Quoted message said:"In GB the number of accidents per 1000 inhabitants is similar to Germany or the Netherlands
although the proportion of cyclists is between 2 and 4%.
Until 1995 the basic rule was that cyclists are high risk participants in traffic and, in order to
reduce the rate of accidents, it was thought advantageous to have as few cyclists as possible.
Since then it is an official government target to have 15% of the population on bikes by 2012."
Well, I wouldn't be surprised if the proportion of the British population that owns bikes already
exceeds the proportion of the Chinese population. Certainly the proportion of Americans does. All we
have to do is to get people to ride the bikes that they already own.
As for usage, there are places that already exceed 15% of the modal split. In Cambridge 27% of
journeys are made by bike, which compares well with Amsterdam's 20%. I think at least Oxford and
York are up there too.
As for risk, cycling is safer than walking. The year 2000 deaths per billion km are 30 for bike, and
48 for walking.
I can't be bothered to look up the exact details, but essentially the gov't did change it's policy
in about 1997. The previous policy was indeed that the best way to abolish bike accidents was to
abolish bikes, although it was assumed that they would, eventually, just vanish by themsleves.
In 1997 it was decided that bikes were ***GOOD THINGS***. A policy was adopted of encouraging
cycling to double in the next five years, and double it again in the five years after that. I
don't think that would amount to 15% nationally (People only ride bikes in the dry, flat, parts
of Britain).
It has been said that democracy is the principle that the people know what they want, and deserve to
get it, good and hard. That being so, the method of encouraging people to ride was to give the non
cyclists what they said they needed - all those new facilities that we know and love.
The five years are now up. Result: cycling has gone down, not up at all (although only down a bit)
and the accident rate has gone up (although just a bit)
A couple of years before the end of the bike plan it became obvious that the targets would not be
met. This being so, the gov't decided to have, instead of a target to double cycling, a target to
triple it. The advantage of this is that it puts the target further away. The methods of achieving
the tripling would be the same as those that worked so well before for doubling.
The new idea for increasing cycling is bike education (of potential cyclists, not politicians or
traffic engineers) The content of the courses remains controversial, since they might involve
the unimaginably dangerous idea of making learners ride on real streets. The CTC will produce a
paper shortly.
Jeremy Parker
