Safety:- Cycling on the pavement v cycling on the road.

Seem to remember a post/thread in here, over the last couple of
days, about safety in pavement cycling, in which it was stated that
there were statistics to back up the claim that cycling on the road was
six times safer than on the pavement. Would anyone have a link to this
site ?
Having a bit of a discussion with a chap who wants
to implement a pressure group with the stated aim of banning cyclists
from the road and restricting them to the pavement. He seems to think
the pavement is safer to cycle on than the road.
--
www.cheesesoup.myby.co.uk

"soup" wrote in message
k...
Having a bit of a discussion with a chap who wants to implement a pressure
group with the stated aim of banning cyclists from the road and
restricting them to the pavement.

I think pedestrians would complain about that a lot!
--
peter

Cheap train tickets database
http://www.petereverett.co.uk/tickets/

Email sent to this address is generally deleted upon arrival
Visit website if you want to contact me

naked_draughtsman wrote:
"soup" wrote in message
k...
Having a bit of a discussion with a chap who wants to implement a pressure
group with the stated aim of banning cyclists from the road and
restricting them to the pavement.

I think pedestrians would complain about that a lot!

I suppose the correct response would be, "Who cares? Pedestrians don't
pay road tax."

soup wrote:
Having a bit of a discussion with a chap who
wants to implement a pressure group with the stated aim of banning
cyclists from the road and restricting them to the pavement. He seems
to think the pavement is safer to cycle on than the road.

Don't discuss - shoot.
--
Brian G
www.wetwo.co.uk

soup whizzed past me shouting
Seem to remember a post/thread in here, over the last couple of
days, about safety in pavement cycling, in which it was stated that
there were statistics to back up the claim that cycling on the road was
six times safer than on the pavement. Would anyone have a link to this
site ? Having a bit of a discussion with a chap
who wants to implement a pressure group with the stated aim of banning
cyclists from the road and restricting them to the pavement. He seems
to think the pavement is safer to cycle on than the road.

It applies to cycleways as well as pavements.
Here's an incomplete list of cycleway summaries with links to some of
the original papers:

http://www.cyclecraft.co.uk/digest/research.html

Surprisingly, the accident rate on pavements was no higher than on
cycleways. That's probably because pavement cyclists go so slowly: if
regular commuter cyclists like me were forced to use pavements the
accident rate would rocket.

--
Sue ]

Why aren't we advocating regular retests for motorists?
It's obvious a lot of them would fail and that'd solve the road congestion problem too.

Sue White wrote:
soup whizzed past me shouting
Seem to remember a post/thread in here, over the last couple of
days, about safety in pavement cycling, in which it was stated that
there were statistics to back up the claim that cycling on the road
was six times safer than on the pavement. Would anyone have a link to
this site ? Having a bit of a discussion with a
chap who wants to implement a pressure group with the stated aim of
banning cyclists from the road and restricting them to the pavement.
He seems to think the pavement is safer to cycle on than the road.

It applies to cycleways as well as pavements.
Here's an incomplete list of cycleway summaries with links to some of
the original papers:

http://www.cyclecraft.co.uk/digest/research.html

Surprisingly, the accident rate on pavements was no higher than on
cycleways. That's probably because pavement cyclists go so slowly: if
regular commuter cyclists like me were forced to use pavements the
accident rate would rocket.

Why would it?

--
Matt B

"Matt B" wrote in message
...

Surprisingly, the accident rate on pavements was no higher than on
cycleways. That's probably because pavement cyclists go so slowly: if
regular commuter cyclists like me were forced to use pavements the
accident rate would rocket.

Why would it?

An analogy would be closing motorways and "A" roads so that all commuter
traffic is forced onto narrow country lanes. The main problem would be
drastically increased journey times but I'd bet there would be a few more
accidents than usual.

in message , Adrian Boliston
') wrote:

"Matt B" wrote in message
...

Surprisingly, the accident rate on pavements was no higher than on
cycleways. That's probably because pavement cyclists go so slowly: if
regular commuter cyclists like me were forced to use pavements the
accident rate would rocket.

Why would it?

An analogy would be closing motorways and "A" roads so that all commuter
traffic is forced onto narrow country lanes. The main problem would be
drastically increased journey times but I'd bet there would be a few more
accidents than usual.

Uh-huh. If you have people weaving through pedestrians at 25mph, someone is
going to get hurt. So either all cyclists have to slow down drastically,
or the accident rate goes up. Furthermore, as everyone who has used a
bidirectional cycle track knows, many people who would keep to the left on
the roads somehow think that it is correct to keep to the right on a cycle
track or pavement. So you'd get a lot of head-ons between cyclists, at
closing speeds up to 50mph.

NOT a good plan.

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; If you're doing this for fun, do what seems fun. If you're
;; doing it for money, stop now.
;; Rainer Deyke

Simon Brooke wrote:
in message , Adrian Boliston
') wrote:

"Matt B" wrote in message
...

Surprisingly, the accident rate on pavements was no higher than on
cycleways. That's probably because pavement cyclists go so slowly: if
regular commuter cyclists like me were forced to use pavements the
accident rate would rocket.
Why would it?
An analogy would be closing motorways and "A" roads so that all commuter
traffic is forced onto narrow country lanes. The main problem would be
drastically increased journey times but I'd bet there would be a few more
accidents than usual.

Uh-huh. If you have people weaving through pedestrians at 25mph, someone is
going to get hurt. So either all cyclists have to slow down drastically,
or the accident rate goes up.

Ah, so cyclists /would/ have to slow down drastically then.

Furthermore, as everyone who has used a
bidirectional cycle track knows, many people who would keep to the left on
the roads somehow think that it is correct to keep to the right on a cycle
track or pavement.

Ah, so cyclists would have to take more care then.

So you'd get a lot of head-ons between cyclists, at
closing speeds up to 50mph.

Or cyclists would learn to take more care.

NOT a good plan.

It is though similar to the way motorists are expected to behave on
roads which too are currently shared by more vulnerable users.

--
Matt B

in message , soup
') wrote:

Seem to remember a post/thread in here, over the last couple of
days, about safety in pavement cycling, in which it was stated that
there were statistics to back up the claim that cycling on the road was
six times safer than on the pavement. Would anyone have a link to this
site ?

There are dozens. Here are some places to start:

http://www.bicyclinglife.com/Library/riskfactors.htm
http://www.toronto.ca/transportation...icle/index.htm
http://www.cyclecraft.co.uk/infrastructure.html

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; Perl ... is the Brittney Spears of programming - easily accessible
;; but, in the final analysis, empty of any significant thought
;; Frank Adrian on Slashdot, 21st July 2003