Current Issues
Summer of Cycling
The Summer of Cycling is a national campaign running between March and October 2012 which aims to encourage more people to cycle. The All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group, CTC and The Bicycle Association, alongside the force of 22 other cycling organisations, are aiming to double cycling this summer.
It's about encouraging everyone with an interest in cycling to share the fun and introduce just one friend, neighbour, colleague or family member to cycling.
The Summer of Cycling brings together a whole host of organisations: charities, NGOs, manufacturers and retailers, as well as major UK cycling event organisers. It is very much a collaborative effort, with racing organisations being able to promote the Summer of Cycling just as easily as local cycle campaign groups such as ourselves.
You can find more detail on the website at www.summerofcycling.net .
Cycling, Health and Safety: Winning the Arguments
This conference, held in Birmingham on 21st April, was aimed at trying to ensure that campaigners had the facts available to them when advocating the encouragement of and investment in cycling.
We started the day with a talk from Professor Bruce Lynn (UCL) looking at the health benefits of cycling. He pointed out that evolution had resulted in bodies that need to be exercised but with a mind that favours resting and eating as much as we can. For a person in the Stone Age this would assist survival but in our technological age it results in obesity and reduced life expectancy. The evidence is that humans eat about the same amount today as they did in the past, but they don't burn it off through exercise.
Bruce showed some convincing studies demonstrating the beneficial effect of exercise, in particular cycling, for everyone, whether they are fat or thin. Whole population studies show that of the 25% of the population taking the least exercise up to the age of 59, about 1 in 4 will be dead by the age of 65, compared to less than 1 in 10 of the 25% taking the most.
Malcolm Wardlow then looked at the risks associated with cycling and expressed regret that the Times has been describing cycling as “shockingly dangerous”. It is not. The deaths each day from heart disease amount to twice the level of deaths per year while cycling. He produced some interesting statistics. The one that most struck was that the casualty rate for young male drivers is 20 times higher than that for middle aged males. In fact these young men are safer cycling than taking a car (and this is without taking into account the lives they often take with them when they crash). Three quarters of all road deaths are male.
He also highlighted the incorrect use of statistics and in particular two types of error:
- comparing risk per mile travelled rather than per hour of travel;
- assuming that all cycle accidents are road accidents.
Dr. Peter Ward then talked about the latest available evidence on the effectiveness of compulsory cycle helmets in reducing cyclist casualties. In summary there is none. It is now well established that enforced cycle helmet laws result in much less cycling and hence the loss of the public health benefit.
In Australia falls in cycle use averaged more than 30% and in Canada 28% to 40%. However, much higher levels of abandoning cycling have been recorded among teenagers, with 90% of teenage girls ceasing to cycle at one Sydney school. These falls in cycle use have not recovered quickly and there has been a long-term change in the profile of cycling. In Western Australia, concerted publicity, population growth and higher fuel prices returned cycling to its pre-law level in absolute numbers after ten years. Relative to population, cycling levels remain suppressed. Cycling casualties, moreover, are higher than ever before.
Dr. Robert Davis than gave a talk about challenging the traditional “road safety” assumptions. The first point being that there are no “unsafe” roads, simply unsafe drivers. He pointed out that the major problem was that governments concentrated on the aggregate level of Road Traffic Accidents (RTA) rather than the looking at who imposes the danger and whom they impose it on.
This was beautifully illustrated on the following Tuesday (24/4/12) when Mike Penning MP and Norman Baker MP smugly told the Transport Select Committee that the Dutch should take lessons from Britain on cycle safety, on the grounds that, per head of population, cycling is over four times safer in the UK! In reality, many more Dutch cycle as a proportion of the population and they also cycle much more than us. Therefore, in reality, the risk per mile travelled is very much lower. This highlights the problem that, due to concentrating on reducing RTAs, “better results” are obtained from measures that discourage walking and cycling.
You can find copies of the presentations and other source materials on these matters at http://goo.gl/gHPWz .
Loughborough Station Redevelopment
First the good news, the new cycle parking is excellent, with most under shelter and proper spacing that both allows access and maximises capacity.
However there is some bad news as you will see from the photos on the right.
www.cyclebeast.com
