Just How Dangerous Is Cycling Really?

A short Sunday afternoon spin down the canal (and up a very steep lane!) with a few thoughts on the dangers of cycling.

Here are a couple of links related to the video – book and government stats I mentioned and my own video about why I do – and sometimes don’t – wear a helmet:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-pedal-cyclist-factsheet-2022

Stay safe and happy cycling, folks!

[Music] this [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hi folks hope you’re doing really well welcome back to another little video and welcome to a Sunday afternoon in a good old brtish summer it’s uh 11° and the weather’s pretty atrocious this afternoon it’s been raining quite heavily uh stopped for a bit then it’s just started again I’ve had to get the waterproofs back on um this is where we’ve come from so we’ve come down the top paath today uh you can just see on the horizon the kind of the walls and Gorge right up in the distance is um possibly Blackstone Edge not too sure might not be uh dobid Castle you can just probably see the roof of uh which is an old uh jump Fielding building uh towering above Toman and we’ve come up dog house l today absolute unequivocal Beast of a climb um I mean I started walking when I hit 35% down at the bottom uh top section’s just about ridable kind of 14 to 20% and a little flat section here uh before we start climbing again so we’re going to climb right up onto the tops onto Toman Mo and probably head over towards the uh shord Direction so the kind of wind turbines up there just poing around really on the gravel bike today but um so frustrating as well I cleaned this yesterday look at the state of it now anyway it was clean for 5 minutes so that’s the main thing but yeah I thought the uh topic for today’s ride just how dangerous is cycling it’s a mix of uh perception reality and then every single cyclist own individual uh opinion I guess and kind of preferences and level of risk so yeah I’m not going to talk about the oldal debate hopefully in this in this video uh but we will just talk generally about the topic of uh cycling and whether or not it’s uh you know it’s generally a dangerous uh Pastime a dangerous thing to uh to be involved with so yeah come on for the ride and uh we’ll have a little chat on route right let’s get back on the bike well the view to suddenly open up here amazing and hopefully that’s the last of the ridiculously sleep climbing so yeah as you’ve uh probably gathered from some of my other videos if you watch them that I don’t really subscribe to the view that the bicycle is just so inherently dangerous that you can’t even get on one without wearing a helmet and of course I appreciate that that is the law in some countries in some states and that’s fair enough you know we follow the rules we follow the laws but by equal measure it’d be very naive to say that cycling doesn’t have an element of danger and oh wow look at this View I can see the tops of the uh the wind turbines we’re going up there it is mighty windy up here I hope you can hear this yeah I’ll just get out the wind and then uh maybe run through one or two statistics which I think are really fascinating and hint at some of the uh the perceptions or the misperceptions that people have about just how dangerous cycling is [Applause] okay we’re well on the way home now back off the tops and um I tried to film a little piece of camera up there but I think it was too windy and um yeah I’m not sure the footage will be very usable um but I might have said at the start of the video I think you know it’d be very naive to think that there isn’t an element of at least some danger um involved with cycling and uh I got a couple of Statistics that I’ve pulled out of a fantastic book that I read recently by Peter Walker uh called bik Nation uh if I remember I’ll leave a link to it in in the description it’s a great kind of Deep dive into uh kind of statistics uh perceptions misconceptions around cycling uh cycling infrastructure kind of History all that sort of stuff it’s uh kind of fascinating if you’re a bit of a nerd like I am with Statistics but just a couple of things from that book amongst lots of data and lots of information that you know 80% of the non cyclist site safety concerns um you know reasons why they don’t get on a bike and that’s such a shame isn’t it because of all the benefits that that cycling brings I think we need to do a lot more to you know get more people on bikes and if there’s genuine safety concerns we somehow got to address that as a you know as a nation as you know in terms of travel infrastructure and all that sort of stuff an absolutely frightening statistic I’m not sure how it was calculated um there’s citations in the book but in all honesty I haven’t checked this but uh this is in the USA any moment of daylight 660,000 drivers are looking at phones or electronic devices it’s absolutely f isn’t it because you can be doing absolutely everything you need to be doing on the road you know riding in the right position you know being aware making all the correct signals all that sort of stuff and if some nump in a car or a van or a truck or whatever is on their phone or not paying attention and just plows into you you know it’s a tragedy isn’t it it’s just game over and it’s absolutely nothing that you’ve done it yeah I mean it’s that’s just like a frightening statistic one of the other things I did um earlier this morning is I went on to the gov.uk website and there’s some interesting stats on there as well and this relates to uh 2018 to 2022 so over a 4-year period uh and these are just average stats there’s obviously a lot more information on the site but uh yeah two cyclists uh died and 81 seriously injured per week uh in reported roads casualty so that’s an average figure over that four years but it it’s unbelievable isn’t it and you know I can’t believe that this isn’t sort of headline news I can’t believe that you know the government and local authorities not doing everything they possibly can to address that and you know I don’t get the sense that anything’s happening on on that front uh majority of cycling fa fatalities don’t occur anywhere near Junctions quite interesting and I think a lot of people are very nervous about cycling around Junctions but statistically that’s not where you’re going to um come Acer if you do come Acer um yeah I mean a couple of other statistics here 56% of fatalities occur on Rural roads I think that’s quite eye openening isn’t it cuz there’s sometimes a perception that I’m not going to go into the city or the town cuz it’s too busy and it’s too dangerous you know I’ll stick to the quiet country lanes but actually statistically you’re more likely to not you’re more likely to but you know more more fatalities occur on those rural quiet Country Roads um 82% of cyclist killed or seriously injured were male interesting and there’s obviously a lot more men cycle I think um you could maybe think about it in terms of men being more likely to take risks more likely to cycle faster I don’t know maybe that’s debatable but you know an interesting breakdown there that something happening on the male female front um rather than necessarily there’s there’s some in inherently you know dangerous aspect of Cy cing so what are we supposed to make of all this and um is cycling an inherently dangerous thing to do the honest answer is I don’t know I can just tell you my own view I guess at this point in time um I really don’t think cycling is an inherently dangerous thing to do I don’t think bicycles are dangerous at all I think what people do on bicycles can be and I think where people ride can be extremely dangerous and there’s no question in my mind that you know particularly here in the UK we have a a travel infrastructure that is just so ridiculously weighted against cycling it’s um it’s actually a scandal and you know we have roads that picked cyclists against other Road users uh completely unnecessarily and you know for all sorts of historic and economic and political reasons that’s the case and it really does need to change yeah particularly if you’ve got you know like that statistic 80% of people site citing safety concerns as a reason why you know they don’t use bicycles yeah I mean it’s not good enough for people like me that’s reasonably comfortable on the roads comfortable in traffic but you know I just shrug off CL passes and pretty much every time I go out there’s something happens that’s you know would put the fear of God into an obvious cyclist and it just becomes a norm unfortunately in uh certainly in the UK I really do like sorry got some little steps here I really do like those cyclists now that are recording and Reporting I think it’s I think there’s a real utility in that I don’t think that’s the solution though I think for me and probably this is where my views changed more recently I you know I used to think it was just about getting more people on the roads almost forcing traffic to consider cyclist cuz there’s just so many of them almost like a kind of critical mass idea of uh flooding the roads with more and more cyclist but it’s just not going to happen people just won’t take the risk and I think for me now it’s about cycling infrastructure and I hate to say it I really do hate to say it but it’s kind of my view now that in towns and cities we need to segregate bicycles and and other traffic the critical mass idea is just it’s not going to happen and it’s taking me a while to I guess admit that or realize that to really get people out on bikes on Mass um you know more Leisure cyclist obviously but people using cycling for General everyday Transportation it’s about infrastructure it’s about you know unfortunately segregated cycle spaces you know being able to Traverse City or get from A to B in a built-up area without having to mix it up with cars and vans and trucks I think if towns and well towns and cities that do that they just see an absolute mass of people coming out on bikes it’s a few days ago on one of my bike rides I popped into Morrison’s to get a bottle of juice and a bag of crisps and you know classic casing point about infrastructure no cycle parking apart from two little posts right around the side of the building totally out of the way perfect place for somebody to scope out bikes and bloody niun in peace and Qui and you know why don’t supermarkets allow you to or have some storage kind of inside inside the entrance like a load of bike lockers with little wristbands you know I used to get in the swimming pool you know swimming pool lockers why are people not through infrastructure encouraging cycling I don’t know I don’t know starting to rant aren’t I what you do on a bike and where you ride can be dangerous and I think it’s certainly fair to say that we’ve got a long way to go here in the UK in terms of infrastructure to make cycling feel safe enough that more and more people get out and get on their bikes and substitute car Journeys for bike Journeys so I think all we can do is be aware of the risks keep our bike skills Tip Top condition on our routs well and advocate for better cycling infrastructure so yeah enjoy your cycling stay safe out there take care thanks for watching as always really appreciate it and uh I’ll see you on the next one bye for now [Music] 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