's drivers have decided simply to kill those who infringe on what they consider to be their domain.

killed or injured is a pretty broad category isnt it? Is there no figures on death / serious injury / minor injury?

Unlike me who obviously didn't!

Bike (motorcycle) mag posited in the late 70's that rather than seat belts (and now airbags) a better way of improving road safety would be to have steering wheels fitted with a number of 6" knives. While facetious there is a grain of truth in the idea. Instead of your car protecting you if/when you drive inconsideratly it actively punishes poor driving. And obviously punishes you for having a true accident. The point is that the more and more that people are cocooned in their cars the easier it is to become complacent about ones driving.

And di you proof read this at all?

"So while the total number of people killed or injured on Britain’s roads fell, the number killed or seriously injured rose by 5%"?

With more SUVs and more airbagged cars it would not be surprising to see fewer car deaths and more motorcycle/cycle/pedestrian deaths.

But, on the plus side, that terrible "War on Motorists" the previous government was waging is over...

ah, this is total nonsense unless you take into account the increase in cyclists. The numbers of pedestrians and car users will have stayed fairly constant, where as there are many more cyclists, so there will be an increase in injuries. If you scale the number of injuries against the number of cyclists per year you might get some useful data.

Try plotting a normalised graph of injuries/no. of cyclists against years and see what happens.

This is Safety in Numbers, yes?