The Transport Committee’s announcement today that it is to revisit the issue of cycling safety is hardly surprising given a truly grim November in regards the deaths of cyclists on the capital’s streets.
The debate is moving fast, – London mayor Boris Johnson is reported today to want to ban cyclists from wearing headphones while on their bikes – and no doubt the committee will take its usual in-depth look at the issue.
Road transport operators will only gain from full engagement in this debate, which has presented some hard questions in regards how essential freight and vulnerable road users can co-exist safely in a city as busy as London.
However, The Hub would also hope that in this most emotive of subjects pragmatism and proportionately will overcome the element of hysteria and the understandable raw emotion that currently envelops the issue.
For example, TfL roads collision data published in June 2013 records 14 cyclist deaths last year, 16 in 2011, and for the period of 2005 to 2009 that there was an average of 16.6 fatalities a year.
Surely everyone would agree that’s too many?
But the same Surface Planning Fact Sheet states pedestrian deaths in the capital in the corresponding periods were 69 last year,77 in 2011 and averaged 96 (from 2005 to 2009) respectively.
Surprised?
As one senior figure pointed out to The Hub this week, cyclist deaths are front page news but the equally important pedestrian that gets knocked down is more likely to receive a different treatment, perhaps a small piece on page 3..
Neither is more important or deserving than the other, which is rather the point.