A quick look at the stats for cycling deaths in London is that this year is similar to the last few years in total – not that that makes it right. If the recent 6 deaths had not happened in such quick succession we would have been heralding a reduction in numbers for 2013. If the 13 had died at the rate of about one a month nothing much would have been said in the media but 7 in 10 months and 6 in two weeks skews the trend.

I have no access to stats to see if autumn is a worse time for cycling deaths or serious injury long term. My perception, perhaps wrongly, is that after the clocks change it takes people a few days to get used to it and that includes cyclists. I have been caught out before with no lights if I have been later back then I thought or non reflective clothing.

And to follow up something JCL says above; how many cyclists have been killed riding through red lights?

Not heard of one in recent years.

In my office at least the deaths are raising the profile of cyclists, and getting some sympathy.

It’s just a shame that’s what it takes to get people to start thinking. 🙁

eskay – A cyclist is critical in Frenchay hospital (Bristol) after being knocked off near Frome last week. He was wearing high vis and had full lights.

I don’t see the point here; hi-vis and lights won’t prevent a car hitting you, they just increase your chances of being seen.

All these cyclists riding like tossers comments are probably true but I bet the percentage of such riders is very low so the chance of them adding to the statistics is next to zero.

But they’re the ones people remember. I nearly went into the back of a guy on Essex Road (Islington) one winters evening while riding home. He had no lights, long dark hair, was wearing a long black coat and riding a black sit-up-and-beg.

I thought at the time ‘if I can’t see you on a bike, what chance does a car driver have?’

However, my point here is that was 12 years ago and I still remember it. In those 12 years I’ve commuted or ridden a bike nearly every day for about eight of them, so seen a lot more cyclists since that I don’t remember.

I do think that the percentage of bad cyclists is going down, actually.

User removed: I didn’t say suck it up, I said we need to establish the facts and identify the actual causes so they can be properly tackled.

As a cycle commuter, albeit not in London, I suck it up every day.

The biggest problem of cyclists is refusal to slow down break their overall speed. I know it takes extra effort to speed up again. That reluctance leads to some close up last moment panick decisions by both cyclist and a driver. Undertaking moving vehicles and slow acceleration from traffic lights provokes a lot of aggro too.

Making London into Cycling heaven … not a chance. Try that in Moscow, New York, Paris, Tokyo? London so far did very well, give good credit for trying. The whole green idea is a non starter. Its either ban motorvehicles and kill economy or pretend trying to do something and get casualties.

I cycle to work and drive in central London.

molgrips – Member

I do think that the percentage of bad cyclists is going down, actually.

Since I nearly got killed jumping the lights at the IMAX on my Brompton, by one at least… 🙂

Does anyone else think this current run of deaths is down to TFL’s FORS stickers on the back of lorries and busses telling the cyclist to stay back?

Thus the HGV/PSV driver sits secure in the knowledge that he/she has already exercised their duty of care to the cycling road users around them by having that sticker on the back of their vehicle. They are now free to make their left/right/change-of-lanes-turn with less regard for cyclists, than they used to before the sticker was put there.

To my mind TFL have done a Pontius Pilate hand-wash jobby and ignored the problem. Their answer is to put the onus entirely onto the cyclist.

The Highway Code (on my last reading of it…10 years ago!!)does/did allow undertaking in limited circumstances, such as in one way street systems, and in slow moving traffic.

LONDON IS SLOW MOVING TRAFFIC FROM ONE END OF THE BASTARD TOWN TO THE OTHER!

TFL’s FORS stickers on the back of lorries and busses telling the cyclist to stay back?

Imagine cyclists with stickers on their backs attempting to tell other traffic users to behave. That wouldn’t get anyone’s backs up 🙂

I do realise these stickers on the backs of lorries/vans/buses are for a cyclist’s safety so not knocking them.

The biggest problem of cyclists is refusal to slow down break their overall speed. I know it takes extra effort to speed up again.

I followed but not closely a roadie very early on Saturday morning whilst taking my kids swimming, from his speed, build and his bike you could tell he was experienced, he was wearing all black with no lights, as he hit a roundabout with good amount of speed, he would have been able to see the oncoming car to his right (I did) but he rode straight out in front of it rather than stop, how the car didn’t hit him I don’t know. I ride a road bike too from time to time and when I see stuff like that it really pisses me off as we can all get tarred with the same brush just because of a selfish few

BBC Boris

I hope he finds a legal way to ban headphones on cyclists. In London headphones are just suicide.

whilst I wouldn’t wear earphones and cycle myself that is about as useful as banning people from using a mobile whilst driving.

ffs Boris is a dick

banning headphones, what kind of idiot thinks that will protect someone from an HGV turning across them?

still its an excellent daily mail friendly way of turning the debate away from the obvious fact that the roads in london just cant handle bikes and trucks together

banning headphones, what kind of idiot thinks that will protect someone from an HGV turning across them?

We have five senses – what kind of idiot doesn’t use as many as possible while cycling in potentially lethal traffic?

If there is a lorry in my blind spot about to turn into me, I generally hear it. If I hear it I know it’s there, and if I know it’s there I can brake so it misses me.

I have actually cycled a few times with headphones, and I realised that every car appearing in my peripheral vision was a complete surprise. And surprises are the last thing you want when riding in traffic IMO.

senses – what kind of idiot doesn’t use as many as possible while cycling in potentially lethal traffic?

Plus one

yeah I try and taste unseen traffic all the time

the sound of an HGV is easy enough to hear whilst wearing headphones and relying on your hearing to warn of other traffic is foolish*, look and look again,
especially when crossing a poorly designed junction/ roundabout which is where these deaths are concentrated

*also other cyclists make no noise and a Prius is virtually silent on the roads

PJ said:

We have five senses – what kind of idiot doesn’t use as many as possible while cycling in potentially lethal traffic?

Can you actually distinguish traffic noise from traffic noise that’s going to bump into you?

Might as well ban cycling with a blocked nose.

Does anyone else think this current run of deaths is down to TFL’s FORS stickers on the back of lorries and busses telling the cyclist to stay back?

Thus the HGV/PSV driver sits secure in the knowledge that he/she has already exercised their duty of care to the cycling road users around them by having that sticker on the back of their vehicle. They are now free to make their left/right/change-of-lanes-turn with less regard for cyclists, than they used to before the sticker was put there.

To my mind TFL have done a Pontius Pilate hand-wash jobby and ignored the problem. Their answer is to put the onus entirely onto the cyclist.

As I’ve pointed out on other threads like this, TFL & the City of London Corporation have made it compulsory for HGV’s operating on their behalf to have Side-Scan fitted – not the cheap, rebadged parking sensor kits but the pucker ones. It’s taking a while for them all to get done but it is, at least, a work in progress.

I know someone involved in the exercise & there was recently a large gathering of the firms involved to discuss and promote this (amongst other issues). There is a long term plan being formulated with initial steps such as reducing speed limits already being implemented.

Here is the report they are currently using which has some very interesting statistics for all road users in London.

The one thing my friend said he’d noticed wasn’t changing for the better was driver’s attitudes – he feels that that a large proportion of the HGV drivers he’s come into contact with don’t think they’ll even be prosecuted if they have a collision with a cyclist let alone be punished severely – apparently one bus driver he spoke to was extolling the fact that if it happened while he was driving he’d “get loads of time off to get over the trauma”.

It’s a situation that clearly needs education on both sides but maybe some proper sentencing on careless/dangerous drivers would be a start.

banning headphones, what kind of idiot thinks that will protect someone from an HGV turning across them?

The only person who can do something about the situation you’ve just described is the idiot cyclist who put himself on the inside of an HGV turning left….Darwin award candidate.

Seriously, these deaths are awful but the riders who put themselves in the blind spot of buses, HGVs etc are not helping themselves.

I appreciate your compassionate and considered response deviant but the CS2 deaths in particular seem to have involved cyclist put there by the blue painted cycle lanes that lead then up the inside of trucks.

Can you actually distinguish traffic noise from traffic noise that’s going to bump into you?

Do vehicles sound quieter the further from you they get? Or are they just small? 😉

Might as well ban cycling with a blocked nose.

Good idea. Let’s shut our eyes too and use the force.

Can you actually distinguish traffic noise from traffic noise that’s going to bump into you?

Yes, I can. I have two ears, so I can tell where something is and how close it is. A lorry closing in close behind me is very audible and thanks to years of practice using my ears quite alarming. That’s the point where I tend to look round.

relying on your hearing to warn of other traffic is foolish

Of all the utterly ridiculous arguments.. 🙄

I don’t RELY on my hearing for ****’s sake, I don’t shut my **** eyes! I use ALL my senses to their maximum potential. Primarly my eyes, but they only look infront. If you are constantly looking behind you then you’re not looking forward. Ears provide an early warning system so that you can then deploy your eyes.

I honestly can’t believe I’m having to tell people how to use their senses! How **** important is your MP3 collection that you have to lose or impede one of your senses in a potentially dangerous situation just to be with it every second of the day.

For ****’s sake get a grip!

a Prius is virtually silent on the roads

Actually not true. Most noise coming from a petrol car at 30mph is made by the tyres, and Priuses have those.

yeah I try and taste unseen traffic all the time

Kimbers on way to work earlier today. :p

Deviant..

The only person who can do something about the situation you’ve just described is the idiot cyclist who put himself on the inside of an HGV turning left….Darwin award candidate.

That’s simply not the case – you’re attributing blame to cyclists when you don’t know the circumstances.

To give you an example, I was knocked off my bike by a bus this week. I was overtaking a line of parked cars. The bus was behind me, overtook (or rather tried to overtake), I was about mid point, between front and rear wheels with the bus when it veered left into space between the parked cars getting to a bus stop. I was getting to the space, I was pushed left into the kerb, puncturing my front tyre and throwing me onto the pavement. Do I qualify for a Darwin award? Apart form not cycling, there is *nothing* I could do. I was cycling at a safe distance from the cars, the bus overtook me me partially on the other side of the road.

You basically called a bunch of dead cyclists idiots when there is little or no information on the circumstances surrounding the accidents.

Seriously, these deaths are awful but the riders who put themselves in the blind spot of buses, HGVs etc are not helping themselves.

If that’s what they did. Something you don’t know.

It’s fairly callous to attribute blame to people without knowledge of circumstance.

Signs on buses: boils my piss, I have written to Andrew Gilligan ccing Boris (no reply as yet) to say: the roads are SHARED, they do not ‘belong’ to buses therefore the signs are unlawful, further that the signs are divisive, and only serve to reinforce motorists’ views that cyclists are a nuisance or not part of traffic. I have invited them to take the notices down.

In the meantime am working on a notice of my own – to go on my back – which will say

BUSES

STAY BACK

Using ears as early-warning devices: I get a lot of clues from listening to tyres – along with engine note I can tell if the following vehicle is accelerating/braking/swerving violently or aggressively or if they are following me in a reasonable manner.

I can usually tell if there’s a bus (they must have some kind of auto box as I can hear the torque converter winding up) so I know to look ahead for a bus stop as if there is, there’s a possibility that I will get overtaken and then cut up immediately.

etc – listening has served me well over the years

Using ears as early-warning devices: I get a lot of clues from listening to tyres – along with engine note I can tell if the following vehicle is accelerating/braking/swerving violently or aggressively or if they are following me in a reasonable manner.

Well put. When hearing one of the aggressive drivers I tend to move into the curb regardless. That sort of driver tends to wait for nothing and will squeeze through without a care.

Drivers of small cars, too. It’s the one with the high-pitched engine tone that isn’t decelerating – you know they’re coming through at full tilt because they believe there’s enough room on the carriageway between the central markings for them and you. Again I move to avoid probable collision.

kimbers, would you drive off a cliff if the road you were on led you to it?….of course you wouldnt, cyclists are under no obligation to use the cycle lane if they think its dangerous….if the cycle lane leads up the nearside of vehicles turning left and puts you between said vehicles and railings for example then you’d have to be pretty stupid to do this.

Paddy, i’m only referring to incidents when a cyclist puts themselves in danger.
In your case the bus driver is entirely at fault…but if the traffic was stationary and a cyclist filters to the front and to the left of vehicles waiting to turn left (putting themselves in a blind spot to compound matters) then the cyclist has to take some of the blame for that…its beyond stupid.

I skimmed through the article and it does say the HGV was turning left, there has been enough publicity about this kind of incident now that if cyclists are still doing this then i struggle to have any kind of sympathy, sorry.

My brain seems to do a lot subconsciously with sound. For example my heart jumps into my mouth suddenly when I hear an engine accelerate towards me, in my lane when there’s no room to pass. Then my conscious brain realises it’s a motorbike and there’s plenty of room for a safe pass..!

Riding along the A6 towards Belper in Derbyshire on Sat morning, passing a parking lay-by with a truck in it. (RH drive, UK plated). Just passed the back of the trailer & he suddenly swings out to do a U-turn. 😯

We had lights (good ones), High-Vis etc. Luckily having to mount the kerb (& probably take out the hedge given how long the thing was) slowed him, giving us time to get out of his way. I was speechless, & needed clean underwear.

Well put. When hearing one of the aggressive drivers I tend to move into the curb regardless. That sort of driver tends to wait for nothing and will squeeze through without a care

See, I tend to do the opposite. I move out deliberately so there isn’t the possibility of the person squeezing past. Yes it might annoy them but it is a sight safer than being pushed into the gutter / curb (this happened to me when I was ‘learning’ to commute)

If you regularly ride the same routes I find it is nearly always the same roads / places that I get near misses or buzzed. This points more to road design than impatient drivers imo. There is one road I ride along which has sunken drains approx 2-3 foot out into the road whilst just being wide enough to let cars past if you are about 1 foot from the curb. Dangerous for cyclists.

Oh and I ride with headphones, have for several years, it is possible to have music playing at a volume where you can hear everything that is going on around you as well. By the same dumb thought process we should ban radios in cars. And maybe even drivers talking to their passengers?!

[quoteWell put. When hearing one of the aggressive drivers I tend to move into the curb regardless. That sort of driver tends to wait for nothing and will squeeze through without a care

I tend to do the opposite. I move out deliberately so there isn’t the possibility of the person squeezing past. Yes it might annoy them but it is a sight safer than being pushed into the gutter / curb (this happened to me when I was ‘learning’ to commute)[/quote]

And me, take the whole lane and make youself big. If you move over you’re just encouraging them to think that they can squeeze past.

Oh and I ride with headphones, have for several years, it is possible to have music playing at a volume where you can hear everything that is going on around you as well. By the same dumb thought process we should ban radios in cars. And maybe even drivers talking to their passengers?!

The difference is that a driver does not use his/her hearing to the same degree a cyclist does (or can, should they choose). I tend to drive without music so I can hear the engine (and music is normally a distraction unless I’m on a long, straight motorway when it becomes an aid), but I know I’m probably in a minority doing this. That said, I still can’t hear other cars while in one, thus making it fairly irrelevant.

On a bike however, I can hear what other traffic is doing and it’s incredibly useful. Why you’d want to compromise that baffles me.

Oh and I ride with headphones, have for several years, it is possible to have music playing at a volume where you can hear everything that is going on around you as well. By the same dumb thought process we should ban radios in cars. And maybe even drivers talking to their passengers?!

Strange how stupid drivers both cant see me or hear me when i have a rant a few feet from their vehicle, both deaf and blind it appears. or just ignorant

I agree that road users with headphones are a hazard to themselves and to others. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that, if you’re in the road, you shouldn’t have headphones on. The ones I mostly see where this would be a step forward for safety are pedestrians.

A question for BoJo and the Headphone Haterz will/should the ban also apply to motorbike and moped riders, deaf people and pedestrians crossing the road ?

I tend to do the opposite.

I understand your viewpoint, guys. I’m no newb to this road riding malarkey – I’ve been cycling for transport for 28 years and I’m familiar with assertive riding – I just think it largely depends on the road, the time and the situation.

The particular road I’m prepared to move gutterside on has numerous drains about every 20 yards or so and the surrounding ‘road’ has collapsed leaving deep holes. In order to avoid these you have to sit out about 80cm. I consider this to be a safe distance for a cyclist to sit and you’d think it was out enough to stop drivers squeezing through but no, the road is just wide enough for cars to get through the gap between me and the white line with about 8 inches to spare. While I dislike having cars this close to me, I have no problem if the traffic is moving slowly. At 50mph+ it becomes a little unsettling and as some drivers will blast through regardless of that distance and their speed, I’d rather just tuck out of the way. I know I could sit that little bit further out but it feels ridiculous and I would imagine that to the average car driver, it would appear as if I was an antagonistic cyclist looking for trouble.

It’s a tough call but you have to call it at the moment. I’ve had three knocks on that road – only one driver was decent enough to stop. So many close shaves I’ve lost count.

a driver does not use his/her hearing to the same degree a cyclist does

good point. convertibles for everyone! ( or at least no windows )

Well, all this debate (not just on here) spurred me on to get a new helmet for commuter journeys, so I got a nice shiny err, matt black Bern Watts helmet. Fit is very good, will keep the majority of rain off and not too voluminous for my oversized melon.

Obviously matt black isn’t really an ideal commuter choice, so I got busy with some left over scotch tape. Quite pleased with the result, even if no-one else is!

New helmet by -Cheesyfeet-, on Flickr

New helmet by -Cheesyfeet-, on Flickr

A question for BoJo and the Headphone Haterz will/should the ban also apply to motorbike and moped riders, deaf people and pedestrians crossing the road ?

I don’t think the plod would look kindly upon motorbike / moped riders listening to their iPods. As for daft peds glued to their phone that step out into traffic – we can live in hope, eh? 😉