CTC is opposed to illegal
cycling.
We believe that first offender cyclists should, as an alternative to a fixed penalty
notice, be offered a course of cycle training under the National Standards for
Cycle Training, known as 'Bikeability'. The offer of an alternative driver retraining
or behaviour modification programme is standard practice for motorists.
Deaths and injuries to pedestrians - cyclists vs. motorists
1. What are the risks of red light jumping?
· In the years 2001-05 (the most recent data we have), there were 3 cyclists,
7 pedestrians and 7 motor vehicle occupants killed in London due to motorists
jumping red lights.
· Two cyclists got themselves killed by red light jumping (i.e. fewer than the
number of cyclists killed by red-light-jumping drivers), while 7 motorcyclists
got themselves killed the same way.
Jumping a red light on a bike is illegal and can be dangerous; jumping a red light
using a motor vehicle is just as illegal but causes a lot more death and injury.
2. What are the risks from pavement cycling?
In London between 2001-05 there were 17 pedestrians killed by motor vehicles on
pavements or verges, and not a single cyclist. In Britain as a whole there are
typically around 40 pedestrians killed on pavements or verges by motor vehicles
- that's getting on for 1 a week. By contrast there has been just 1 pedestrian
killed by a cyclist on a pavement this decade. Yet it was the latter (an incident
in Cornwall in 2006) which made headlines.
3. Who injures pedestrians?
· In the years 2001-5 in London, there were 101 times as many pedestrians injured
- and 126 times as many seriously injured - in collisions with motor vehicles
than cyclists. There were 534 pedestrians killed in collisions with motor vehicles,
and just 1 involving a cyclist (and no reason to believe that the cyclist in the
latter case was breaking the law).
· For the whole of Britain's road network, there were 3894 pedestrians killed
in collisions in 2000-04. Just 9 of these involved cyclists, none of them on the
footway. The remainder of these deaths involved motor vehicles.
· Per mile travelled, drivers are about 50% more likely than cyclists to be involved
in injuring a pedestrian, and 3.5 times as likely to be involved in killing them.
N.B. This calculation makes no allowance for the fact that (a) drivers accumulate
a lot of their mileage on motorways and trunk roads where there are very few pedestrians
to injure and (b) a lot of cyclists are children and teenagers.
CTC, the national cyclists' organisation January 2008