Britain’s cyclists are on the warpath. Fed up with being hooted, bumped and
abused by motorists, they are campaigning against changes to the one
document that has previously offered them protection: the Highway Code.
Under the proposed alterations laid before parliament the new Highway Code
will require cyclists to stick to cycle paths and lanes rather than using
the road. Cycling groups warn that many cycle lanes increase the risks they
face, and being forced to use them would take away their members’ right to
use their initiative and react to changing road conditions.
The debate centres on amendments to the wording of the new document, due to be
published this summer. In the version drafted in 1999 cyclists are required
to use cycle routes “where practicable”; in the latest version they are
required to use them “wherever possible”.
The change appears minor, but to cyclists it is the latest in a series of
measures to corral them off the main roads and further evidence that the
government’s cycle policy is flawed. “If the new document goes through
unamended it will be the single most anticycling thing that this government
has done since it’s been in power,” says Roger Geffen, campaigns manager for
the Cyclists’ Touring Club (CTC), the national cycling organisation. “It
will be a catastrophe.”
As well as increasing the risks for cyclists, the CTC fears the changes could
have legal implications. Although for the most part the Highway Code is
regarded as a set of recommendations rather than law, judges and courts do
take it into account. Geffen claims the new wording might lead to criminal
prosecution of cyclists caught not using lanes, as well as affecting civil
court actions where motorists could claim contributory negligence and
thereby avoid paying damages if a cyclist wasn’t using a lane.
The Department for Transport (DfT) has already seen off one challenge to the
new code that saw 11,000 cyclists petition their MPs last year. It maintains
the changes have been made in the “interests of clarity” and they do not
affect the substance of the code’s advice. “The Highway Code has advised
cyclists to use cycle facilities like cycle tracks since 1946,” a spokesman
said last week.
The row has been thrown into sharper focus by the unintended publication 12
days ago of a document produced by Transport for London (TfL) that suggested
cyclists who obeyed the rules of the road were more likely to be killed or
injured than those who did not. It said women were more likely to be
involved in an accident because they were less aggressive cyclists than men
and more likely to stick to the rules.
TfL last week distanced itself from some of the findings, saying that the
document was meant for internal use only and that some of the statements
made within it were unsubstantiated. It added that the author of the report
had since left TfL.
But the sense that the government is somehow getting its safety policy on
cyclists wrong will not go away. According to the DfT’s latest full-year
figures, in 2005 cycling was the only mode of transport with an increase in
deaths, up 10% to 148 from 134 in 2004, while the number of cyclists
seriously injured rose by 2% to 2,212. It was the second year running in
which cycling deaths rose: in 2003 there were 114 fatalities.
The upward trend is set to continue. According to the DfT’s recently published
provisional estimates of road casualties, in the year from October 2005 to
September 2006 2,490 cyclists were killed or seriously injured compared with
2,298 for the same period in 2004-5, an 8% rise.
In London 21 cyclists were killed in 2005 – a 163% increase over 2004 – and
351 were seriously injured, up 6% over the previous year.
While some of the increase can be explained by the boom in the number of
cyclists – the capital has seen an 83% rise in cycling since 2000 – critics
claim it is evidence of a muddled approach to cycle safety that is set to
get worse.
John Franklin, the author of Cyclecraft, a training manual endorsed by the
Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, claims that many cycle
trainers are confused by contradictory instructions on what to teach
cyclists and highlights the problem of lorries turning left, which kill a
disproportionate number every year. (More than half of all cycle deaths in
London last year involved a goods vehicle.)
“This has been a major problem for some years but nothing seems to be done
about it,” he says. “In fact the proposed changes to the Highway Code will
make the situation worse. One of the golden rules of cycling is never to go
up the inside of lorries. The new code effectively tells you to do this. It
is another instance where cycle lanes actually introduce hazards of the
road.”
Cycle lanes are not the only places where the official advice contradicts
everyday experience. Another area of contention is the use of advanced stop
lines in front of traffic lights. These are meant to create a reserved zone
for cyclists ahead of traffic, enabling a quick getaway.
However, cyclists who remain too close to tall vehicles such as HGVs can
remain outside the driver’s line of vision, increasing the chance of being
caught under his wheels when the lights change. Many cyclists claim this is
one reason they jump red lights. An unpublished report by the government’s
Transport Research Laboratory last year found ASLs increased the chances of
cyclists jumping red lights by 4%.
Franklin also points out that rules controlling cyclists’ safety are in the
hands of the Driving Standards Agency (which publishes the Highway Code) and
the DfT. “As far as I know there is no one at the DfT’s road safety section
who has any experience of cycling,” he says. “Until there is a proper
discussion about what works and what doesn’t, the problem of cyclists dying
on the roads will only get worse.”
