Protection for Cyclists - Cyclist Fatalities in 2015

Two blogs I’ve posted this month on sticking to those cycling New Year’s Resolutions.  How awful then to hear that this January 2015 has been one of the worst months in many years for its spate of cyclist fatalities. To put it rather crudely, it hardly fills this year’s new wave of cyclists we wished to welcome, with confidence.

I’m in no doubt that with every life we lose on the road, we lose the resolve of a whole plethora of would-be cyclists - that is cyclists that ‘would-be’ cycling if they considered the roads to be safer.  We lose our battle to better the perception of road cycling, the perception of safety and the faith that enough road influencers care.

It’s all very well, us blaming sensationalising in the media for the poor perception of safety on our roads but, let’s face facts, the fatalities are real.

Yesterday we were shocked and saddened to hear that we tragically lost our 14th cyclist of this year to a collision with a truck in North London.

Now I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  Devastating accidents like these are not inevitable; they are preventable.  And I’m not alone in believing this. There’s over a 1000 other people I seem to remember joining one winter night in 2013 - I’m pretty sure we weren’t there putting that 2-week spate of horrific deaths down to a bit of bad luck.  We were there because we knew that their deaths were AVOIDABLE.  London Cycling Campaign‘s Space4Cycling captured the hearts of the 1000s it did (not just in London but nationwide) because the campaign’s demands were just so…..sensical!

There is no cure-all for safer cycling and we know it.  Designing risk-free junctions in restricted urban areas is a problem that no-one has fully resolved.  And that includes those countries like the Netherlands which already have in place, far more superior cycling infrastructure than we do.

There is no single strategy that will guarantee against collisions, but there are a number of measures we can out in place to hugely reduce the risk.  So what’s the hold-up?

- Safer junction design and segregated space: a painted line simply doesn’t cut it; we want to see authorities using kerbs and barriers to safely segregate cyclists from lorries and motorists.  Nobody is saying that roads can be made absolutely collision free but, to take this week’s tragedy as an example, this site at Seven Sisters could be made significantly safer for cyclists through effective segregation.

Segregation aside - because infrastructure alone does not remove the risk of these types of collision - we need to ensure we do absolutely everything we can to mitigate the risk of lorries to cyclists and pedestrians.  Lorries are here to stay and as long as vulnerable road users are expected to share road space with them, we need to eliminate this problem of their restricted vision.

- Safer lorries: we want all lorries equipped with fresnel lenses, side-bars and cyclist-specific sensory equipment like Cycle Alert.  We want to see these retrofit at source.  We want to see more done in the way of lorry re-design.  Lorry drivers are on the whole, very well trained professionals - I’m willing to bet they don’t wake up in the morning thinking “I want to kill a cyclist”.  It’s important that they - lorry drivers - are given all the tools necessary to make their vehicle as safe for vulnerable road users as possible.

For more information on Space for Cycling, please visit LCC.org.uk