# 2 more women die in London



## jefmcg (7 Feb 2017)

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/lond...in-whitechapel-dies-in-hospital-a3460426.html

Women die in London way out of proportion to the number on the roads. 2 more yesterday.


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## jefmcg (7 Feb 2017)

http://road.cc/content/news/76510-stats-reveal-londons-deadly-cycling-zone…-if-youre-woman

This is a map of cyclists killed in London 2001-2014. Everyone inside the circle was female.


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## albal (7 Feb 2017)

awful  RIP


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## ianrauk (7 Feb 2017)

That makes horrific reading


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## numbnuts (7 Feb 2017)

Very sad RIP


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## mjr (7 Feb 2017)

What's the latest thinking on why women cyclists in London are dying disproportionately often?

I don't understand the CS2 collision. The location seems to be http://www.instantstreetview.com/@51.516113,-0.069505,236.56h,-18.62p,1z - the coffee house and nails shop shown in the Standard's photos are ahead on the left. I've ridden there. That bit of "super" highway is basically a cycle lane with posts along the white line and it doesn't look in the photos like the coach has flattened any. Someone in the paper speculates that a cyclist may have been forced out of the lane by a collision, but I suspect that might be because they'd seen the famous video of a collision on CS3 Blackfriars Underpass.

Bounces Road in Enfield is too far out for me to have ridden but it looks like one of those horrible rat-run roads between two A roads which is somehow wide enough for car parking and wide footways on both sides, yet too narrow for decent space4cycling... and which I suspect people cycle along because pretty much the same goes for all the east-west routes between the North Circular and Turkey Brook?

But it sounds like there's more serious criminality involved there because of the hit-and-run - disqualified, incapacitated or distracted driver, probably?

The report of someone run down on a pedestrian crossing by a tipper truck is pretty scary too  RIP all


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## Markymark (7 Feb 2017)

Safest way to be in London is assertive (bordering on aggressive),avoiding some of the awful and often lethal cycling infrastructure shitted on us and finally being able to stand your ground to the abuse you get for doing so. My guess is a difference in the willingness to do this between sexes.


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## Lonestar (7 Feb 2017)

Markymark said:


> Safest way to be in London is assertive (bordering on aggressive),avoiding some of the awful and often lethal cycling infrastructure shitted on us and finally being able to stand your ground to the abuse you get for doing so. My guess is a difference in the willingness to do this between sexes.



Not so much worried about the abuse...More like the punishment pass or whatever to come with it...Last year near Mile End I came out of the CS 2 because of two boris bikers clowning around.Soon after I got punishment passed by some clown in a car.(At a guess this was because I wasn't in the CS 2)


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## Markymark (7 Feb 2017)

Lonestar said:


> Not so much worried about the abuse...More like the punishment pass or whatever to come with it...Last year near Mile End I came out of the CS 2 because of two boris bikers clowning around.Soon after I got punishment passed by some clown in a car.


You are right, 'abuse' leads people to believe I mean verbal abuse which I'm sure male/female can equally ignore. 'Threat of violence' would be more apt.


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## Ian H (7 Feb 2017)

mjr said:


> What's the latest thinking on why women cyclists in London are dying disproportionately often?


There could be all kinds of reasons–more women perhaps being less assured, or aggressive, or experienced in evaluating risks (a cultural, not innate difference). But the solution lies in educating drivers (everyone, after all, has to earn a licence to drive a motor-vehicle on the road) to recognise their responsibility when in charge of potentially lethal machinery.


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## Markymark (7 Feb 2017)

Ian H said:


> There could be all kinds of reasons–more women perhaps being less assured, or aggressive, or experienced in evaluating risks (a cultural, not innate difference). But the solution lies in educating drivers (everyone, after all, has to earn a licence to drive a motor-vehicle on the road) to recognise their responsibility when in charge of potentially lethal machinery.


Correct. When those that survive are the ones more willing to stand up to the threat of violence you know the system is fecked.


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## vickster (7 Feb 2017)

RIP


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## mjr (7 Feb 2017)

Lonestar said:


> (At a guess this was because I wasn't in the CS 2)


I doubt such guesses because I've had plenty of abuse nowhere near any cycling infrastructure, including being told to get on the (non-existent) cycle track. My guess is that the driver is what usually seems called a nobber on this site.



Ian H said:


> There could be all kinds of reasons–more women perhaps being less assured, or aggressive, or experienced in evaluating risks (a cultural, not innate difference). But the solution lies in educating drivers (everyone, after all, has to earn a licence to drive a motor-vehicle on the road) to recognise their responsibility when in charge of potentially lethal machinery.


Oh blow education! If that was going to work, it would have done long ago. It's far too easy now for the much larger motoring lobby to subvert it and for individuals to disregard it once they've got their driving licence. The roads need modernising to reduce the potential for harm from mistakes (deliberate or not), enforcement needs to be increased and wider use made of retesting and continuous driver education.

But what I'm really interested in is anything more research-based, especially since this 2014 don't know conclusion http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/02February/Pages/Cycling-safety-a-special-report.aspx#women


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## Lonestar (7 Feb 2017)

@mjr have you got a link to the video of the CS 3 collision?

Cheers.


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## mjr (7 Feb 2017)

Lonestar said:


> @mjr have you got a link to the video of the CS 3 collision?



View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp3rIHjTRBE

HTH


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## Lonestar (7 Feb 2017)

Thanks.Not a like for the collision a like for you posting it.


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## subaqua (7 Feb 2017)

That Bit of CS2 is rubbish. If you want to turn right into Osborne street , to go onto Brick Lane then you are stuck in no mans land with the coaches coming down Whitechapel high street into the city inches away. You need to come out of the "protected " lane into main carriageway where you do get subjected to the bollox from drivers about get in your lane .


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## Lonestar (7 Feb 2017)

subaqua said:


> That Bit of CS2 is rubbish. If you want to turn right into Osborne street , to go onto Brick Lane then you are stuck in no mans land with the coaches coming down Whitechapel high street into the city inches away. You need to come out of the "protected " lane into main carriageway where you do get subjected to the bollox from drivers about get in your lane .



It looks rubbish.I rarely use it now.


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## subaqua (7 Feb 2017)

Lonestar said:


> It looks rubbish.I rarely use it now.


I try not to. However sometimes I just have to.


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## Lonestar (7 Feb 2017)

subaqua said:


> I try not to. However sometimes I just have to.



http://www.standard.co.uk/news/tran...-cyclists-at-notorious-junction-a3158781.html

Also found this....A good point about Lower Thames Street and motorcyclists not able to filter easily.I always feel sorry for them.

Comments are interesting too.


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## mjr (7 Feb 2017)

subaqua said:


> That Bit of CS2 is rubbish. If you want to turn right into Osborne street , to go onto Brick Lane then you are stuck in no mans land with the coaches coming down Whitechapel high street into the city inches away. You need to come out of the "protected " lane into main carriageway where you do get subjected to the bollox from drivers about get in your lane .


Really? The Advanced Stop Box looks like it's full-width there to help cyclists turn right once the lights change, but I don't know whether the oncoming traffic is held long enough for you to actually get going and across. It would have been nice if they'd moved the no-entry to White Church Lane back a bit to enable a jug-handle turn as another option but I know not everyone will use those.

From the position of the bike in the photos, it looks more like the right-turn may have been what she was trying to do and if it's as narrow as @subaqua describes then it'd only take one coach to be inches off...


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## MichaelW2 (7 Feb 2017)

Whatever the cause of these crashes, they are affecting women far more than men, yet there seems to be no cycle training that addresses this particular issue.
One can speculate on the reasons; women being less risk averse and less willing to ride assertively or aggressively, less willing to get away at lights on the G of green ( if not before), more willing to abide by laws and road layouts that offer no protection and less willing or able to identify sources of danger. They ride bikes that are, in general, heavier and more cumbersome than the bikes than male riders generally use.


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## mjr (7 Feb 2017)

MichaelW2 said:


> One can speculate on the reasons; women being less risk averse and less willing to ride assertively or aggressively, less willing to get away at lights on the G of green ( if not before), more willing to abide by laws and road layouts that offer no protection and less willing or able to identify sources of danger. They ride bikes that are, in general, heavier and more cumbersome than the bikes than male riders generally use.


I think the bike effect is unlikely because London cycle hire users are all on similar bikes and IIRC women hirers are still disproportionately more injured. I also doubt the willingness to get away is a big thing, but maybe that's only my experience of London where there are soooo many lights and still everyone's so slow to move off  - The rest? Maybe.


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## subaqua (7 Feb 2017)

looking towards Mile End the road layout ( and the cars coming out of Whitechurch Lane show clearly how they go wide https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5...A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1?hl=en&authuser=0


the motorbike here shows how narrow it is to turn right into osborn ( between Khushu and Efes) which is what one report said she was doing. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5...g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1?hl=en&authuser=0


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## ufkacbln (7 Feb 2017)

An ideological fantasy

Sustrans used to have a suggestion that their routes would be "safe" for a competent 10 year old (or similar)

That should be the aim or any road


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## Tin Pot (7 Feb 2017)

Hmm, I can't help read his thread with a little...well, put it this way: Men have been injuring and killing women disproportionately for thousands of years, the fact that they are doing it with cars and trucks while women are on bicycles strikes me as less significant than the underlying theme simply being continued.

Nor do I think the assertiveness or lack thereof is to blame.


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## Racing roadkill (7 Feb 2017)

I've used the 'cycle superhighway' referred to in the piece, several times. It's not the best piece of cycling infrastructure I've ever used. R.I.P. and condolences to the lady's F&F.


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## mjr (7 Feb 2017)

Cunobelin said:


> Sustrans used to have a suggestion that their routes would be "safe" for a competent 10 year old (or similar)
> 
> That should be the aim or any road


Should be, but blatently isn't. If it were for cycle routes, that would be a big step forwards.



Tin Pot said:


> Hmm, I can't help read his thread with a little...well, put it this way: Men have been injuring and killing women disproportionately for thousands of years, the fact that they are doing it with cars and trucks while women are on bicycles strikes me as less significant than the underlying theme simply being continued.


Isn't it still even more disproportionate than for any recent baseline case, though?


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## growingvegetables (7 Feb 2017)

RIP and condolences to family and friends. Terrible.


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## Mrs M (7 Feb 2017)

Sad news


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## srw (7 Feb 2017)

User46386 said:


> One of the main points with car drivers is that a lot of them dont care if they kill someone



That is wrong. There might be a tiny handful of conscienceless psychopaths, but by and large people don't want to kill people and suffer if they do

It's also unhelpful. It encourages an unrealistic sense of the scale of the risk. Cycling is, mostly, very safe.


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## RoubaixCube (7 Feb 2017)

User46386 said:


> Terrible RIP those poor women.
> One of the main points with car drivers is that a lot of them dont care if they kill someone because they know that they will mostly likely get off with it anyway. By that I mean they will not get a custodial sentence, people arent bothered about getting community sentences.They will just say it was their blind spot or they didnt see the cyclist or whatever.So if you have a culture of people not giving a shoot,I cant see things changing for the better anytime soon.



A more important question that needs to be asked is how can another person hit/run someone over and drive off, leaving them in any sort of state at the side of the road? I sincerely hope the driver does the honorable thing and hands themselves in.


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## ianrauk (7 Feb 2017)

RoubaixCube said:


> A more important question that needs to be asked is how can another person hit/run someone over and drive off, leaving them in any sort of state at the side of the road? I sincerely hope the driver does the honorable thing and hands themselves in.




It's way past being honourable what ever the driver does now.


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## RoubaixCube (7 Feb 2017)

ianrauk said:


> It's way past being honourable what ever the driver does now.


 
To a certain extent I agree, but If they hand themselves in, it would save the police time and effort hunting them down. The family of the deceased would also be more relieved knowing the person to took their loved ones life is in custody instead of 'still out there' because this person could strike again. Nobody knows if it was accident that she was hit or deliberately mowed down.

The quicker justice is served -- HOWEVER BAD THE END RESULT MAYBE then at least thats some closure.


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## L Q (7 Feb 2017)

Horrific, not good news at all.

Something needs sorting but the capital is so over populated its going to be impossible to keep everyone happy.


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## Tin Pot (7 Feb 2017)

mjr said:


> Isn't it still even more disproportionate than for any recent baseline case, though?



I don't know, at a guess no. of men beaten to death by their wife in the last 12 months would be approximating zero. Not so for the inverse, I suspect.

But I'm not sure a statistical comparison would be useful, so much as the approach to the problem. Domestic violence is no longer approached from a "what was she doing wrong" point of view, perhaps the same should be the case when it comes to killing them with cars.


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## Markymark (7 Feb 2017)

L Q said:


> Horrific, not good news at all.
> 
> Something needs sorting but the capital is so over populated its going to be impossible to keep everyone happy.


You are right. So let's make the most dangerous, least efficient, most polluting ones the least happy. No need for private cars in central London. Ban them within the congestion charge zone. Cull taxis and minicabs by 50%. Make all lorries fitted with sensors and windows to see pedestrians and cyclists. 

London will survive happily without them and it'll be better for everyone else.


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## Blue Hills (7 Feb 2017)

Tin Pot said:


> Hmm, I can't help read his thread with a little...well, put it this way: Men have been injuring and killing women disproportionately for thousands of years, the fact that they are doing it with cars and trucks while women are on bicycles strikes me as less significant than the underlying theme simply being continued.
> 
> Nor do I think the assertiveness or lack thereof is to blame.


am staggered by this comment. May sound very right on to you, and maybe the circles you mix in, but hardly going to help in finding a solution to this problem is it? Are you saying all the bad drivers are men? Are you seriously suggesting that they are somehow targetting a particular gender?


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## Blue Hills (7 Feb 2017)

L Q said:


> Horrific, not good news at all.
> 
> Something needs sorting but the capital is so over populated its going to be impossible to keep everyone happy.


Sorry, I don't think London is overpopulated.Though it has many many other problems these days. If you look at the statistics for road deaths, they were, I believe, far higher as a proportion when the population was significantly smaller.


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## Pete Owens (8 Feb 2017)

jefmcg said:


> http://road.cc/content/news/76510-stats-reveal-londons-deadly-cycling-zone…-if-youre-woman
> 
> This is a map of cyclists killed in London 2001-2014. Everyone inside the circle was female.
> View attachment 336639


You have to be careful when people claim to find patterns in statistics. If you divide a large enough dataset into small enough chunks you are bound eventually to come across a sample that appears to show something. I'm sure you there are 1.5km diameter circles in the UK where every cyclist death was male - or black - or over 60 - or under 15. 

So by publicising this anomaly two misleading impressions are generated:
1. That female cyclists are more at risk than male ones - when the reverse is the case (as you would expect from a generally less risk taking demographic of the population)
2. That central London is a particularly risky place to cycle - when it is probably the safest place in the UK when you consider the volume of cycling there.

Having said that, there probably is something going on which would be worth further investigation into differences in riding behaviour between male and female cyclists. If you consider crashes over the whole of central London there still appears to be a disparity (though this should still be treated as an exceptionally safe place for male cyclists, rather than an exceptionally dangerous place for females). Most central London deaths are due to trucks, and you also see a similar disparity nationwide with female cyclists over-represented in truck collisions.


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## Pale Rider (8 Feb 2017)

When this topic a was looked into a couple of years ago, there was a suggestion women as a gender difference tend to have less spatial awareness than men.

This shouldn't matter if all drivers drive to avoid clouting cyclists as a priority, but realistically they don't.

A male cyclist is genetically better equipped to make up for the deficiencies of vehicle drivers, which in turn explains why more women cyclists are killed.


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## vickster (8 Feb 2017)

Pale Rider said:


> When this topic a was looked into a couple of years ago, there was a suggestion women as a gender difference tend to have less spatial awareness than men.
> 
> This shouldn't matter if all drivers drive to avoid clouting cyclists as a priority, but realistically they don't
> 
> A male cyclist is genetically better equipped to make up for the deficiencies of vehicle drivers, which in turn explains why more women cyclists are killed.


What does the last sentence mean?


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## Pale Rider (8 Feb 2017)

User said:


> Ah... I'm afraid your understanding on this point is somewhat out of date. Recent studies on spatial awareness and abilities tend to show that the differences between the sexes (not genders) is nurture-based rather than genetic.



It depends which research you regard as most accurate.

Not having closely studied either, I have no view either way.

As regards 'sexes not genders' I prefer genders, but a dictionary will tell you they are synonyms.


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## srw (8 Feb 2017)

Pale Rider said:


> When this topic a was looked into a couple of years ago, there was a suggestion women as a gender difference tend to have less spatial awareness than men.



There was. But that's all it was - a suggestion. Based on sexist nonsense. Suggesting something doesn't make it true.


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## jefmcg (8 Feb 2017)

Pale Rider said:


> A male cyclist is genetically better equipped to make up for the deficiencies of vehicle drivers, which in turn explains why more women cyclists are killed.


You can cut this sexist crap out right now.

You might have a point if this data was consistent across the world or even the UK, but it's not. It's just London.

For example, across the UK in 2015 there were 100 cyclist deaths, 21 were woman. Pretty close to proportional to the number of riders, I'd guess.


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## jonny jeez (8 Feb 2017)

Markymark said:


> Safest way to be in London is assertive (bordering on aggressive),avoiding some of the awful and often lethal cycling infrastructure shitted on us and finally being able to stand your ground to the abuse you get for doing so. My guess is a difference in the willingness to do this between sexes.


I've held a personal theory on the higher proportion of female incidents for riders in heavy traffic.

As a chap I grew up in a world that required you to prove your male credentials, I was encouraged to be stupid (we could call it maverick), to find my own way, to be resourceful and sometimes to break the rules if it made sense to me. Being a dick was encouraged as it looked more "manly"...an example might be driving on the wrong side of the road around a blind country lane...to maintain speed and progress.

My wife was brought up In an opposite world of behaving, being good, adhering to the rules and being methodical.it was deemed wrong for her to think outside the box...almost ladylike or pushy.

As a result my wife wont break the rules, even if the rules look dodgy, she will, quite sensibly, just slow down on that country lane and put up with the tailgating chap in her rear view mirror.

Adhering to the rules whilst on a bike in traffic is a dangerous strategy. The rules take you up the left hand side of vehicles at junctions, suggest you should never take a primary position outside the cycle lane and follow the lane wherever it tells you to go.

I think the male ego is a real benefit in these environments and I encourage all riders, male or female, to understand that their own safety is the only rule worth following...at all times


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## jonny jeez (8 Feb 2017)

Markymark said:


> Safest way to be in London is assertive (bordering on aggressive),avoiding some of the awful and often lethal cycling infrastructure shitted on us and finally being able to stand your ground to the abuse you get for doing so. My guess is a difference in the willingness to do this between sexes.


I sort of agree but defiantly...totally disagree with the bordering comment.

For me its about assertiveness only but true assertiveness. Showing other road users that you know what's happening, how to deal with it and how to remain consistent....no surprises.

Being assertive and acting with grace, to let drivers know you have held them up (for a few seconds) and recognising their patience. Not thanking them for their help so much as their understanding.


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## jonny jeez (8 Feb 2017)

jefmcg said:


> http://www.standard.co.uk/news/lond...in-whitechapel-dies-in-hospital-a3460426.html
> 
> Women die in London way out of proportion to the number on the roads. 2 more yesterday.


Liked for support.

Not because I like the message.


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## Pale Rider (8 Feb 2017)

jefmcg said:


> You can cut this sexist crap out right now.
> 
> You might have a point if this data was consistent across the world or even the UK, but it's not. It's just London.
> 
> For example, across the UK in 2015 there were 100 cyclist deaths, 21 were woman. Pretty close to proportional to the number of riders, I'd guess.



You may not like the results of the research, but it was not sexist.

And rather like climate change, other research will no doubt contradict it.

It is a simple matter of fact there is a large disparity in the genders of cyclists killed in London.

Even more so when there are far more male cyclists, so in theory males should make up the majority of deaths.

I reckon bicycle use between the genders will be about the same, so it's not that women riders use more dangerous routes, or ride at more dangerous times, or ride many more miles.

Which leaves gender differences as a likely explanation.


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## mjr (8 Feb 2017)

jonny jeez said:


> The rules take you up the left hand side of vehicles at junctions,


 how well the motoring lobby have convinced cyclists of this myth! I feel it's not so much that people overtake on the left but that motorists appear to act as if they can overtake through junctions (contrary to the highway code) with impunity. Maybe motorists think women are more likely to be bullied into stopping while they overtake dodgily or maybe that's enabled because women are more likely to follow mistaken paint which:



jonny jeez said:


> suggest you should never take a primary position outside the cycle lane and follow the lane wherever it tells you to go.


But I don't know the research evidence on how many men and women exit the cycle lanes at junctions like that on CS2.


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## Blue Hills (8 Feb 2017)

jonny jeez said:


> I sort of agree but defiantly...totally disagree with the bordering comment.
> 
> For me its about assertiveness only but true assertiveness. Showing other road users that you know what's happening, how to deal with it and how to remain consistent....no surprises.
> 
> Being assertive and acting with grace, to let drivers know you have held them up (for a few seconds) and recognising their patience. Not thanking them for their help so much as their understanding.


Agree. I always thank (usually a raised flat hand) drivers who hold back for me, or who show tolerance when I maybe do something i shouldn't, like ending up in the wrong lane and having to make a late correction.


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## Blue Hills (8 Feb 2017)

User13710 said:


> same thing as when we are accused of being 'aggressive'?


Being assertive, for either gender, has nothing to do with being aggressive. Very often the most aggressive people, male or female, are those who are anything but assertive but are weak - whether it's hidden or not. Assertive (in the best sense) people are far better to deal with, pedalling or not, than the unassertive.


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## fossyant (8 Feb 2017)

The simple fact is more women then men are proportionately being killed in traffic.


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## vickster (8 Feb 2017)

Maybe the individuals (in most cases men) driving the mostly large vehicles are impatient ignorant twunts and the women who have fallen under their wheels were simply extremely unlucky enough to have been in the very wrong place at the very wrong time when these twunts cocked up in their road positioning, awareness, driving style, whatever  It's the drivers who are to blame not the female (or indeed male) victims

I certainly don't think my gender, size (I'm as big if not bigger than a lot of blokes) or spatial awareness (I was riding along in strong secondary, not squeezing through a gap or filtering) had anything to do with the fact I was knocked off for example


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## deptfordmarmoset (8 Feb 2017)

vickster said:


> Maybe the individuals (in most cases men) driving the mostly large vehicles are impatient ignorant twunts and the women who have fallen under their wheels are simply unlucky enough to have been in the very wrong place at the very wrong time  It's the drivers who are to blame not the female (or indeed male) victims
> 
> I certainly don't think my gender, size (I'm as big if not bigger than a lot of blokes) or spatial awareness (I was riding along in strong secondary, not squeezing through a gap or filtering) had anything to do with the fact I was knocked off for example


If you look at the gender of the killers in big vehicles, particularly construction industry drivers, we may as well ask ''Why do men kill women cyclists?'' It might even be a better question to ask than ''Why is a higher proportion of women cyclists being killed?''


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## vickster (8 Feb 2017)

[QUOTE 4672817, member: 9609"]Could it just be London because that is where cyclists are riding on extremely busy roads. I'm with the others who think women are just too timid for their own good in heavy traffic, need to be more aggressive, to stay safe in my opinion you have to be either have to be 'in the way' or completely out of the way of other traffic, many women are dreadful for keeping close to the gutter and giving drivers the opportunity to just squeese past. Ride in the middle of the lane and if they start to tailgate turn round and stare at the driver, and then move over to let them past when it is safe for them to do so.[/QUOTE]
What evidence do you have that this was the case with the woman killed by the coach in the OP? She may have been in primary, it appears that the coach driver still thought he could accelerate through a gap that wasn't there

I've had it, albeit with a car. In primary, going through a pinchpoint, idiot impatient bloke (for he was a he) thought he could squeeze through...the ped island had other thoughts and I had a wry smile as I heard the big bang and rattle rattle of him bursting at least one tyre and knackering at least one wheel


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## PK99 (8 Feb 2017)

[QUOTE 4672817, member: 9609"]need to be more aggressive, .[/QUOTE]

ASSERTIVE not aggressive.


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## Blue Hills (8 Feb 2017)

PK99 said:


> ASSERTIVE not aggressive.


Yes, last thing we need in London is more aggressive twonk cyclists - for there are unfortunately a fair few. God help us if some of them transfer to cars.


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## mjr (8 Feb 2017)

[QUOTE 4672004, member: 9609"]In a thread where we are suggesting women are too timid and not assertive enough on the road, the woman that caused the crash in that vid was overly confident.[/QUOTE]
Indeed, and the fame of that vid of CS3 may have prompted "Another cyclist, who was coming from the other direction when the crash occurred" to suggest that maybe this woman had done a similar thing on CS2 and her "bike got clipped and then dragged out across the road."

Personally, I can't see how the bike would have ended up where it did then unless the coach was overtaking amazingly fast and close. The suggestion (by @subaqua and others) that she was in the narrow right-turn lane and the coach went for a gap that wasn't there seems much more likely.


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## Rooster1 (8 Feb 2017)

***** ******* Christ!!!!! Enough of this horrible stuff. RIP cyclists.


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## jonny jeez (8 Feb 2017)

mjr said:


> Debatable, but I won't here.
> 
> 
> how well the motoring lobby have convinced cyclists of this myth! I feel it's not so much that people overtake on the left but that motorists appear to act as if they can overtake through junctions (contrary to the highway code) with impunity. Maybe motorists think women are more likely to be bullied into stopping while they overtake dodgily or maybe that's enabled because women are more likely to follow mistaken paint which:
> ...


Its not about overtaking, its about positioning. Cyclepaths place riders on the left (even if there is an ASZ) of large vehicles at junctions. They show a clear path to follow that puts the rider at huge risk. 

Even the ASZ is often to short to allow the rider to be seen, even if they are right in front of a tall lorry.

I would also like to see some evidence in the last point.


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## mjr (8 Feb 2017)

jonny jeez said:


> Its not about overtaking, its about positioning. Cyclepaths place riders on the left (even if there is an ASZ) of large vehicles at junctions. They show a clear path to follow that puts the rider at huge risk.


I broadly agree with that and I think the recent moves away from simple ASZs to cycle-specific signals and phases are probably a good thing.



jonny jeez said:


> Even the ASZ is often to short to allow the rider to be seen, even if they are right in front of a tall lorry.


Yes! This is made even worse by the UK's over-use of far-side secondary/repeater signals which is another way that people basically aren't punished for crossing the stop line and all too often obstructing the pedestrian crossing.


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## jefmcg (8 Feb 2017)

Pete Owens said:


> I'm sure you there are 1.5km diameter circles in the UK where every cyclist death was male - or black - or over 60 - or under 15.


Yes easily to male, because most cyclists are male, and across the country 80% fatalities are men. But I bet you can't draw a circle of any size with 14 deaths inside that are all of a minority in that areas cycling community. And if you can, that is going to indicate an underlying problem.

And if 15 cycling children had been killed in 1.5km radius, it would be a national scandal.


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## benb (8 Feb 2017)

[QUOTE 4673175, member: 9609"]Coming round the roundabout was an articulated lorry, the driver just stopped, he watched and waited until he could see the children were beyond the rear of his trailer before moving off. Now that is gold standard driving, he seen a potential disaster unfolding and made sure it could not happen. We need more drivers like this.[/QUOTE]

Yes, and driving like this ought to be completely normal and unremarkable. It's illuminating that we are in the position of pouring praise on a driver for simply driving to the standard that is required of them.


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## jefmcg (8 Feb 2017)

Pale Rider said:


> You may not like the results of the research, but it was not sexist.


What research? If you had quoted some research, then I may have had a different opinion, but all you did was vaguely mention a "suggestion" and then lead to the conclusion that "A male cyclist is genetically better equipped" for cycling. That is sexist.

And ... it's not backed up by data. I said that across the country 80% of fatalities are male, so that seems to disprove your idea entirely.

Which presumably you didn't read, because you continued to say



> Which leaves gender differences as a likely explanation.



As you seem to think that only 50% of cyclists are men, then we have the opposite problem - understanding why men are four times more likely to die than women.

(that's not true, I'd say there are easily 3 times the number of men cycling than women so nationally there is no anomaly)


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## subaqua (8 Feb 2017)

jefmcg said:


> Yes easily to male, because most cyclists are male, and across the country 80% fatalities are men. But I bet you can't draw a circle of any size with 14 deaths inside that are all of a minority in that areas cycling community. And if you can, that is going to indicate an underlying problem.
> 
> And if 15 cycling children had been killed in 1.5km radius, it would be a national scandal.



nah it wouldn't 


because they are only cyclists , and treated as vermin because they are on bikes , sadly. Even the Met Pol and City Pol treat us as vermin. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15216...don-cyclist-is-killed-by-a-lorry-at-junction/ DO NOT CLICK IF YOU ARE A SENSITIVE SOUL.

it is going to take a massive step change , similar to the Netherlands .


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## jefmcg (8 Feb 2017)

What's sad is that we are all guessing the reasons. If 20% of cyclists are suffering most of the fatalities, then there could be a real opportunity for an easy win here. If someone could study these incidents and actually come to an informed conclusion about why they are happening, then maybe some concrete action could be taken that would have an effect.

If we could reduce the fatalities amongst women cyclists in London to the same levels as men, the death toll in the city would plummet. I'd even accept some well informed mansplaining from the police if I knew it was backed up with data.

I'll write to the Mayor. Let's see if he even replies.


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## fossyant (8 Feb 2017)

jefmcg said:


> What's sad is that we are all guessing the reasons. If 20% of cyclists are suffering most of the fatalities, then there could be a real opportunity for an easy win here. If someone could study these incidents and actually come to an informed conclusion about why they are happening, then maybe some concrete action could be taken that would have an effect.
> 
> If we could reduce the fatalities amongst women cyclists in London to the same levels as men, the death toll in the city would plummet. I'd even accept some well informed mansplaining from the police if I knew it was backed up with data.
> 
> I'll write to the Mayor. Let's see if he even replies.



Something needs doing as these deaths are way out of proportion.

There is a reason behind it and that reason might make some unpleasant reading. Questions need to be asked about the driver and cyclists experience to find out what's leading to this.


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## jefmcg (8 Feb 2017)

I've just be reading a few new reports, and there is something that stands out - China, Italy, Germany, Hungary. Many of them are from overseas. That's not surprising, especially in central London, I probably know more immigrants than native Londoners. But there would certainly be less immigrants in most of the UK.

I wonder if it that's a clue?


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## fossyant (8 Feb 2017)

What about familiarity with particular junctions ? There are roads and junctions I won't use because the chances of being hit are far higher than other routes. E.g Elephant and Castle I believe isn't great.

I won't use Oxford Road in Manchester. Too many pedestrians, Europe's busiest bus route and an abundance of little side streets. All add up to an unpleasant experience.


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## jefmcg (8 Feb 2017)

User said:


> it is four years old


This is particularly notable. I confess I misread it and conflated the year and the number of deaths so thought the data was from 2001-2014, rather than 2012. 

I'll do some further research and collate some real data myself.



User said:


> What we can say, using the figures that are available, is that nationally men are proportionally more likely to be killed whilst cycling than women - not the other way round.


Do you think that is true? I would guess one in four or five cyclists were women. You think it's more, nation wide?

I download the data of all road casualties from 2015 from the DfT, which is where the 79/21 figure comes from. (Aside: I should appear on that list, as a list of all each road incidents with an injury from that year - but the police who attended didn't realise that cycle only accidents count, and didn't record it)


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## mjr (8 Feb 2017)

User said:


> And as the data source cannot be interrogated there is no real ability to judge the accuracy of the data mapping or the quality of the interpretation of the results.


It's probably RRCGB so it could be interrogated if you wanted but it would take some work.

I have the 2015 public data loaded into a database already so "select Sex_of_Casualty, count(*) from Casualties where Casualty_Type = 1 and Accident_Index in (select Accident_Index from Accidents where Police_Force in (1,48) ) and Casualty_Severity = 1 group by Sex_of_Casualty;" tells me that 6 women cyclists and 3 men cyclists died in the Metropolitan Police and City of London Police areas in that year. 

Meanwhile, http://content.tfl.gov.uk/travel-in-london-report-8.pdf Figure 11.1 suggests that there are more cycling trips by men than women, so 3:6 seems disproportionate. There may be more detailed data lurking somewhere in TfL, but that seems sufficient for this conclusion.

And because it's cheap to omit the Police_Force clause: nationally, the "Local Area Walking and Cycling Statistics: England" report suggests twice as many men cycle as women, while 79 male cyclists were killed compared to 21 women ones... so it's disproportionate in the other way, as @User suggests... but I do caution that it's something like 30 times the deaths in 80 times the area of London so it's going from a low rate to even lower.

(Edited to put more bits into past tense)


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## jefmcg (8 Feb 2017)

User said:


> That's not what I said. What is said was that nationally men are proportionally more likely to be killed whilst cycling than women.


You and I have a different understanding of "whilst" in this sentence.


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## Tin Pot (8 Feb 2017)

Blue Hills said:


> am staggered by this comment.


Glad to have given you a different angle to the pervasive "they should be more assertive" victim blaming, which ironically got much worse after I posted.


> May sound very right on to you,


No, but apparently it does to you.


> and maybe the circles you mix in,


Which circles are these? I guess you mean white male middle aged elite. 


> but hardly going to help in finding a solution to this problem is it?


Finding the correct approach to a problem will indeed find the best solution.


> Are you saying all the bad drivers are men?


Another strawman.


> Are you seriously suggesting that they are somehow targetting a particular gender?


Not I, but this thread is.

The weight of your assumptions about me and my thought process is staggering. I'd suggest you look at what I have put forward, rather than who I am.


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## deptfordmarmoset (8 Feb 2017)

jefmcg said:


> You and I have a different understanding of "whilst" in this sentence.


While and whilst are used pretty much interchangeably. I prefer using while to mean at the same time and whilst to indicate an contrasting situation but that's just a personal choice.


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## jonny jeez (8 Feb 2017)

srw said:


> The "explanations" being offered are largely not explanations but assertions of masculine superiority. And as @User points out, they're not being "flamed" but assertively, and largely politely, challenged.


Some might be. I don't think mine was in the slightest. It actually berates the Male ego and simply suggests that in this case, the "macho" inclination of being stupid might create an unintentional difference. 

That it can be read as sexist isn't my problem. This thread is about the disproportionate levels of deaths by gender, so discussing Gender is to be expected.


----------



## jonny jeez (8 Feb 2017)

vickster said:


> Maybe the individuals (in most cases men) driving the mostly large vehicles are impatient ignorant twunts and the women who have fallen under their wheels were simply extremely unlucky enough to have been in the very wrong place at the very wrong time when these twunts cocked up in their road positioning, awareness, driving style, whatever  It's the drivers who are to blame not the female (or indeed male) victims
> 
> I certainly don't think my gender, size (I'm as big if not bigger than a lot of blokes) or spatial awareness (I was riding along in strong secondary, not squeezing through a gap or filtering) had anything to do with the fact I was knocked off for example


For you personally I'm sure you are right.

But sheer luck doesn't explain the disproportionate overall figures. Worse, it feels like an excuse to ignore the issue and bury our heads in the sand.

Something is going on here and I don't believe its chance.


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## jefmcg (8 Feb 2017)

deptfordmarmoset said:


> While and whilst are used pretty much interchangeably. I prefer using while to mean at the same time and whilst to indicate an contrasting situation but that's just a personal choice.


No, it's not while/whilst. It's that I would take "men are proportionally more likely to be killed whilst cycling than women" as "men are more to be killed during the times they are cycling than women are during the times they are cycling." I'd leave "whilst" out altogether if I meant "more men die cycling than women"


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## deptfordmarmoset (8 Feb 2017)

jefmcg said:


> No, it's not while/whilst. It's that I would take "men are proportionally more likely to be killed whilst cycling than women" as "men are more to be killed during the times they are cycling than women are during the times they are cycling." I'd leave "whilst" out altogether if I meant "more men die cycling than women"


Ok, I misunderstood the confusion. I'd better get back to my early dinner....


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## Profpointy (8 Feb 2017)

User said:


> Discussing gender is fine. It is the looking to perceived gender stereotypes, especially when satisfied that there is no need to look any further, that is not.



By my reading jeez did the first. "being satisfied no need to look further" is your words and bears not relation to what he wrote.

It's been stated by a few people that women cyclists are disproportionately killed. I don't know if this is right, but the claim with some evidence has been made. Legitimate to argue either way, without arguing sexism

Jeez made a moderate point that women may (on average) tend to be timid and hug the gutter more (for instance). Ok anecdote rather than evidence but I have to say that's my impression too. Of course we may both be percieving what we expect to see rather than it being true. Either way it's a traversty to attack the suggestion as being sexist piggery, or to claim mansplaining or whatever. 

Surely asking if there is an increased cycle ridk for women, and if so, why is an important thing.

Just to be clear, no one is suggesting women shouldn't ride or anything


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## Profpointy (8 Feb 2017)

User said:


> You are quite right it doesn't. That was because the comment was not a direct reply to his post but a comment on other posts. As many posts have been deleted, the meaning has become a bit blurred.



Fair enough. I do sometimes lose track when it gets to a he-said, she said.


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## summerdays (8 Feb 2017)

Mod Note: as mentioned a number of posts have been deleted. Hopefully it generally makes sense, otherwise I can put it in the mod area for us to check over later.


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## jonny jeez (8 Feb 2017)

User said:


> You are quite right it doesn't. That was because the comment was not a direct reply to his post but a comment on other posts. As many posts have been deleted, the meaning has become a bit blurred.


If it wasn't a direct reply to my post then why did you use the direct reply to my post function...to make your comment.

No need for rudeness


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## Blue Hills (8 Feb 2017)

Tin Pot said:


> Glad to have given you a different angle to the pervasive "they should be more assertive" victim blaming, which ironically got much worse after I posted.
> 
> No, but apparently it does to you.
> 
> ...


Thank you for highlighting my comments.
I stand by them.


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## Tin Pot (8 Feb 2017)

Blue Hills said:


> Thank you for highlighting my comments.
> I stand by them.


Anytime.


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## Blue Hills (8 Feb 2017)

Tin Pot said:


> I don't know, at a guess no. of men beaten to death by their wife in the last 12 months would be approximating zero. Not so for the inverse, I suspect.
> 
> But I'm not sure a statistical comparison would be useful, so much as the approach to the problem. Domestic violence is no longer approached from a "what was she doing wrong" point of view, perhaps the same should be the case when it comes to killing them with cars.


Er, i fail to see what the extremely serious subject of domestic violence has to do with this.
And are you saying that when there is a collision the circumstances should not be looked at but that the driver of the vehicle is presumed guilty?
Does your scenario include the idea that the driver of the vehicle might be a woman?


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## jonny jeez (8 Feb 2017)

Profpointy said:


> By my reading jeez did the first. "being satisfied no need to look further" is your words and bears not relation to what he wrote.
> 
> It's been stated by a few people that women cyclists are disproportionately killed. I don't know if this is right, but the claim with some evidence has been made. Legitimate to argue either way, without arguing sexism
> 
> ...



I appreciate your support of my post, thanks for helping get my point across... but to clarify, I really am not suggesting that women riders are in any way being timid, I am suggesting that they might be more likely to adhere to the rules that have been set down. I believe these rules to be the issue and that by pure happenstance of ego, men seem more likely to avoid these rules.

But yes its totally anecdotal and I agree with @jefmcg that this is an issue that deserves attention, whether we find that attention uncomfortable or not.


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## jonny jeez (8 Feb 2017)

User13710 said:


> What a muddle. Are we women meant to be more like men (pace Rex Harrison) and behave recklessly, disregarding the rules because they are dangerous? Or are we to be predictable and gracious like good girls? When we are 'assertive', is that the same thing as when we are accused of being 'aggressive'?


Why cant women be can be both assertive and predictable in their riding. My comment has nothing at all to do with being "good Girls" and I know plenty of people that cant be assertive without being aggressive...both Men and Women.


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## jonny jeez (8 Feb 2017)

fossyant said:


> The simple fact is more women then men are proportionately being killed in traffic.


its a fact...but not a simple one.

yellow smiley thing....


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## fossyant (8 Feb 2017)

jonny jeez said:


> its a fact...but not a simple one.
> 
> yellow smiley thing....



Something needs doing, as it's not reflective of the rest of the UK. Maybe there are more in-experienced cyclists in London due to your 'critical mass' of cyclists making people feel safer, plus the sheer number of big vehicles, including construction traffic on roads not designed for it.

London is a sprawling city. Most UK cities are a mile or two in radius and then you hit suburbia... that must affect it.


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## Tin Pot (8 Feb 2017)

Blue Hills said:


> Er, i fail to see what the extremely serious subject of domestic violence has to do with this.



Yes you do, and you're still asking loaded questions despite my previous response. 

If you disagree with any of my posts, could you be specific about where you think I am wrong and why you think I'm wrong?

(Statements would be useful in progressing this conversation.)


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## jonny jeez (8 Feb 2017)

fossyant said:


> Something needs doing, as it's not reflective of the rest of the UK. Maybe there are more in-experienced cyclists in London due to your 'critical mass' of cyclists making people feel safer, plus the sheer number of big vehicles, including construction traffic on roads not designed for it.
> 
> London is a sprawling city. Most UK cities are a mile or two in radius and then you hit suburbia... that must affect it.



volume and a false sense of safety wouldn't directly explain the higher level of* female *deaths. Yes it would suggest more incidents for all riders but why the high level of female deaths... something else must be going on


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## fossyant (8 Feb 2017)

Right, deliberately baiting members isn't appropriate. There has been enough trouble here.

Maybe our extensive joint knowledge of commuting needs to think of a way of getting an investigation going. The death rate is out of control in London, never mind else where, but I think it's linked to critical mass.

I was speaking with my solicitor who cycles into London, and I explained how we, outside of London, don't have this mass. It's unusual to get more than yourself at a junction. Get 4 and it's a party.... our hazards is they don't expect cyclists, even in the city centre. There aren't many round Piccadilly in Manchester compared to London - I drive round there every night now (since breaking my spine).


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## fossyant (8 Feb 2017)

Behave folks....


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## jonny jeez (8 Feb 2017)

fossyant said:


> Right, deliberately baiting members isn't appropriate. There has been enough trouble here.
> 
> Maybe our extensive joint knowledge of commuting needs to think of a way of getting an investigation going. The death rate is out of control in London, never mind else where, but I think it's linked to critical mass.
> 
> I was speaking with my solicitor who cycles into London, and I explained how we, outside of London, don't have this mass. It's unusual to get more than yourself at a junction. Get 4 and it's a party.... our hazards is they don't expect cyclists, even in the city centre. There aren't many round Piccadilly in Manchester compared to London - I drive round there every night now (since breaking my spine).


yes but as I said before volume doesn't explain the female point. I really think critical mass..general .mass, volume these are all red herrings. it pretty clear that more numbers of riders will result in more issues but why are so many females being killed?


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## PK99 (8 Feb 2017)

Tin Pot said:


> I don't know, at a guess no. of men beaten to death by their wife in the last 12 months would be approximating zero. Not so for the inverse, I suspect.
> 
> But I'm not sure a statistical comparison would be useful, so much as the approach to the problem. Domestic violence is no longer approached from a "what was she doing wrong" point of view, perhaps the same should be the case when it comes to killing them with cars.



In male domestic violence there is a clear male vs female deliberate act.

Is your second paragraph trying to say you think there is the same happening re the female cyclists?


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## fossyant (8 Feb 2017)

jonny jeez said:


> yes but as I said before volume doesn't explain the female point. I really think critical mass..general .mass, volume these are all red herrings. it pretty clear that more numbers of riders will result in more issues but why are so many females being killed?



Well you are from that part of the world.. I'm going with the free for all cycling attitude ! 

Unless there is real research then there are some real issues in London. The big vehicles are a major feature, as is experience... you won't get in-experienced folk going on a bike in Manchester - no cycle hire rubbish, and drivers that will run you over !


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## jonny jeez (8 Feb 2017)

User said:


> And then only if the underlying problem really is a lack of assertion. Thus far, it appears to be a self supporting assumption.


I really don't think that is true. I cant think of any riding situations in London that would benefit from being less assertive. So I don't think its self supporting, I think its common sense that to communicate well with, ride with and be treated respectfully with, other road users, you need to be assertive... confident if you prefer. But I do take your point that assertiveness in itself may not be the cause of the high number of female deaths. Although I do believe its linked.

I'll propose a few thoughts (that others have suggested) and I apologise to all if these seem sexist or blunt but I am genuinely interested in trying to reach some sort of consensus, revealing or not.

1- Is my theory about rule breaking, compliance and general male ego in some way true?
2- Are drivers considering female riders less important?
3- Are men just genitically better equipped for cycling in a certain postcode...I know, I know it sound ridiculous but I'm asking?
4- Are drivers of trucks deliberately targeting female riders
5- Is something else going on


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## jonny jeez (8 Feb 2017)

User said:


> That women are less assertive was the assumption.


By who?


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## fossyant (8 Feb 2017)

Right discuss the subject people. No tolerance now 

WHY is this happening ??? IDEAS ? ITS A CRIME... It's not happening in the same proportions in Manchester (that seems to be just me) !!!


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## fossyant (8 Feb 2017)

Riders in the City - any demographics ?

Borris bikes, or just bikes ?


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## fossyant (8 Feb 2017)

Cycling clad riders, or civvy clad riders ?


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## Profpointy (8 Feb 2017)

User said:


> Have you read this thread? It is a theme that has run through it, that women are lacking assertiveness which makes drivers kill them, that women lack the necessary spatial awareness to cope with traffic.



So do you think the assertiveness suggestion is false then ?


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## fossyant (8 Feb 2017)

User said:


> We are trying to discuss the issue. Part of that is getting to grips with whether or not there really is an issue or just an apparent issue. If there is an issue, what that issue might be.



You have an issue in London with people getting killed generally, especially women.


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## fossyant (8 Feb 2017)

On bikes I add.


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## Profpointy (8 Feb 2017)

User said:


> No, not necessarily. My problem with it is that early on an argument was advanced that women are less assertive than men, therefore women on bicycles are riding less assertively than men, therefore women are being killed more. This was being taken as self evident.
> Now the theory may or may not be correct in part or whole. Basing an argument on the assumption that it is both correct and the only explanation required is not really trying very hard, and not getting anyone anywhere near a solution.



I took it as a suggestion for discussion. I find it plausible at least. Well at least the cycling less assertively bit at any rate. 

The women being inherhently weak and timid bit seems a bit of a straw man argument but hey ho


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## fossyant (8 Feb 2017)

User said:


> At the risk of appearing ever so slightly rude here are you OK?



YES but you lot can't discuss !


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## fossyant (8 Feb 2017)

Got your attention !


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## jonny jeez (8 Feb 2017)

fossyant said:


> Right discuss the subject people. No tolerance now
> 
> WHY is this happening ??? IDEAS ? ITS A CRIME... It's not happening in the same proportions in Manchester (that seems to be just me) !!!


Fella, we are discussing the topic, I was just asking @User who was assuming that assertiveness is the key. I have also posed a number of IDEAS, what are your thoughts on them


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## jonny jeez (8 Feb 2017)

User said:


> Have you read this thread? It is a theme that has run through it, that women are lacking assertiveness which makes drivers kill them, that women lack the necessary spatial awareness to cope with traffic.


I see, I thought you were suggesting that this was my assumption. I'm not convinced that this is a general assumption though. we've had suggestions of spatial awareness, programming genetics and yes one or two suggesting assertiveness but there doesn't yet seem to be a general opinion. Perhaps this is the point, perhaps it isn't as simple as a single solution perhaps many contributing factors influence this outcome.


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## jonny jeez (8 Feb 2017)

User said:


> No, not necessarily. My problem with it is that early on an argument was advanced that women are less assertive than men, therefore women on bicycles are riding less assertively than men, therefore women are being killed more. This was being taken as self evident.
> Now the theory may or may not be correct in part or whole. Basing an argument on the assumption that it is both correct and the only explanation required is not really trying very hard, and not getting anyone anywhere near a solution.


Fair enough, so what thoughts do you have on the issue, why do you think this happens very specifically in London


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## Profpointy (8 Feb 2017)

So is it actually true that women seem disproportionately at risk cycling in london? If not so, then the "timid cycling" theory is clearly irrelevent.

My own experience (outside london) is that the roads seem safer and I get less incidents now that with more experience I've learnt to be more assertive. I could be deluding myself of course, or got used to the close misses. For what it's worth I'm a bloke


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## growingvegetables (8 Feb 2017)

jonny jeez said:


> ..... but why are so many females being killed?


Just a convenient hanger for a few random thoughts - nothing particular about your post.

I wonder if the fact that "so many *females*" are being killed/seriously injured may be a red herring? I can think of at least two groups, defined by being male and of a certain age, where there is an identifiable population of .... I'll use the phrase "less assertive riders". Aye - and this isn't London-based, either.

*First - older men*. In their 50s and 60s. They've been pootling back and forwards to work on their bikes for 30-40 years. Slowly. It's been their cheap transport, convenient for shifts which start or finish when the buses are stopped, and keeps their beer-gut under control. And they ride doggedly and determinedly ... along the double yellow lines. As they learned 40 years ago.

But please - no dismissive terms like "gutter-huggers". So many great old guys, with stories to tell. There's a goodly number around S Leeds, especially Dewsbury Road, going to/from the industrial parks. 

*And of this I am sure, they figure very highly in KSI figures.* Hard statistical evidence? I have none. It's an impression gained from reading newspaper accounts, and police requests for witnesses to hit-and-run accidents.


*Second* group - an identifiable group among *secondary school-age boys*. 

I commute to schools, and inevitably get to know the other cycle-rack users (... and repair their punctures, adjust their gears, and admonish them for their shocking brakes!). A group easy to miss among the testosterone-fuelled teenage jackasses pulling wheelies along the pavement, or riding down dual carriageway York Road, in the outside lane, at night, without lights ... against the traffic (yup! I saw you, Dwayne ) ....

.... the quiet, polite, studious (bless 'em - that's often NOT a reflection of academic ability). Almost certainly taught "rules of the road" (ahem!) by a grandfather; aye, and keen to do right by their grandpa. With that same dogged determination to ride hard to the left, in the gutter.

And it infuriates me beyond all reason when I see how they get treated by some drivers on the road. "Bullying"? Doesn't do justice to the farking callous and deliberate intimidation I've seen some of these guys experience. [Fortunately, I have no inkling of how they feature in KSI rates. Nor do I want one - I teach some of the wee guys.]

As a general comment on a theme in many of the previous posts - basically, "mtfu and be assertive"? Sorry - that's victim blaming.  If we need research - it's into the mindset of driving. If we need education - it's for drivers. If we need action - it's on piss-poor drivers.

Eeeh - that were a ramble!


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## Profpointy (9 Feb 2017)

growingvegetables said:


> Just a convenient hanger for a few random thoughts - nothing particular about your post.
> 
> I wonder if the fact that "so many *females*" are being killed/seriously injured may be a red herring? I can think of at least two groups, defined by being male and of a certain age, where there is an identifiable population of .... I'll use the phrase "less assertive riders". Aye - and this isn't London-based, either.
> 
> ...



Whilst there's a lot to agree with in the above, people suggesting that assertive riding is safer is well intentioned and likely good advice. To pejorativley lable it as mtfu victim blaming is dishonest and unhelpful. I percieve I'm much safer by "assertively" taking the lane - particularly so after one extremely scary 100 yards including 2 incidents after I hugged the gutter thinking I was being too assertive. Never again will I make that mistake. This isn't to blame victims of bullying or outright murderous driving. I do agree with your assesment of how badly kids are treated in the road from my own touth


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## growingvegetables (9 Feb 2017)

Profpointy said:


> Whilst there's a lot to agree with in the above, people suggesting that assertive riding is safer is well intentioned and likely good advice. To pejorativley lable it as mtfu victim blaming is dishonest and unhelpful. I percieve I'm much safer by "assertively" taking the lane - particularly so after one extremely scary 100 yards including 2 incidents after I hugged the gutter thinking I was being too assertive. Never again will I make that mistake. This isn't to blame victims of bullying or outright murderous driving. I do agree with your assesment of how badly kids are treated in the road from my own touth


I couldn't agree more that assertive riding is good advice. I don't give a monkey's .... for the drivers I've upset riding Dewsbury Road into central Leeds .

Does this make my thinking clearer? 
- Agreed that "assertive riding" is an entirely correct and appropriate response to the problem of aggressive and anti-social driving. 
- But it's not a *solution,* and shouldn't be suggested as such?

Basically. for a brief moment in time I have managed to control my space - but the aggressive anti-social ******* in an Audi just picks on another, rather more vulnerable, road user?


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## mjr (9 Feb 2017)

fossyant said:


> you won't get in-experienced folk going on a bike in Manchester - no cycle hire rubbish, and drivers that will run you over !


No cycle hire in Manchester? Did I dream hiring a Brompton from Piccadilly station then?



fossyant said:


> Riders in the City - any demographics ?
> 
> Borris bikes, or just bikes ?


Already posted:


mjr said:


> London cycle hire users are all on similar bikes and IIRC women hirers are still disproportionately more injured.





mjr said:


> Meanwhile, http://content.tfl.gov.uk/travel-in-london-report-8.pdf Figure 11.1 suggests that there are more cycling trips by men than women





User13710 said:


> And that 'self-evident' approach to this was scotched by @jefmcg way back on page 4:


Although we should note that "For example, across the UK in 2015 there were 100 cyclist deaths, 21 were woman. Pretty close to proportional to the number of riders, I'd guess" was an incorrect guess - from the relative numbers of riders, we would expect 33 women, so it's actually disproportionate in the opposite way to London, as @User correctly noted.



User13710 said:


> Perhaps what we need is a statistician, to explain about noise and anomalies.
> @srw?


There's a statistician already here but it feels like no-one's listening or looking for data anyway :P



User said:


> As @User13710 says, first someone needs to establish that it really is a problem, as opposed to a statistical blip or a matter of perception.


I'm pretty sure this is not a temporary statistical blip or matter of perception because it's been reported for years, but feel free to load in the previous years from https://data.gov.uk/dataset/road-accidents-safety-data and rerun the queries I used earlier to calculate the male/female fatality splits for different years. It would be good to find more detail on ridership by gender, too.



growingvegetables said:


> *And of this I am sure, they figure very highly in KSI figures.* Hard statistical evidence? I have none


"select count(*) from Casualties where Casualty_Type = 1 and Casualty_Severity < 3 and Age_of_Casualty > 49 and Age_of_Casualty < 70 and Sex_of_Casualty = 1" finds 675 male cyclists in their 50s or 60s KSId.

Deleting the Age constraints finds 2763 male cyclists KSId, so that was about 24%. Removing the Type clause finds 3578 males in their 50s or 60s KSId out of 16838 males KSId, which is about 21%. I don't think that's a large enough difference to think 50/60something men are figuring any more highly among cycling casualties than among casualties in general.

Similarly, 233 11-16 male cyclists (or 8% of all male cyclists) compared to 940 11-16 males (or 6% of all males).

So I suspect the reason you don't have hard statistical evidence to say they figure highly is that there isn't any!

Edited to add: if there was some reason to think that there were low cycling levels among those groups, you might have a case, but the statistics I've seen (CW0203 mainly) doesn't give me any reason to think that, although the upper age bands were 45-65 not 50-70.



growingvegetables said:


> Aye - and this isn't London-based, either.


So what's its relevance here, then?


----------



## growingvegetables (9 Feb 2017)

mjr said:


> There's a statistician already here but it feels like no-one's listening


I'm listening and appreciating 


mjr said:


> ... or looking for data anyway


... and I enjoy (other people looking for/finding/interpreting) data.

To be fair, I think (hope?) I was suggesting that a more "fine-grained" analysis might show up different/interesting(/alarming?) results? An analysis WAY beyond my bog-basic and meagre statistical "ability" , and way beyond the figures you have access to?


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## mjr (9 Feb 2017)

growingvegetables said:


> To be fair, I think (hope?) I was suggesting that a more "fine-grained" analysis might show up different/interesting(/alarming?) results? An analysis WAY beyond my bog-basic and meagre statistical "ability" , and way beyond the figures you have access to?


Probably. I've been told it's possible to get hold of the "contributing factors" data in exchange for signing some agreements but I've not done so and anyway that's only the police report rather than something tested in court, plus once you start distinguishing the 9 London cyclist deaths a year still further, then that's probably doing case studies rather than statistics.

I feel the main alarming results found so far are the disproportionalities which @jefmcg and @User have highlighted: disproportionately many women cyclists in London being killed and disproportionately more men cyclists outside. If anyone can find data about why that might be, it could be interesting (but the non-London stuff might be better in a new thread).


----------



## mjr (9 Feb 2017)

Returning to the CS2 collision, it seems that Clarkes have a reputation for trying to squeeze past cyclists. I think this is slightly closer in to the city than where the collision occurred:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvbdT73U5VE


And here's Clarkes jumping red on CS3:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf-2S19fzNM


And overtaking a woman through a left-turn:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpEE1A_n6dg


And just so you know it's not only cyclists, here's the Clarkes attitude to pedestrians: never mind the red light - just drive straight through them!

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWf1lv6ecWU


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## jonny jeez (9 Feb 2017)

growingvegetables said:


> Just a convenient hanger for a few random thoughts - nothing particular about your post.
> 
> I wonder if the fact that "so many *females*" are being killed/seriously injured may be a red herring? I can think of at least two groups, defined by being male and of a certain age, where there is an identifiable population of .... I'll use the phrase "less assertive riders". Aye - and this isn't London-based, either.
> 
> ...


Inagree with some of this, in particular your comment about well taught students being bullied, which plays to my thinking on rule breaking.

I don't understand the middle aged reference, is this also a group with higher than average deaths through riding in London?


----------



## jonny jeez (9 Feb 2017)

mjr said:


> Probably. I've been told it's possible to get hold of the "contributing factors" data in exchange for signing some agreements but I've not done so and anyway that's only the police report rather than something tested in court, plus once you start distinguishing the 9 London cyclist deaths a year still further, then that's probably doing case studies rather than statistics.
> 
> I feel the main alarming results found so far are the disproportionalities which @jefmcg and @User have highlighted: disproportionately many women cyclists in London being killed and disproportionately more men cyclists outside. If anyone can find data about why that might be, it could be interesting (but the non-London stuff might be better in a new thread).




We seem to have been taken around the block a bit in the last few post, perhaps correctly. Looking at nationwide numbers.

So,in summary stats show that more women than men are being killed in London whilst cycling, than any other group.

Do you agree?


----------



## jonny jeez (9 Feb 2017)

User13710 said:


> But only if they are more vulnerable universally, which they're not.


I sort of agree. Certainly women are not universally more vulnerable but could there be some combination of elements that makes them more vulnerable...in London.


----------



## summerdays (9 Feb 2017)

I was interested in something @jefmcg said about the nationality of many of the women who died, but then I'd also expect to see a higher number of non U.K. males in the statistics too if it's something to do with the road culture (respect of other road users) in this country.


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## Spinney (9 Feb 2017)

mjr said:


> Although we should note that "For example, across the UK in 2015 there were 100 cyclist deaths, 21 were woman. Pretty close to proportional to the number of riders, I'd guess" was an incorrect guess - from the relative numbers of riders, we would expect 33 women, so it's actually disproportionate in the opposite way to London, as @User correctly noted.


The above implies that around 1/3 of cyclists are women. I have no idea whether or not this is correct (nor how the figure is arrived at).

However I'd like to throw another figure into the mix. I was recently gobsmacked to see on my Strava page that I was in the top 10 over a particular segment. On checking more closely, I had managed somehow to be looking at the leader board for women, rather than for all riders. Looking at several segments, and the numbers of men and women whose stats appeared there, most segments appeared to have a ratio of around 10:1 for men:women.
Now this is obviously vague, but even if the ratio was only 5:1, this is still a larger difference than the 2:1 implied in mjr's quote. So it seems that proportionately more men than women use Strava.

- In the case of Strava, with the (so I've heard) inclination of a few to take silly risks to beat their segment times, does this point to a possible reason for some of the disproportionate deaths among men rather than women in the UK in the quote above?
- Is the preponderance of men on Strava (in my extremely limited survey) an indication that in general men do more miles than women, which could explain some of the disproportionate deaths...?


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## jonny jeez (9 Feb 2017)

summerdays said:


> I was interested in something @jefmcg said about the nationality of many of the women who died, but then I'd also expect to see a higher number of non U.K. males in the statistics too if it's something to do with the road culture (respect of other road users) in this country.


it seems to be something to do with tipper trucks, almost specifically.

I dont have access to stats but can quote the below rom the ES

_"Of those eight (deaths this year), six were women — all of whom died following a collision *with a lorry.* In fact, every woman who has died on a bike in the capital since August 2011 was* hit by a truck* — 16 in total.

Since January 2009, 84 cyclists over the age of 16 have been killed following crashes with vehicles in Greater London: 33 women and 51 men (three children have also died). According to Transport for London, women make only a quarter of our city’s bike journeys, yet they represent 39 per cent of adult cycling fatalities in the past six-and-a-half years.

Analysis by the Evening Standard reveals something more stark, though: a much higher proportion of female cyclists die in* HGV crashes than male cyclists*. Of the 33 female deaths, 27 — or 82 per cent — were hit by lorries. Only 22 of the 51 men collided with lorries; 17 with cars; four with buses; three with vans; two with coaches; and one each with a rollerblader, a parked car and an opening car door.

Yet overall, women are at a lower risk of being killed or seriously injured (KSI) riding on London’s roads. According to TfL there are around 710 KSIs for every billion km travelled by male cyclists, compared with 580 for females."






_
keep in mind proportionally more men cycle in london, so the chart above reflects a greater proportion of female deaths


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## jonny jeez (9 Feb 2017)

Spinney said:


> - In the case of Strava, with the (so I've heard) inclination of a few to take silly risks to beat their segment times, does this point to a possible reason for some of the disproportionate deaths among men rather than women in the UK in the quote above?
> - Is the preponderance of men on Strava (in my extremely limited survey) an indication that in general men do more miles than women, which could explain some of the disproportionate deaths...?



nationally, or universally perhaps...but not in London.


----------



## summerdays (9 Feb 2017)

User said:


> Do women make fewer but longer journeys?


I would have thought the reverse would be true, my experience (not London), is that women tend to do lots of little journeys rather than huge commutes. That could just be based on those I meet rather than actually what happens.


----------



## srw (9 Feb 2017)

User13710 said:


> Perhaps what we need is a statistician, to explain about noise and anomalies.
> @srw?


Away for a couple of days!

Might be noise, not signal. I don't know.


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## Milkfloat (9 Feb 2017)

jonny jeez said:


> .......
> _
> Analysis by the Evening Standard reveals something more stark, though: a much higher proportion of female cyclists die in HGV crashes than male cyclists. Of the 33 *female* deaths, 27 — or 82 per cent — *were hit by* lorries. Only 22 of the 51 *men collided with* lorries; 17 with cars; four with buses; three with vans; two with coaches; and one each with a rollerblader, a parked car and an opening car door._



Without trying to derail the thread - I suspect unsuccessfully.

I love the language used - females 'were hit by', whilst men 'collided with' the lorries.


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## Milkfloat (9 Feb 2017)

User13710 said:


> Introducing tipper trucks into the debate only really brings it back to 'is it women's behaviour that kills them?', since presumably trucks are equally capable of killing men, and often do.



I don't think that at the moment we have established that 'women's behaviour' is or is not a contributing factor. Certainly I think that there is a correlation between female deaths and tipper trucks for one reason or another.


----------



## jonny jeez (9 Feb 2017)

User said:


> How does this
> _
> Sit with this?_
> 
> Do women make fewer but longer journeys?


I see that as the difference between London focus of stats and national. The former quote is from tfl the latter is derived from national stats...which plays to @User 's comment upstream about higher national averages of male deaths.

Although I may have read that wrong...I'm between tube stops without much time.


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## Spinney (9 Feb 2017)

On the supposition that there might (or might not) be some correlation between driver behaviour towards male and female cyclists - how easy is it to tell whether a cyclist you are approaching is male or female? No doubt there will be some riders in skirts with long hair etc*, but for the average lycra clad cyclist, how obvious is the difference? Yes, there are usually body-shape differences, but if you are in a moving car and register 'a cyclist' it is not always easy to tell. When driving I tend to register 'cyclist' not 'female cyclist' or 'male cyclist'.

(*this could also include blokes in kilts with long hair, but let's not nit-pick too much here)


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## Milkfloat (9 Feb 2017)

User13710 said:


> You're right, we haven't established anything at all.
> 
> How strong is that correlation really though? It seems strong, in the way this is reported. Does it mean anything significant for women's behaviour around tipper trucks, and tipper truck drivers' behaviour around female cyclists? Or is it really just a not-meaningful statistical blip?



I am not sure we will find out - perhaps we need a lot more deaths before we can find a correlation 

I have my own personal theories - that seem to match some of the others, but equally they are probably completely rubbish.

The victims tend to be young, foreign women whom I, rightly or wrong, judge to be inexperienced.
The majority of accidents (surprise, surprise) occur at junctions, usually with the victim on the nearside.
I don't believe that the tipper truck drivers behave any differently towards female cyclists compared to male - in the reports of accidents that I have seen they claim not to have seen the cyclist in all the cases. 

I tend to believe that although everyone should have the right to go on a journey and not die that something the victim is doing is a significant factor. I don't think it is as simple as saying only young, foreign women sit on the inside of tipper trucks at junctions as we have all seen plenty of cyclists of all ages, sex and nationality do exactly the same, despite me cringing every time they do it. Perhaps the nuance is that other cyclists know to hang back or surge forward at just the right moment to avoid being squashed.

Then again - it could just all be bad luck.


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## Blue Hills (9 Feb 2017)

Spinney said:


> On the supposition that there might (or might not) be some correlation between driver behaviour towards male and female cyclists - how easy is it to tell whether a cyclist you are approaching is male or female?


Not very at all - which is why an earlier suggestion that men in cars were cruising the streets to hit/kill women was so barmy and said more about the poster.

By the same token, pedalling around London, it will come as no surprise to folks that I do have the odd run in with a driver. Although I generally ride with what I like to think of as calm assertive politeness (and I do thank many drivers, including ones in white vans and commercial vehicles) I must admit to giving the odd driver a mouthful after something spectacularly bad (yes I know I shouldn't) and it isn't usually until I pull alongside after the offending incident that I have any idea whether they are male/female/transgender, let alone what their sexual preference might be/which football team they favour/what they are planning to have for tea.


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## Pale Rider (9 Feb 2017)

User13710 said:


> Well, in the newspaper report that triggered this thread, one of the victims was indeed young and foreign (Hungarian, but had lived here for some years). She was killed by a car which failed to stop, near her home, in Enfield. The other victim wasn't named or described beyond her being a woman. The article says ten cyclists were killed 'in London' last year, so what was the definition of 'London'? People here seem to be talking about a small part of central London, not Enfield. Perhaps this is sparked by the circular area defined in the link in post 2, which is described in the accompanying article as arbitrary, and adjacent to a distinct cluster of solely male deaths, about which there seems to be less speculation.
> 
> So I think I am more inclined to go with your last suggestion - but only for the issue of _women being killed_. The issue of _too many cyclists, whatever their sex or gender, being killed_ is the one we should be focusing on, in my opinion. This searching for some reason why women in particular die seems to be a bit of a damaging distraction and leads almost inevitably to more unfortunate and possibly unintended victim blaming.



The damaging distraction is squealing 'sexist' at any attempt to consider gender as part of the problem.

The next damaging distraction is squealing 'victim blaming' at any suggestion a cyclist has to take responsibility for his/her safety.


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## Tin Pot (9 Feb 2017)

PK99 said:


> Is your second paragraph trying to say you think there is the same happening re the female cyclists?



My second paragraph is saying exactly what it is saying:

'Domestic violence is no longer approached from a "what was she doing wrong" point of view, perhaps the same should be the case when it comes to killing them with cars'

Is there a part of this statement that you disagree with?


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## mjr (9 Feb 2017)

User13710 said:


> How strong is that correlation really though? It seems strong, in the way this is reported. Does it mean anything significant for women's behaviour around tipper trucks, and tipper truck drivers' behaviour around female cyclists? Or is it really just a not-meaningful statistical blip?


Querying the 2015 database, three women cyclists were killed in collisions in London with vehicle type 20 "Goods over 3.5t. and under 7.5t" and three by vehicle type 21 "Goods 7.5 tonnes mgw and over". The three men cyclists were killed in collisions with type 20, type 9 "Car" and type 1 "Pedal cycle", one each.

("select Accident_Index,Vehicle_Type from Vehicles where Accident_Index in (select Accident_Index from Casualties where Casualty_Type = 1 and Sex_of_Casualty = 2 and Casualty_Severity = 1) and Accident_Index in (select Accident_Index from Accidents where Police_Force in (1,48));")

Is this a statistical blip? Hard to say for 2015 London fatalities alone because the numbers are so small. If we assume that it's basically random what the outcome is (big assumption) and look at all reported casualties (so drop the Casualty_Severity constraint) and group by vehicle type, we see this:

 1 Pedal cycles: 1012
 2 Motorcycle 50cc and under: 4
 3 Motorcycle 125cc and under: 27
 4 Motorcycle over 125cc and up to 500cc: 4
 5 Motorcycle over 500cc: 9
 8 Taxi/Private hire car: 85
 9 Car: 648
 10 Minibus (8 - 16 passenger seats): 2
 11 Bus or coach (17 or more pass seats): 18 (2%)
 19 Van / Goods 3.5 tonnes mgw or under: 104 (10%)
 20 Goods over 3.5t. and under 7.5t: 21 (2%)
 21 Goods 7.5 tonnes mgw and over: 27 (3%)
 90 Other vehicle: 1
 (Total collisions: 992 )
Similar for male cyclists:

 1 Pedal cycles: 3507
 2 Motorcycle 50cc and under: 9
 3 Motorcycle 125cc and under: 52
 4 Motorcycle over 125cc and up to 500cc: 10
 5 Motorcycle over 500cc: 33
 8 Taxi/Private hire car: 274
 9 Car: 2453
 10 Minibus (8 - 16 passenger seats): 4
 11 Bus or coach (17 or more pass seats): 84 (2%)
 19 Van / Goods 3.5 tonnes mgw or under: 329 (9%)
 20 Goods over 3.5t. and under 7.5t: 40 (1%)
 21 Goods 7.5 tonnes mgw and over: 39 (1%)
 90 Other vehicle: 16
 98 Goods vehicle - unknown weight: 3
 (Total collisions: 3485 )
I've gone back and added rough %s for the main large classes and it looks like they're within a few percent.

Well, as it's cheap now, repeating it for KSIs, it seems like 22 of the four main large classes are involved in 144 women cyclist KSI collisions (15%) but 62 in 613 for men (10%). So in crude terms it seems only slightly higher in all collisions, but well out of whack for KSIs.  (Edit: in other words, that previous big assumption may well be shoot.  )



Spinney said:


> On the supposition that there might (or might not) be some correlation between driver behaviour towards male and female cyclists - how easy is it to tell whether a cyclist you are approaching is male or female?


Womens bikes are pink, aren't they? (runs and hides)



Milkfloat said:


> The victims tend to be young, foreign women whom I, rightly or wrong, judge to be inexperienced.


Nationality isn't recorded, but age is, so here's London women cyclist KSIs (as that's the largest obvious subset where things go disproportionate IMO - see above) from the 2105 database:

 11-15: 1
 21-25: 7
 26-35: 24
 36-45: 17
 46-55: 14
 56-65: 5
 66-75: 2
 Missing: 4
If anything (edit: based on what I remember about general UK demographics, London being skewed slightly younger than UK averages and cycling participation being roughly uniform except for the youngest and few oldest bands...), I'd say that young women are *under*represented there. Older ones, too. Limiting it to those KSId in collisions with large vehicles (types 11,19,20,21):

 11-15: 1
 21-25: 3
 26-35: 7
 36-45: 3
 46-55: 7
 56-65: 1
So if anything, they're less young, aren't they?

Edited to add: limiting it to those killed in collisions with large vehicles:

 26-35: 6
 36-45: 1
 46-55: 1
Well, that's surprising, but the numbers are getting rather small. Anyone got time to load in more years?

Right. I'm getting too close to these numbers and have finished my coffee! HTH BBL


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## mjr (9 Feb 2017)

User13710 said:


> People here seem to be talking about a small part of central London, not Enfield.


Quick note: I've been limiting it to the Met and City police areas when querying the database. To limit to central London, I'd want long/lat max/min values.


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## Blue Hills (9 Feb 2017)

Pale Rider said:


> The damaging distraction is squealing 'sexist' at any attempt to consider gender as part of the problem.
> 
> The next damaging distraction is squealing 'victim blaming' at any suggestion a cyclist has to take responsibility for his/her safety.


thank you pale rider for your eminently sensible reasonable post.
If have more time may return to address whether being foreign/young/recent arrival in London with possibly female thrown in might be a factor.Though stress will only be individual musings ~ can't claim science.


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## PK99 (9 Feb 2017)

Tin Pot said:


> My second paragraph is saying exactly what it is saying:
> 
> 'Domestic violence is no longer approached from a "what was she doing wrong" point of view, perhaps the same should be the case when it comes to killing them with cars'
> 
> Is there a part of this statement that you disagree with?



I don't know. Because I'm not sure what you mean to imply.

If you mean to imply a malign intent directed at female cyclists then I do disagree fundamentally.

There is clearly someting happening that is worthy of serious debate. Parallels with domestic violence are misplaced and damage open discussion.


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## theclaud (9 Feb 2017)

PK99 said:


> I don't know. Because I'm not sure what you mean to imply.
> 
> If you mean to imply a malign intent directed at female cyclists then I do disagree fundamentally.
> 
> There is clearly someting happening that is worthy of serious debate. Parallels with domestic violence are misplaced and damage open discussion.


Why not just deal with the words he actually wrote, which are about placing responsibility for killing and injuring women, by whatever means, with those who kill or injure them?


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## theclaud (9 Feb 2017)

User said:


> Because actually dealing with the words other people write, and the intended meaning behind them is apparently not OK.


Its _so _last season.


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## subaqua (9 Feb 2017)

Going back to the incident. 

I rode CS2 this morning. 

Kings Ferry Coach pulling out of Whitechurch lane turning Left. 
Tthe front of vehicle goes way into the opposite carriageway then swings back into the correct lane over the narrow zone you would be in if turning right into Osborn Street. I would have filmed but couldn't stop . the sad thing is that if the coaches didn't use whitechurch street they would use the much bigger junction of commercial rd and whitechapel high street. 
That doesn't stop them blocking CS2 but it does mean that the risk of an incident would be lower. maybe its time for TfL to make that route down whitechurch "access Only" 

maybe even LCC could even campaign for it. ( fat chance)


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## spen666 (9 Feb 2017)

subaqua said:


> Going back to the incident.
> 
> I rode CS2 this morning.
> 
> ...




I have thought that for sometime. The Coaches ( and lorries) using that street are far too big to do it safely and it seems its an attempt to avoid the queue on Commercial Road heading to the lights at Whitechapel high Street.

I don't know why its not been resolved before now


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## mjr (9 Feb 2017)

spen666 said:


> I have thought that for sometime. The Coaches ( and lorries) using that street are far too big to do it safely and it seems its an attempt to avoid the queue on Commercial Road heading to the lights at Whitechapel high Street.
> 
> I don't know why its not been resolved before now


I've certainly seen old comments suggesting it while looking at that bit of CS2 in detail. Would someone in London use www.WriteToThem.com to ask their assembly member (I think) to act before someone else gets hurt? Commenting on websites is lovely and all, but commenting to government is more likely to change this.


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## mjr (9 Feb 2017)

Continuing this from the duplicate discussion...


User said:


> It's not correct. If you look across all cyclist fatalities in London between 2006 and 2016 (for example) you'll find that the majority of those killed were men - around 2/3rds.


I'm such a sucker for this. Here's 5 years I can see easily:
2015 - 6 women, 3 men; (upthread)
2014 - 1 woman, 13 men; (met - city)
2013 - 5 women, 8 men;
2012 - 1 woman, 13 men;
2011 - 6 women, 10 men;
total - 19 women, 47 men... seems closer to 5/8ths than 2/3rds, but still a majority. So what are the other five years, are the pre-2011 (so pre-cycle-hire-and-superhighways) figures relevant to today and have male and female cycling rates developed at different rates?


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## jonny jeez (9 Feb 2017)

theclaud said:


> Why not just deal with the words he actually wrote, which are about placing responsibility for killing and injuring women, by whatever means, with those who kill or injure them?


To make that parallel, we need to understand who killed them. Who is to blame?

Who is it that we should place responsibility with?

Trying to understand that is the whole point of this thread.


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## mjr (9 Feb 2017)

User said:


> If it's 19 women and 47 men in those 5 years then it's 29% women and 71% men.


Yep, good spot.  Edited. I was switching between ratios (that I prefer) and fractions (that you used) and I suspect repunctuated without conversion at some point. 

Care to share the 2016 numbers, where you were pulling from and defend your inclusion of pre-2011 numbers? If you'd got anything on London male and female cycling over time, that'd be the icing.


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## steveindenmark (9 Feb 2017)

There is some thought that male cyclists are able to get themselves and their bikes out of the way quicker than females, when danger looms unexpected. By riding up a kerb, for example. 

I do not know how true this is. But it is a bit more realistic than drivers making female cyclists targets.


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## theclaud (9 Feb 2017)

jonny jeez said:


> To make that parallel, we need to understand who killed them. Who is to blame?
> 
> *Who is it that we should place responsibility with?*
> 
> Trying to understand that is the whole point of this thread.



Drivers in the one case, domestic abusers in the other. Killing people is the responsibility of those doing the killing.


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## theclaud (9 Feb 2017)

User said:


> Which do you reckon it is, the possession of a penis enabling riding up a curb more easily, or the possession of breasts making it more difficult?


Is it not more likely to be women needing to stop and do their makeup first?


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## jonny jeez (9 Feb 2017)

mjr said:


> Querying the 2015 database, three women cyclists were killed in collisions in London with vehicle type 20 "Goods over 3.5t. and under 7.5t" and three by vehicle type 21 "Goods 7.5 tonnes mgw and over". The three men cyclists were killed in collisions with type 20, type 9 "Car" and type 1 "Pedal cycle", one each.
> 
> ("select Accident_Index,Vehicle_Type from Vehicles where Accident_Index in (select Accident_Index from Casualties where Casualty_Type = 1 and Sex_of_Casualty = 2 and Casualty_Severity = 1) and Accident_Index in (select Accident_Index from Accidents where Police_Force in (1,48));")
> 
> ...




The other big assumption in these stats... on collisions, is that many cycle collisions go unreported. Unlike vehicle collisions that need reports to follow up insurance claims, for event the slightest of scratches.

my personal experience (of friends and clubs) is that probably around 80% of the collisions that occur, even with a full "off", go unreported, often with the driver just carrying on and not stopping.

KSi are obviously a different matter but 1012 and 3507 cycle collisions, reported?


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## jonny jeez (9 Feb 2017)

theclaud said:


> Drivers in the one case, domestic abusers in the other. Killing people is the responsibility of those doing the killing.


Yes but you are making the huge assumption that it is always the drivers fault.

how do you *know* this?


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## jonny jeez (9 Feb 2017)

User said:


> Which do you reckon it is, the possession of a penis enabling riding up a curb more easily, or the possession of breasts making it more difficult?


ok, that actually is funny.


----------



## jonny jeez (9 Feb 2017)

User said:


> Two points.
> Firstly, I don't believe the above is true.
> Secondly, under reporting of cyclist deaths, and skewed by gender? Seriously?



they are not deaths, they are collisions, I'm talking specifically about collisions that @mjr is quoting here.
so yes, it really could, its possible that male ego restricts "blokes" from reporting incidents, just dust yourself up...MTFU!


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## mjr (9 Feb 2017)

User said:


> I think your point about the cycle hire scheme is interesting. I wonder if it would be able to cross reference whether those killed were on a Boris Bike. I seem to recall one case off hand - but I'd have thought that if there'd been more deaths there'd have been more made of it by the media.


It's not in RRCGB but TfL clearly keep records because http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g425 so you could try www.whatDoTheyKnow.com if it's not already published.



jonny jeez said:


> The other big assumption in these stats... on collisions, is that many cycle collisions go unreported.


Yes, that's generally true for anything using RRCGB. I think even minor motoring collisions are unreported more than most people might think, despite the stricter law.



jonny jeez said:


> Unlike vehicle collisions that need reports to follow up insurance claims, for event the slightest of scratches.


First, don't cycle collisions need reports if anyone want to make an insurance claim off a cyclist?

Second, here we're looking mainly at cycle-motor vehicle collisions, so they should be reported as much as motor-motor ones (which is what I think you meant).



jonny jeez said:


> Yes but you are making the huge assumption that it is always the drivers fault.
> 
> how do you *know* this?


It might be only making the assumption that it's _most often_ the driver's fault, which we know because http://www.cyclinguk.org/blog/chris-peck/whos-to-blame-in-crashes-between-cyclists-and-motorists and similar.


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## theclaud (9 Feb 2017)

jonny jeez said:


> Yes but you are making the huge assumption that it is always the drivers fault.
> 
> how do you *know* this?


Actually, the word I used was 'responsibility'. Drivers (and vehicle operators more generally) have a responsibility not to hit people with their vehicles, whether or not the people they hit are without fault.


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## glasgowcyclist (9 Feb 2017)

Third fatality now, not known if victim is male or female at this point.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crim...his-week-after-crash-with-lorry-a3462951.html


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## vickster (9 Feb 2017)

glasgowcyclist said:


> Third fatality now, not known if victim is male or female at this point.
> http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crim...his-week-after-crash-with-lorry-a3462951.html


Another bloody lorry


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## mjr (9 Feb 2017)

vickster said:


> Another bloody lorry


 and a different road environment. What I'd call a fast wide distributor road with paint+signs relabelling the pavement on one side as a cycle track (I think I've walked it but never cycled it), compared to CS2 and an unreconstructed estate rat-run yesterday.


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## jonny jeez (9 Feb 2017)

theclaud said:


> Actually, the word I used was 'responsibility'. Drivers (and vehicle operators more generally) have a responsibility not to hit people with their vehicles, whether or not the people they hit are without fault.


Ah....right.


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## theclaud (9 Feb 2017)

jonny jeez said:


> Ah....right.


Which bit of not hitting people with vehicles do you disagree with?


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## psmiffy (9 Feb 2017)

vickster said:


> Another bloody lorry



I think this is the crux of the matter - lorries are responsible for over 40% of the incidents but only represent 4% of the traffic


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## jonny jeez (9 Feb 2017)

theclaud said:


> Which bit of not hitting people with vehicles do you disagree with?


no bit


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## theclaud (9 Feb 2017)

jonny jeez said:


> no bit


Jolly good then.


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## vickster (9 Feb 2017)

[QUOTE 4675024, member: 9609"]and if it is the one in the image then it looks like another tipper.

not sure what the connection is but the same firm seems to get a mention in this accident (7th paragraph down)
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/cycl...rry-owned-by-death-crash-company-6485541.html[/QUOTE]
Or the red Arctic?


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## deptfordmarmoset (9 Feb 2017)

vickster said:


> Or the red Arctic?


I don't think so, it's on a side road from warehousing south of the DLR line and is yet to enter the North Woolwich Road. More likely that it's south east London's own Primagrange Waste Management, who as @User9609 points out were involved (Primagrange truck and driver subcontracting for Keltbray.) in the earlier accident.


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## vickster (9 Feb 2017)

Ok


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## Trickedem (9 Feb 2017)

This is on my commute and I got diverted around the incident which was still being investigated several hours later. There is a shared space cycle lane here, but it is really poor quality and gives way to every side road, most of which lead to construction sites. I stick to the main road which is a dual carriageway, because it's marginally better. Not sure if it is relevant, but a large section of the shared path before this incident is closed off along with one of the road lanes. So cyclists who normally use the cycle lane either have to dismount or go on the road. There was a big traffic jam there this morning, along with the normal impatient behaviour


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## steveindenmark (9 Feb 2017)

glasgowcyclist said:


> Third fatality now, not known if victim is male or female at this point.
> http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crim...his-week-after-crash-with-lorry-a3462951.html




Its a man.

"He was pronounced dead at the scene"


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## Wobblers (10 Feb 2017)

User13710 said:


> Perhaps what we need is a statistician, to explain about noise and anomalies.
> @srw?



Not a statistician, and not srw, but if I may?

Let's start with the figure @mjr posted:


mjr said:


> Continuing this from the duplicate discussion...
> 
> I'm such a sucker for this. Here's 5 years I can see easily:
> 2015 - 6 women, 3 men; (upthread)
> ...



The first thing to note is that the numbers are actually very small (this is not to detract in any way that each number represents an individual tragedy) compared to the many billions of journeys by bike that have taken place in the same period. I'll leave a space for @srw to comment about denominator neglect here...

Each fatality is a dscrete and presumably independent event, so use of the Poisson distribution is appropriate. The important thing is that the standard deviation is thus given by taking the square root of the total. The standard deviation is a statistical measure of the likely variability of a measured quantity. For instance, if you take many measurements if some quantity x and its mean is 10 with a std dev of 2, the true value of x is probably somewhere between 8 and 12 [1].

So, taking the totals:

Women 19
Std dev 4.36 
Men 47
Std dev 6.86

But we haven't taken account of the fact that there are more male cyclists than female. IIRC the TfL figure was 25% of cyclists are female, so a quick and dirty way is simply to scale (or normalise, if you're a physicist) all numbers to 100%. For women, that means multiplying by 4 (4 x 25 = 100), for men, multiply by 1.333 (75 x 1.333 = 100) [2]. Thus our normalised figures are:

Women 76
Std dev 17.44 
Men 63
Std dev 9.14

Thus the natural variations in fatalities over the 5 years for both men and women, normalised to compensate for differences in each population are in the range:

Men: 54 to 72
Women 59 to 93

Both ranges coincide. If there were a thousand identical Londons, the fatality rate for each of them would probably lie within this range just through chance (but see [1] below). There is no reason to believe therefore that women are over-represented in cycling fatalities in London with the figures as presented. Natural - *random *- noise is large and total fatalities are - thankfully! - low: this means that if any systematic difference exists, it's buried in the noise. [3]

Note that I've used a rather crude method here. A more rigorous method would to apply the appropriate t-test to the data to test for the probability of the two populations being different. With overlapping variances, it is highly unlikely to give a significant result. I'll leave that one to the proper statisticians.

Oh, and just to reiterate - cycling, even in central London, is a very safe activity.

[1] Pedantic statistician's note: assuming a normal distribution, there is a 68% probability of x being somewhere between 8 and 12. Therefore, there is a 32% chance of x lying outside this range.

[2] Yes, I could have saved myself some effort and just multplied the female data by three. But then, I _am _a physicist...

[3] Alert (or possibly awake) readers will have noticed that I've used standard deviation in a rather different way to how I defined it above. This is because there is no uncertaincy in the number of fatalties. But there is a large and random year to year variation. Standard deviation in this case refers to the amount of randomness in these figures that can be expected.

Edited to correct silly mistake in the normalised female fatality number - which _decreases _the difference between men and women.


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## subaqua (11 Feb 2017)

jonny jeez said:


> ok, that actually is funny.




will it be neutral for TS/TG pre op ?


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## subaqua (11 Feb 2017)

[QUOTE 4675119, member: 9609"]quite possibly, and there is nothing whatsoevr at this stage to suggest the driver is in anyway at fault.

I think it has just said on the news that the cyclist was a young man - very very sad news whatever the circumstances. It really does sicken me hearing of these incidents.[/QUOTE]


but had to be flagged down as didn't know he had squished the guy. really. didn't know . FFS


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## theclaud (11 Feb 2017)

[QUOTE 4675119, member: 9609"] there is nothing whatsoevr at this stage to suggest the driver is in anyway at fault.
[/QUOTE]
Other than a person being dead.


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## Blue Hills (11 Feb 2017)

subaqua said:


> but had to be flagged down as didn't know he had squished the guy. really. didn't know . FFS


That is possible. I don't think the facts/circumstances are yet known. I wouldn't prejudge.


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## srw (11 Feb 2017)

McWobble said:


> Not a statistician, and not srw, but if I may?


I'm not a statistician either - I just use some of the tools of real statisticians in a fairly ad-hoc way, including as it happens the sort of tool you're using (the variability in the occurrence of rare events being one of my stock-in-trades).

But I can't see anything material to complain about in the analysis.

I think you're being quite generous in focussing on the rather narrow interval of one SD either side of a mean - the null hypothesis is that there is no difference between the sexes, so to establish a difference I'd want some certainty to a stronger confidence. You're also being quite generous in taking a straight mean of the data. In the real world I'd want to normalise each year for some sort of exposure measure - even during the time represented by the dataset you've used the number of cyclists in London has grown a lot.

But both of those refinements would make it _even_ more difficult to discern a difference, so the conclusions would be no different.



McWobble said:


> I'll leave a space for @srw to comment about denominator neglect here...



Talking of which....

A number of people have pointed out in this thread that cycling in London is very very safe. The best representation of this I know of is the wonderful post "Risk, cycling and denominator neglect" by @jo from the other place. (http://www.gicentre.net/blog/2013/11/24/risk-cycling-and-denominator-neglect). The picture below I have shamelessly stolen from his website. It represents 219 million bike journeys made in London during 2012. Each grey block is made up of 25,000 individual figures, mostly grey, representing 25,000 safe bike journeys. Buried somewhere with this large picture are 14 orange figures, representing 14 fatalities, and 657 blue figures, representing 657 serious injuries. Finding them is left as an exercise for the reader.

[edit]
I realise that the forum software means that it's extremely difficult to make out the grey blocks. Each row of the picture consists of 6 super-blocks which you can just about make out. Each super-block is made up of 13 grey blocks of 25,000 safe journeys, so represents 325,000 safe journeys.


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## mjr (11 Feb 2017)

"IIRC the TfL figure was 25% of cyclists are female" Can anyone find a link to confirm it so that @McWobble can link it maybe, please?

I'm thinking about the other bits but certainly nothing there seems as outrageous as some of the shoot included in developer transport plans!


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## deptfordmarmoset (11 Feb 2017)

mjr said:


> "IIRC the TfL figure was 25% of cyclists are female" Can anyone find a link to confirm it so that @McWobble can link it maybe, please?
> 
> I'm thinking about the other bits but certainly nothing there seems as outrageous as some of the shoot included in developer transport plans!


Table 4 on this might help: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/casualties-in-greater-london-2015.pdf

EDIT: though reading further, it only gives casualties not the overall numbers
And Table 4.1 below gives a gender breakdown between cyclists with different travel frequencies.
http://content.tfl.gov.uk/analysis-of-cycling-potential.pdf


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## Blue Hills (11 Feb 2017)

theclaud said:


> Other than a person being dead.


I wouldn't prejudge things. There is such a thing as due process.
Otherwise, if you are found in the same building as a dead person, you are guilty?
No need for an investigation.

RIP, condolences to the family.


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## theclaud (12 Feb 2017)

Blue Hills said:


> I wouldn't prejudge things. There is such a thing as due process.
> Otherwise, if you are found in the same building as a dead person, you are guilty?
> No need for an investigation.
> 
> RIP, condolences to the family.


I'm afraid the comparison makes no sense to me. The driver was driving the lorry when it killed the cyclist - he's not some person that just happened to be there when it happened. This is not a whodunnit.


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