Are drivers and cyclists just as dangerous to pedestrians?

exceed? maybe you should check the stats first, hilarious.

Has RoadCC approached The Times for a comment having had its science discredited?

I find it incredible that anything in a News International paper is taken seriously. We know that often their stories are simply a means of self promotion, write something outrageous and watch the interest grow. Treat them with the contempt they deserve, just ignore them, they don't deserve serious debate.

"What you really want to know here is how much of a risk different road users pose to pedestrians."

Why?

I don't think that's what you want. At least I don't want that. I'd be much more interested in whether encouraging cycling is likely to make roads safer, whereas your question is about what's likely to have happened if I find myself lying in the middle of the road with a broken bone. I want to know whether a given trip is more dangerous to some group of people (e.g. pedestrians) depending on whether it's made by car or by bike, because the answer leads to a difference in policy--either individual ("I want to kill someone today. Should I drive or bike?") or societal ("Should we subsidise parking and petrol as they do in the USA?"). So the article you criticise is asking the important question: What's Pr(hurt | hit by bike), whereas the question you're asking is What's Pr(hit by bike | hurt)?, which is only interesting for storytelling purposes.

Since far more miles are driven by cars than by bikes, obviously cars will kill more people. That's not interesting because it doesn't answer the question "Would encouraging cycling lead to safer roads?"

On the other hand, your criticism of "serious injury" is correct and important--even if hospitalisable injuries are similar, Pr(death | hit by car) > Pr(death | hit by bike).

Another way of looking at it is this: what you really want to know is which form of transportation kills more _people_, regardless of how they choose to transport themselves on any given trip. (You could maybe argue that people driving cars are knowingly choosing to put the lives of others at high risk and thus deserve to die, and so we don't care if people in cars kill people in cars, but actually let's not do that.) Bikes are more dangerous to other people than pedestrians are, but nobody on a bike ever kills anyone in a car (AFAIK), and people in cars kill people in cars all the time.

(And then there are the personal health benefits of cycling and the personal and societal health drawbacks of driving...)

If the original article shows something that you wish it didn't show (and who likes to hear that cycling hurts others?), perhaps we should be arguing for better integration of cycling infrastructure and better civic planning, rather than trying to ask misleading questions.

If you must question the statistics, perhaps you could argue that "per distance" is flawed, since cycling trips tend to be much shorter than driving trips, and more urban, resulting in higher exposure of pedestrians. The analysis in the Times may merely show that long-distance highways are efficient, pedestrian-death-wise: cars can rack up many billions of kilometers without coming anywhere near pedestrians (no kinetic endangerment, at least, although endangering them through toxins and political instability and climate change still occurs). Normalising _per_trip_ rather than _per_distance_ would arguably make more sense. This would also take into account the behaviour change caused by cycling: cyclists presumably tend to travel less distance per year, but to go out at roughly as often.

Cheers!

I am delighted that cyclists agree with me that stats are crap after all

But you miss two vital points. Accident records show that with drivers involved 75% are the pedestrians fault.

And of course,because drivers keep us all alive and provide basic essentials, they save far more people than they kill or injure. Yes it can't all be perfect.

Jjkuvbgd36788&£

"(he actually chased me in his converted golf cart)."

Lol, so you cycled slow and waited for him too catch up right?

Hi it's me again using the word Save is a code word for Send (previous post) must remember that.
23 pedis killed by cyclist? If you believe that you'll. believe anything.when I returned from a 2 year cycle tour abroad a few year ago I was shocked to learn of 20,000 cycle accidents,3000 fatally,in the previous year.
It turned out that these figures were entirely fictitious.theres a good few loonies round cycling but these will be eventually sorted out in the fullness of time by the shear weight of of numbers in the coming flood of cyclist who are going to bring this planet back to its senses.
You lucky young people, enjoy the ride!

I hope you guys realise that the prevalence of hybrid vehicles is only going to increase the number of accidents. >10 tonnes of metal going down the road silently is very scary. Pedestrians in London don't look when they cross the road already (is this some kind of Islamic fatalism at work?) - it won't be long until deaths and serious injuries from hybrids exceed those from 'cycles

Over the last few years I've had exactly the same problems as (it seems) everyone else with pedestrians not looking before stepping out, but over this winter (mainly for a laugh) I've been running the bike with Schwalbe ice spikers. It sounds like a half track and I've never failed to attract the attention of all pedestrians (even with headphones). Everyone gets out of my way and I'm thinking of running them into the summer as well.

I love finding a technology solution to problems.

Whoops: I wrote:

1. A tiny proportion of pedestrian KSIs involve cyclists. When walking you are far, far, far more likely to be hospitalised (let alone killed) in a collision involving a cyclist than a motorist.

One of you spotted that ti shoudl read "less" rather than "more".

I was just testing you.

Honest.

I'm a pedestrian, a cyclist, a passenger on public transport and a motorist.

Fortunately, I have appropriate insurance and have written a will. Sounds like I could be needing one or other soon!

Let's put this in perspective.

In the 10 years to 1997, guess how many people were killed on London's pavements by cars? = 37.

By bikes? = Zero.

Clearly there's infinitely much more danger of being killed by a car on the pavement than on the road.

Data source:
http://www.ctc.org.uk/news/goodwill-reiterates-footway-cycling-guidance

Per minute spent travelling should be used as the measure rather than per unit distance.
Typically motor vehicles travel much faster than bicycles. If, for example you assume a steady rate of pedestrians crossing the road, a cyclist will be exposed to more pedestrians per km than a driver.
Additionally, as mentioned already, shared use foot/cycle paths increase exposure for cyclists.

No one is impressed by data analysis alone. The question is "what can be done?", The answer is "improve the design of streets so that the most vulnerable get the most help".

Cycling will do very well from such a plan, and so will walking. Driving will have to take quite a lot of restriction, but can continue to be useful and convenient where necessary.

The problem of bad behaviour will have to wait for Judgement Day.

Saw the Times today which had half a page celebrating Top Gear's 21st birthday and the fact that Clarkson has no plans to "grow up". Go figure as the Americans say.

from the Times article
"Analysis of the past ten years of road casualty data by CTC showed that cyclists killed 23 pedestrians in the decade to 2012 and seriously injured 585.

In the same period, 3,330 pedestrians were killed by motor vehicles and 46,081 were seriously injured. "

ok so simple maths assuming a linear relationship to kms travelled (not proper stats )
so if you doubled the number of cycle-kms ridden
then the number of people killed per year by pedal bikes could be as many as 5 give or take with around 120 people seriously injured
if you halved the vehicle-kms driven then that would be 150 pedestrians killed per year by vehicles and 2300 seriously injured per year

that seems a pretty big gap to me think I know where effort to improve skills and change attitudes needs focussing

Couple of references to daft pedestrian behaviour - long may it last, I say, in urban areas, as it helps to slow cars and enforce the correct priority of feet, then bikes mingling in with care, then motorised vehicles going at a crawl to limit the danger the vehicles introduce. Blame-shifting talk of lemmings is misjudged, I think. Anyone going too quick in town needs to swap their long drop cantis for some disc brakes - an excuse for a new Croix de Fer maybe?

I have yet to collide with a pedestrian but boy do some of them try in London. Everyone makes mistakes but it is the ones who see you and make no effort to clear off the road and usually have a shitty remark to make as you swerve/jam on the brakes.
Sad that the Times has gone down this route but it does employ Clarkson.

Pedestrians don't see & hear cyclists, or under-estimate their speed. That's the issue we face, honestly.

In the beautiful place that is Canary Wharf last week, a private plod there decided that me yelling at a "not-looking-before-crossing-the-road-and-reading-my-smartphone-with-headphones-in" pedestrian that I was in danger of hitting was "startling" for him and uncalled for (he actually chased me in his converted golf cart).

My response was surprisingly docile - "go and shout at a motorist that hoots, then come back and I will agree with you".

I see so much hysteria since November, and more tension between motorists, pedestrians and cyclists. Enough with stupid articles - let's all just be courteous and aware.

The most obvious problem with this statistic is that there are no accurate figures for the number of cyclists or the number of miles they travel! Also, given the title of the piece, this, from near the end seems a bit at odds with intent of the article

"Research by the City of Westminster Council last year found that, in collisions between pedestrians and cyclists, 60 per cent of the crashes were caused by the pedestrian. "

Perhaps it should have been "Pedestrians create army of cycling wounded"