There are always some people who aren’t very sympathetic to cycling. Normally they’ve got preconceived notions of what cycling is, what cyclists are like or what cyclists should do.
Q1: Cycling’s dangerous, isn’t it?
Facts:
Among men the level of obesity has increased by 39% in the last 10 years
At current trajectories 6 out of 10 people will be obese by 2050, costing £49 bn
per year
Obesity and diabetes are linked to heart disease and strokes
A third of people die from an illness related to physical inactivity
Cycling is one of the easiest ways of introducing exercise to the daily routine of
people who aren’t regularly physically active
Since 2000 cycling in London has increased by 91% and the number of cyclists
injured has dropped by 33% since the mid-1990s
75% collisions involving cyclists are caused by driver error so the real danger on
the roads comes from drivers
Health:
• The health benefits of cycling far outweigh its risks; not cycling is far more
dangerous.
Road safety:
• Cyclists gain from “safety in numbers” – the more people who cycle the safer it
becomes as drivers get increasingly used to looking out for cyclists and
sharing space safely with them
• Cyclists rarely cause injury to other road users
Q2: Wouldn’t cycling be safer if you wear a helmet? Shouldn’t it be made
compulsory?
Facts:
o Cycle helmets standards require them to cater for an impact velocity of only 20
km/h (12.5 mph).
o Helmets are therefore not designed to withstand the sort of impact a cyclist might
suffer if they are hit by a speeding car
o The circumstances in which a cycle helmet is more likely to prevent or reduce
injury are low impact falls, e.g. if you fall off your bike all by yourself – something
that children may do. They may also help if you are hit by an overhead branch
when out mountain biking
Facts:
o Compulsion laws in other countries have reduced the number of people who
cycle
o Several recent reports (including four papers in peer-reviewed medical journals)
have found no link between changes in helmet wearing rates and cyclists' safety
- and there are even cases where safety seems to have worsened as helmetwearing
increased. The loss of “safety in numbers” benefits is one of several
possible explanations for this.
o CTC thinks that it should be up to you to decide whether you want to wear a
helmet or not, and that it should be an informed choice.
o CTC actively opposes all proposals to making helmet-wearing compulsory, for
children as well as for adults
o Instead, CTC promotes the road safety measures that are most likely to benefit
cyclists, e.g. 20mph in urban streets; strong enforcement against bad driving; and
good cycle training
Helmets & Safety
• Cycle helmets won’t always prevent injury in all circumstances and people
should be aware of their limitations
• It is the behaviour of drivers that causes most problems for cyclists on the
roads, so tackling speed and poor driving standards would help cyclists a lot
more than widespread helmet wearing
Helmet Compulsion
• Compelling people to wear cycle helmets may reduce the numbers of people
willing to cycle, undermining its health, environmental and other benefits
• The more people who cycle, the safer cycling becomes, so reducing cycle use
risks undermining these “safety in numbers” benefits
Q3: Why can’t cyclists learn to ride safely and obey the law?
Facts:
o Only a small proportion of illegal cycle use is straightforward “antisocial
behaviour”; most of it is people feeling forced to decide between what is safe and
what is legal, whilst some are unaware they are breaking the law at all.
o Illegal cycling causes very few serious injuries and fatalities are almost nonexistent
compared with the injuries caused by illegal car use, so the response
needs to be proportionate to the problem.
o We lobby for and promote the best ways to encourage cyclists, especially
teenagers, to ride safely and legally on the roads, i.e.:
- reduced speed limits on urban streets (20mph should be the norm except for
the widest and busiest main roads),
- enforcing road traffic law on all road users who create danger to others (this
will mostly affect bad drivers) and
- good cycle training, widely available for people of all ages.
Q4: Why don’t cyclists obey red lights?
Facts
o In London between 2001-05 (the most recent data we have), there were 3
cyclists, 7 pedestrians and 7 motor vehicle occupants killed when a motorist
jumped a red light. Two cyclists were killed by red light jumping (i.e. fewer than
the number of cyclists killed by red-light-jumping motor vehicles), while 7
motorcyclists got themselves killed the same way.
What’s CTC doing about it?
o Campaigning for best practice, cycle-friendly arrangements at junctions
o Promoting good cycle training
Red light jumping
• Jumping a red light on a bike is illegal and can be dangerous; jumping a red
light using a motor vehicle is just as illegal but causes a lot more death and
injury.
Illegal cycling
• It is not the job of CTC to justify illegal cycling. However before deciding how
to address the problem one needs to understand why it happens in the first
place and promote effective means for tackling it
• Things that make it impossible (or prohibitively costly) for children and
newcomers to take up cycling in the first place (e.g. registration, licences etc –
see Q6 below) risk seriously undermining its health, environmental and other
benefits.
Q5 What are you going to do about cyclists riding on the pavement?
Facts:
o There are about 40 pedestrians (almost one a week) killed annually in Britain by
motor vehicles on footways or verges (not to mention about 650 pedestrians
killed annually by motor vehicles on the road)
o By contrast an average of 0.3 pedestrians were killed in collisions with pavement
cyclists over the same period. There are similarly large discrepancies between
the numbers of pedestrians injured by cycles and motor vehicles on pavements,
whether in London or in Britain as a whole
Total pedestrian injuries (i.e. looking at all causes):
o In the years 2001-5 in London, there were 101 times as many pedestrians injured
– and 126 times as many seriously injured – in collisions with motor vehicles than
cyclists. Over these 5 years there were 534 pedestrians killed in collisions with
motor vehicles, and just 1 involving a cyclist
o No pedestrian has been killed in London in collision with a cyclist who was either
on the pavement or jumping a red light in any of the last ten years
What’s CTC doing about it?
o Promoting cycle training to give people the confidence and skills needed to cycle
on-road
o Urging engineers not to introduce shared-use pavements unless there is
absolutely nothing they can do to help cyclists on the road (e.g. by reducing
motor traffic volume and speed).
Pavement cycling
• CTC does not condone law-breaking or misbehaviour by cyclists and believes
that the road is usually the best place to cycle. However, we understand that
lack of confidence and skills mean that some people feel ‘safer’ on the
footway, particularly novices and children
• Figures show that cyclists very rarely cause injury to pedestrians on the
pavement
• The proliferation of legal shared use (a lot of it patchy and unnecessary), only
serves to confuse cyclists and pedestrians about the legalities of cycling on
the pavement.
Q6: Why don’t cyclists have compulsory training, number plates and
insurance to stop them riding dangerously and illegally, or so they can be
made to pay up when they do?
Facts:
o CTC was instrumental in drawing up new “Bikeability” national cycle training
standard, and encourages all people to take it. Whereas conventional cycle
training merely taught young children to not fall off their bikes while riding round
bollards in a playground, “Bikeability” is about giving people of all ages (including
teenagers and adults) the skills to handle real traffic confidently, safely and
legally, and thus to cycle more safely more often
o The administrative costs of making registration and insurance compulsory would
be as large as for car use, since there are about as many cyclists and bicycles in
Britain as there are drivers and motor vehicles – the main difference is that more
of the cyclists are children
o The administrative costs would therefore be similar, and would have to be borne
either by tax-payers or by individuals, and the Government has rightly ruled out
both options. Making cyclists pay both for training and registration would
seriously deter occasional cycle use (e.g. family outings) or newcomers to cycling
(including children), thus undermining efforts to encourage more people to cycle
o There is no evidence that registration would provide any safety benefits – after
all, having number plates doesn’t stop large numbers of motorists from driving
illegally and dangerously
o We continue to promote Bikeability training
o We also encourage all regular cyclists to have third-party insurance – indeed we
provide £10m of 3rd party insurance cover for all CTC members.
Legislative control of cyclists
• CTC believes that good quality, readily available cycle training is the best way
of ensuring that cyclists obey the law and ride safely. It should not be made
compulsory because that would probably deter people from taking up cycling
• CTC thinks that registration and licencing schemes would be prohibitively
costly, unenforceable, impossible to administer and also act as a deterrent
• We don’t see any reason for treating cyclists differently from pedestrians
• CTC promotes the take-up of third party insurance and provides it for its
members
Q7: Shouldn’t cyclists stop slowing down traffic and stick to where they
belong – i.e. cycle paths/tracks off the road? Shouldn’t campaigners be
asking for more on-road cycle lanes and off-road paths because they make
cycling safer?
Facts:
o The Highway Code states that cyclists do not have to use cycle facilities if
they do not wish to. CTC believes that the right of the cyclist to decide
whether or not to use a cycle path or lane should be maintained.
o Three-quarters of cyclists’ injuries occur at junctions. Both cycle paths/tracks
and lanes may put cyclists at even greater risk at these already risky points
because they can them more complex to negotiate (see below)
o Cycle paths/tracks
- Counter-intuitively, there is some evidence that cycle tracks are associated
with lower safety than others.
- Many cycle collisions occur where a cycle track crosses the mouth of a side
turning, or rejoins the main road. Whilst cyclists on the road retain priority,
those riding on the track are usually expected to stop and look for motor
traffic approaching from several angles and directions. Novices and children
may find this difficult and be placed at greater risk than they would be had
they cycled, with due priority, on the road. Equally, drivers may not be looking
for cyclists using an off-road path.
- Pedestrians and particularly people with sight impairments, tend to object to
sharing footways with cyclists
o Cycle lanes
- As long as they are of adequate width (1.5m min, 2.00m preferred) cycle
lanes may provide protection between junctions. They may make people feel
safer and encourage them to cycle more
- However, staying in a cycle lane means, once again, that you may be worse
off at junctions. This is because they take you out of the driver’s field of
attention, whilst also making it harder for the cyclist to see what is coming out
of a side road and to avoid being cut up by a driver overtaking then turning
left from behind
- An unacceptably narrow cycle lane (and there are many of them) might signal
to drivers that this is all the space a cyclist needs, thus encouraging them to
overtake too closely
What’s CTC doing about it?
Cycle paths/tracks v the road
• Cycle paths, especially those provided alongside a road, are not necessarily
safer than the road and there is no obligation to use them
• Cycles are vehicles and, as such, have every right to use the road
• Cyclists don’t slow down traffic – they are traffic!
Cycle lanes (lanes painted on the road)
• These are often not wide enough to help; and sometimes they are so narrow
that they cause more problems than they solve
CTC – the UK’s national cyclists’ organisation 7
o We advocate that engineers do everything possible to make the road itself
suitable for cycling first, before so much as considering cycle lanes or (last resort)
shared use paths
Q8: Cyclists don’t pay road tax, so you have no right to complain about the
roads or drivers, or to take up road-space, do you?!
Facts:
o Almost all adult cyclists pay for the roads too as the money comes out of council
tax and income tax
o Cyclists who don’t drive still pay for the most expensive roads, i.e. motorways,
despite being banned from using them
o Nobody pays roads tax any more as it was abolished in the 1930s for fear that
drivers would think they “owned the road”. The argument that paying vehicle
taxes gives drivers prior use of the roads is like arguing that smokers should
have priority in hospitals because they pay for these out of cigarette taxes
o Both cyclists and pedestrians, who do minimal damage to the road surface, could
get by perfectly happy without all the money that gets spent on motorways and
trunk roads
o Campaigning to make sure that councils spend money for road maintenance in
ways that help cyclists as well as motorists
Q9: You’ll never get large numbers of people to cycle, will you?
Facts:
o 43% of people aged 5 and over own a bicycle
o There are very high levels of recreational cycle use – it is the 3rd most commonly
undertaken form of physical activity in adults, after football and swimming, with
about 31% of Britain’s adult population cycling at least once a year (c18m
people), and about 15% (almost 9m people) cycling at least once a week
Road tax
• Actually, most adult cyclists do pay for the roads, even though they impose minimal
wear and tear on them!
• There are no calls for pedestrians to start paying “road tax”, so why require it of
cyclists?
Getting lots of people to cycle
• Yes we will! There is huge potential for increased cycle use in Britain. Cycling is fun, fast,
flexible, free (well, almost), it keeps you fit, it avoids burning finite fuel reserves and is
friendly to the local and global environment. It is good for the health of individuals and that
of our communities and the environment. It’s the answer to lots of the problems we have
today.
o Yet cycling is little used as a mode of transport in Britain, with less than 2% of
trips being made by cycle. This compares with 9% in Switzerland, 10% in
Germany and Belgium, 12% in Sweden, 18% in Denmark and 27% in Holland.
None of these countries have significantly different economies, car ownership
levels or weather, and Switzerland is a lot more hilly
o Over two thirds (68%) of all trips in Britain, and over half (58%) of car trips, are
under 5 miles, approximately a half hour cycle ride. Especially in larger towns
and cities, such journeys are often quicker by cycle than by any available
alternative
o 37% of adults in Britain agree that 'Many of the short journeys I now make by car
I could just as easily cycle, if I had a bike'
o Around 3 in 10 car users in Britain say they would reduce their car use 'if there
were more cycle tracks away from roads ' (31%), 'if there were more cycle lanes
on roads' (27%) or 'better parking facilities for cycles' (30%)
o Just over two-thirds (68%) of Britons agree that 'cyclists should be given more
priority', while only 11% felt that 'cycle lanes on roads simply reduce space'
What’s CTC doing about it?
o Everything we can…campaigning, Champions, training…you name it…
Q10: Our roads would be safer if there were no cyclists, wouldn’t they?
What’s CTC doing about it?
o Just being there…
No cyclists = safer roads?
• Around 3000 people die from road traffic collisions in the UK every year – only
about three of those involve only a cyclist and a pedestrian, the remainder all
involve motor vehicles.
The roads would be safer with no motor vehicles!
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