The safety challenge of increased cycling

Abstract

Many countries have recently set out policy frameworks to support the growth of cycling. However, increased cycling can mean more collisions, injuries and even fatalities. This paper discusses the role of safety in cycling policy in the particular case of Ireland, which is one of the countries that has a government-endorsed policy to increase cycling. It examines available information on cycling, including police-reported accident data over the last fifteen years and more recent hospital accident data. Comparisons are made for injuries between the two sources and data matching and capture-recapture methods used to estimate injuries. The deficiencies in data are analysed and suggestions for improvements made. It is argued that gaps in available data have led to accident risks being poorly understood. The paper discusses how a convergence in cycling and safety policy can be achieved and suggests additional measures including a cycling safety target, increased communication on cycling safety, lower urban speeds and compulsory wearing of helmets for children. Background: Road Safety and Cycling in Ireland Road safetyIreland has had a highly successful decade in reducing road traffic fatalities and has jumped up the international safety league tables (International Transport Forum( IRTAD), 2011). Not previously known as a country with a particularly good road safety record, the achievements, especially in the latter half of the past decade have attracted a lot of attention from international bodies and from countries keen to understand the reasons for the improvements. With a fatality rate of less than 50 per million people, Ireland, in 2010, joined the elite group of around ten countries achieving this level (IRTAD, 2011). In terms of fatalities per vehicle kilometre, arguably a more correct measure, Ireland was rated fourth behind Iceland, Sweden and Great Britain, recording fewer than 5 deaths per billion vehicle kilometres. Cyclist fatalities have also fallen significantly and at 5 in 2010 were among the lowest (absolutely and per capita) in the OECD (IRTAD, 2011). CyclingBetween 1986 and 2002, cycling in Ireland declined dramatically as can be seen from Table 1. The number of people cycling to work almost halved and, because the number at work grew, the modal share by bike fell from 5.6% to below 2% (CSO 2011(a)). The decline in cycling to school or college was even more striking. Between 1986 and 2006, the number of children between 5 and 12 years of age cycling to school fell by 83%. The number of 13-18 year olds cycling to school fell even more, by 85% and the number of girls of this age cycling to school *Manuscript (without author's information) Click here to view linked References 2 fell by 98%. In 2011, there were as many people in this age group driving a car to school or college as there were cycling. (CSO, 2011 (a)).The decline halted between 2002 and 2006 and cycling started to grow again. Supported by policy, including a successful scheme to subsidise bicycle purchase through tax-free loans (...

Record linkage for road traffic injuries in Ireland using police hospital and injury claims data

“…Code V182 has over 1,500 cases and it seems strange that coders are unsure whether the person was a cyclist or a passenger but were sure that it was not a traffic accident. (Short and Caulfield, 2014). Similar problems with coding traffic and non-traffic accidents were found in Kudryavtsev et al (2013) Moreover, in the record linkage results described in Section 4, some of these supposedly non-traffic accidents are matched with police recorded crashes.…”

“…As argued by Short and Caulfield (2014), this is evidence of a weakness in cycling policy because the official data seriously understate the risks involved. Car occupants provide a different example.…”

Who, where, when: the demographic and geographic distribution of bicycle crashes in West Yorkshire

“…The uncertainty surrounding police records for non-fatal casualties has already been mentioned with respect to police under-reporting in Ireland (Short and Caulfield, 2014). A wider issue is whether riskiness is well measured by the number of incidents that result in police reports or hospitalisations at all.…”

“…A recent comparison of hospital and police records of casualties from cycling in Ireland suggests that underreporting may lead to underestimates of the true risks of cycling (Short and Caulfield, 2014). This issue is especially pertinent to the present paper, which uses the publicly available STATS19 dataset, collated by the police.…”

Investigating traffic light violations by cyclists in Dublin City Centre

“…Short and Caulfield (2014) demonstrated that cycling in the city is not as safe as some of the statistics report and that for the total number of days spent in hospital per transport accident for cyclists are over 13% of total days spent in hospital (in 2011), while cycling modal share of approximately 5% in 2011. Figure 1 shows that the number of cyclist deaths in Dublin City had been gradually decreasing since 2005.…”