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news
Flag of New ZealandFewest cycling deaths for 25 years in New Zealand
Only five cyclists died on the roads in New Zealand in 2016 - the lowest figure in the country’s last 25 years of record keeping.
Over the past 25 years about 12 cyclists died on the roads each year, and the Cycling Action Network has said the apparent improvement in the figures is “encouraging".
The organisation’s spokesman Patrick Morgan said the decline was a reflection of more people riding and becoming accustomed to cyclists - and that new infrastructure slowly coming into play was adding to the safe spaces for cycling.
While saying there were more ambitious schemes the government could adopt, Morgan said the country had the best cycling advocate yet in Simon Bridges as Minister of Transport for cyclists.
There were six cyclist deaths in 2015 and 10 in 2014.
"It is really encouraging, the numbers appear to be moving in the right direction," Morgan said.
Further work, however, was needed in the areas of protected cycleways; better designed junctions; educating drivers and cyclists and setting safer speed limits through neighbourhoods.
A New Zealand Transport Agency spokesperson said the country was undergoing: "The single biggest investment in cycling in New Zealand's history," the spokesperson said.
"We want people to be able to choose how they get around and to feel safe."
Earlier this year we reported how houses in Christchurch, New Zealand, may be demolished to make way for a planned cycleway there.
Christchurch City Council plans to connect two cul-de-sacs in Somerfield, Barrington Street and Roker Street, under its proposals for the Quarryman’s Trail segregated cycling route between Halswell and the city centre.
And it seems that the two houses, together comprising four residences, at the end of each of those roads face the wrecking ball, with the alternative being to take away car parking spaces.
Previously, the council had planned to route the cycleway along the parallel Milton Street, but that idea was shelved since it would have meant removing all the car parking on the street – something the local authority deemed would not have gone down well with residents.
Transport operations manager Steffan Thomas said: "We have approached the affected owners regarding the property acquisition but have not confirmed the purchase of any properties at this stage.”
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I stand corrected by all above, here's what I think I know:
And finally NZ really is an amazing country to ride a bike in - but that bike is most likely to be a Mountain Bike.
Not really sure why the article about the house demolitions in Christchurch was juxtaposed with this completely unrelated story about New Zealand cycle death statistics, but if you want some more perspective on the former, you may want to read this: http://cyclingchristchurch.co.nz/2017/01/02/what-price-for-a-cycleway/
"A New Zealand Transport Agency spokesperson said the country was undergoing: "The single biggest investment in cycling in New Zealand's history," the spokesperson said."
So having totally destroyed utility cycling with the worse than useless helmet law, they are now trying desperately to encourage cycling. Hmm, can't help thinking that they might be missing something, literally and figuratively.
I call irrelevancy on this, as nothing other than statistical noise. The most recent travel survey shows cycling levels in NZ are ***HALF*** that of the UK, with only 1% of trip legs being by bike.
A total of 195M miles are cycled in NZ each year, 4.6M people making it 42 miles/year per head. Compared with the UK's 3.5Bn miles for 64M people, or 54.6 miles/head.
The UK fatality rate is 1 per 29M miles cycled. For NZ, with around 9 dying each year, it's one death per 21.6M miles.
Since 2010, cyclist fatalities have trended pretty much flat at around 9 per annum (10, 9, 8, 8, 10, 6, then 5 in 2016). From my reading, that 6 and 5 are aberrations.
So: far from this being 'good news', what it reaffirms is that
1. NZ is a more dangerous place to cycle on road than the UK.
2. Fewer Kiwis ride bikes for transport than Brits.
3. Helmet laws don't work, neither do helmets make you safer overall.
Yes, here and there councils are doing some stuff with bike lanes. but it's nowhere near European levels of investment. Not even close. Go there for the mountainbiking, sure. But on the road, expect to have shit thrown at you, be punishment-passed and generally have a bad time compared with Europe or even the UK.
Get back to me in 10 years. Then I might think things are looking up.
So your own calcs indicate that UK citizens are only riding 30% more than their Kiwi counterparts; that hardly equates to the "HALF" difference you claim. Since that travel survey was undertaken, I'd say that cycling usage has increased further in NZ, based on various cycle counts around the country.
Statistically, if we assume a Poisson distribution, it is too soon to confirm a significant change in the mean, although for context this drop has also happened while the overall NZ road toll has increased by 20% in the past three years, partly due to rising traffic volumes.
If you account for the increased cycling usage and using the lower fatal rate of the past couple of years, the NZ fatality rate is barely different to the UK.
The "official" road toll stats aren't entirely helpful; they miss a number of non-motor veh crashes (e.g. one fell into a ditch riding home across a park) or those where the person happened to be walking their bike at the time (e.g. to cross a road). Ignoring the "medical incident while riding" ones, the annual figures for the past few years actually read: 12, 13, 10, 9, 13, 16, 11, 11, 10,7,6. It would only take another year of similarly low fatal numbers to confirm a stat. significant drop. So, while I'd be continuing to keep an eye on the figures for a while (and also checking the injury crash trends), they're a promising drop for now.
Quite a few councils are doing "some stuff with bike lanes" (actually it's more about separated bikeways and neighbourhood greenways these days); NZ is currently spending GBP200 million on cycleways over 3 years; that's about 15 pounds per capita annually. Some places like Christchurch are investing nearly GBP100 million there alone over five years; that's about 50 pounds pa/capita, i.e. Dutch-like levels. I hear that the UK's latest strategy in March proposed GBP316 million over five years, or about one pound per person a year...
NZ'ers cycle further per trip - because they have to to get somewhere useful - the cities are far less dense than in the UK.
But the number of trip legs conducted by bicycle is indeed half that in the UK: 1% as compared to 2%. So I stand by my assertion that cycling levels are half that of the UK. Once on their bikes NZ'ers have to go further, because towns and cities are mostly sprawling.
I'm not going to squabble over statistics, they are what they are and tell a basic story: cycling in NZ is more crap than in the UK, which by European and increasingly other global benchmarks is woeful itself. Both may be improving, slowly, with patchy investment strategies that are easily skewed by one city or authority deciding to do a flagship project where a large sum radically shifts a woeful baseline investment.
Fundamentally, don't take your lovely dutch bike to NZ and expect it to be Amsterdam.
My brother lived there (now he's just moved to anti-cyclist Australia) and he said the driving standards were terrible compared to the UK.
We only did three weeks in a camper van when we went to visit him and once you got out of Auckland the place was dead for traffic. I will have to go back and take it all in by bike one day.
I don't think road cycling is massive in NZ, but they're really into adrelin rush stuff like mountain biking and off the beaten track stuff. As others have said - lots of triathletes, but not much dedicated road cycling.
No, you missed the real chance to stir - it goes like this... in NZ helmet wearing is compulsory... discuss
No, please don't, just joking!!!
I sincerely doubt cycling is on the decline in NZ, it's a nation of fitness fanatics and triathalon seems ot be the national sport these days.
Cycled the country a number of years ago. Hardly saw any cyclists after two months there. Few i did see were European. Drivers were horrendous there.
Yes, feel safer in London than Wellington or Auckland on a bike. There are tons of cyclists but vast amjority are metro based racers, triathletes and MTBers - most kiwis don't bother with the kinds of roads that you were probably on!
So long as the flip side of this isn't "fewest cyclists in New Zealand in twenty five years"!
Quite the opposite; cycling numbers have been growing in the past decade after reaching their nadir in the early 2000s. E.g. Christchurch has about 8% cycle commuting, with many suburbs recording 10-15% - not a bad start. Some Auckland central city corridors have cycle numbers increasing by 50% over the past year, following improvements to cycle routes.