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In 2018, 678 people lost their lives in traffic in The Netherlands. That is 10.6 % more than in 2017, the largest increase since 1989. This reported Statistics Netherlands (CBS) … Continue reading →

Utrecht has reconstructed yet another arterial road. The Croeselaan was a 4-lane road, leading to an area in the city that had been designed with only the private car in … Continue reading →

Eindhoven is creating a fast cycle route, a 32 kilometre long loop around and through the city, that is in its final stages of construction. The plans were first made … Continue reading →

This is a little extra post for you. Last Friday was a lovely day so I just had to ride around a bit. I didn’t bring my camera as I … Continue reading →

The Dutch Cyclists’ Union (Fietsersbond) has created a Cycle Vision for 2040 with dreams, ideas and wishes for a cycle friendly society in 2040. Last February the active members discussed … Continue reading →

The following letter under this title appeared in Local Transport Today 769 (29 March – 11April 2019).I wonder if I could raise two issues in the ongoing debate about 20 mph and your Editorial (LTT 768) which have not attracted much, if any, attention?

Firstly, there is confusion between numbers reported as casualties in Road Traffic Collisions and safety. As we have been saying in the Road Danger Reduction movement for decades, the two are different and may even be inversely related. (See my Viewpoint in LTT 635 for a simple explanation of this). There is certainly a place for good quality analysis of the casualty figures – but this has to be placed in the context of how we fully define “safety”.

Secondly, a key question has been the discussion around motorists’ speed. Debate has existed since 20 mph areas and/or zones were rolled out as to what effect they would have: would engineering methods be required to get speeds below 20 mph? Would there have to be heavy traffic calming or could we get away with minor treatments like some alteration to median marking? How about some policing, such as is currently done by West Midlands Police Road Harm Reduction Team? Should we rely on fixed cameras (concealed or otherwise) or do we have to go straight on to automatic on-board speed governors?

The idea of 20 mph as a maximum speed for motor vehicles in areas with significant pedestrian traffic has been around for a while. It’s commonplace in parts of Europe such as northern Germany (not exactly a country hostile to the private car!) and was advocated 50 years ago in this country by Buchanan despite his advocacy of a car-centred urban transport system. Driving below 20 mph rather than below 30 mph increases time to react and cuts the potential kinetic energy dispersed on impact, with particular relevance to pedestrian and cyclist safety, and we have known this for some time.

As few commentators (with the exception of such as Ben Goldacre) have pointed out, the issue here is this: a large proportion of drivers (generally the majority) in 20 mph areas simply do not want to obey the law. That’s the bottom line here: if we want a more civilised highway environment it has to be socially unacceptable to use a motor vehicle going over 20 mph on roads with actual or potential significant concentrations of people walking or cycling. Arguing about exactly how to get there is a secondary issue.

 

Dr Robert Davis, Chair, Road Danger Reduction Forum

It was a lovely day yesterday and the cycle-paths of Drenthe were calling so I decided to make the journey to the Dwingelderveld to eat my lunch next to the somewhat famous radio telescope. Why there in particular ? I'm currently reading Harry Mulisch's "De Ontdekking van de Hemel" ("The Discovery of Heaven"). The author stayed in the area of the radio telescope during the time when he wrote the David Hembrowhttps://plus.google.com/114578085331408050106noreply@blogger.com0http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2019/03/the-discovery-of-heaven.html

Utrecht has improved the cycle route from Overvecht in the north of the city to the University campus Utrecht Science Park. This means that people could choose to arrive at … Continue reading →

Imagine if sidewalks (pavements in the UK) for pedestrians were unidirectional. If you wanted to visit your neighbour who lived on the right side of your home then you could walk there directly, but to come back home again in a legal manner you'd be expected to cross the road, walk until you were opposite your home and then cross back again. Does that make sense ? Of course not. The David Hembrowhttps://plus.google.com/114578085331408050106noreply@blogger.com0http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2019/03/how-bidirectional-cycle-paths-improve.html

School children opened the new cycle bridge near Schinveld in the province of Limburg, by cycling across it together with the provincial representative for mobility on 20 February last. The … Continue reading →

The Sint Annatunnel in Antwerp (Belgium) is an 86 year-old pedestrian and cycling tunnel under the Scheldt river, connecting the city centre to the west-bank, called left bank in Antwerp. … Continue reading →

In our Charter we give a commitment to: “Find new measures to define the level of danger on our roads. These would more accurately monitor the use of and threat to benign modes.” This post is part of our work at doing that – hopefully it will contribute to debate. It is based on a document by PACTS given to the Transport Committee Active Travel enquiry in December 2018.

In previous posts and discussions, we have spent a lot of time talking about the need to have measures and targets for benign transport modes expressed with a measure of exposure – e.g. casualty rates per distance, or time, or number of trips travelled. Examples are here  and here . In this post we move on to look at the question of: Who Kills/Hurts/Endangers Whom?

(Note: The data is from Reported Road Casualties GB (RRCGB) 2017, Transport Statistics GB (TSGB) 2017 and Domestic Road Freight Stats GB (DRFSGB) 2017)

PACTS tweeted that their submission: ”Includes suggestions for better analysis of road casualty stats which would show harm as well as vulnerability and encourage danger reduction and active travel policies.” The purpose of this post is to build on their analysis to do just that. Here I refer to a key section of their document (I have abridged it – I strongly suggest you read the original).

“…in relation to understanding the risks and benefits of active travel, Reported Road Casualties Great Britain still has significant limitations:

 
• It does not distinguish benign modes from dangerous ones, i.e. those modes sustaining the casualties and those inflicting them.

• It assesses at length, with graphs, rates and commentary, the “vulnerability” of different road users, mainly of active travel modes.

• It does not present the other side of the equation, i.e. danger and casualties suffered by other road users in collisions with motorised modes – the number or rate of third party casualties associated with cars, buses and HGVs. Using the same RRCGB data, PACTS has done a preliminary analysis which shows an alternative picture of the risks by mode. (See graphs below.)

• It does not clearly convey that, for the vast majority of UK road users, they are much more likely to be killed in a car, or by car, than any other mode.

• It compares user fatality rates per distance travelled, concluding that walking and cycling are “high risk” modes whilst cars, buses and HGVs are low risk. This implies the trips are similar and interchangeable, which generally they are not. The average person travels over 5,000 miles by car/van per year. By comparison, the average person walks and cycles fewer than 300 miles per year. Even under the most optimistic CWIS (The Government’s Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy) scenario, there is no prospect that these trips or miles would be substituted on a like for like basis.

• Casualty numbers and risks are often measured in terms of those Killed and Seriously Injured (KSI). However, as there are approximately 13 reported serious injuries for every one fatality, KSI is really a measure of serious injuries. In addition, the UK definition of Serious Injury used in STATS19 is very broad. It ranges from cuts and minor fractures to dying more than 30 days after the collision. Whilst this may be a reasonable definition for road safety purposes, it makes KSIs a very crude assessment of risk. This has a bearing on assessing the risks of active travel. Cyclists have a much higher ratio of reported serious injuries to fatalities (36:1 in 2017) than car occupants (11:1) and the percentage of clinically serious (MAIS3+) injuries for cyclists admitted to hospital was lower (9%) than for any other road user group. In other words, cyclists may be involved in more KSIs but they are predominantly minor “serious injuries”.

So, below we have PACTS giving a basic illustration of casualties killed in collisions with the mode in question, as well as the users of that mode:

FIGURE ONE

(Incidentally, this is a good illustration of the point PACTS make that the vast majority of people killed on GB roads in 2017 died in collisions involving cars or vans.)

Teasing this out a little, take a look at the illustration below from SWOV in the Netherlands (with a population 3.9 times smaller), also for deaths in 2017.

FIGURE TWO
Transport mode victim (slachtoffer) against Transport mode third party (tegenpartij)

Of course, this does not imply legal responsibility is always that of the user of the third party. Nevertheless, I think this is a good indicator of “Who Kills Whom”.

Where this gets more interesting is in the next graphic from the PACTS document, where the number of non-users of the mode killed in collisions is expressed as a rate with exposure in terms of distance travelled by the mode:

FIGURE THREE
(Source: RAS 40004 P.235 -237 )

Figure Three gets closer to an understanding of which modes (or modes’ use) are implicated in the deaths of other road users. This in turn will lead us to assessing which modes pose more or less threat to others on the road (the two are different, albeit related, characteristics).
I want to refine this further by considering involvement of other modes in pedestrian deaths only, to allow for a more direct comparison. Furthermore, we see that according to Road type TSGB0702 TSGB0709 Percentage of road traffic and road length on different road types

LENGTH                                    TRAFFIC
Motorway                                    1%                                             21%
Urban A roads                            3%                                             15%
Rural A roads                              9%                                             29%
Urban minor roads                  33%                                             21%
Rural minor roads                    54%                                             14%

This means that 65% of traffic (i.e. motor traffic) is on roads used relatively less by pedestrians and cyclists.

So, to make a better comparison of involvement in pedestrian deaths I have shown in the next figure pedestrian deaths by involvement with other road users (per billion vehicle kilometres) in urban areas only, again for 2017.

Bicycle                                                    0.8

Motorcycle                                            4.9

Car                                                          1.4

Bus/Coach                                             0.7

Van                                                          0.6

HGV                                                         13

All                                                            1.6

Pedestrians killed in collision with other road users on urban roads per billion vehicle kilometres FIGURE FOUR

(Apologies for tabular representation only: problems with uploading the graphic)

Source: RAS 30018 p.114  Discussion: Involvement in deaths by mode…

Firstly, I have used deaths for uniformity and as these are the most reliable statistics, with fewer problems from non-reporting. However, this does mean that analysis is limited by some very small numbers, such as the three pedestrians killed in 2017 in collisions with pedal cycles. A different picture can emerge if using the less reliable Serious Injuries figures as well.

Secondly, there are two “stand-out” vehicle classes for involvement in pedestrian deaths – and these are similar to those for all other 3rd parties as shown in Figure Three, namely HGVs and, to a lesser extent, motorcycles.

Thirdly, I have separated out cars from vans in Figure Four: vans have the lowest involvement per billion vehicle kilometres travelled. I have to say I don’t know the reason for this. (Please feel free to send in comments on this and other issues below.)

Fourthly, buses and coaches seem to be very low for involvement in both Figures Three and Four.

Fifthly, while bicycles are at a very low level of involvement, they are not as low as pedestrians in Figure Three.

I now want to make a further step in the analysis of these figures which looks at what lies behind these levels of involvement. This is where we look at potential lethality of different modes.

…and potential lethality of modes

So: why is it that we see these differences in involvement?

1. HGVs. For some time we have known that HVs are heavily represented (compared to their modal share) in urban cyclist deaths – approximately 50% of cyclist deaths in London for the last couple of decades, despite lorries being some 5% of traffic. The figures for pedestrians are similar. Attention has been on the “blind spots” for HGV drivers that make it difficult for them to see pedestrians or cyclists near their vehicle, and the gap between vehicle body and tarmac, which is large enough for pedestrians and cyclists to be run over by what are very heavy vehicles. So far, so straightforward.

2. Buses and coaches. There are design features on modern buses which reduce danger to pedestrians: unlike HGVs there is Direct Vision on many, and generally a smaller gap between bus body and tarmac. Bus drivers are professionally trained: but so are HGV drivers, and bus drivers are under pressure to reduce “headway” and have other pressures on them. So the position of buses and coaches in both figures three and four is very low, and indeed lower than we might expect.

3. Motorcycles. The involvement rate is high here. We know that motorcycle users have a far higher user KSI rate than other modes by some way. But why the especially high figure for involvement with other users generally and pedestrians, as shown in figures three and four?

4. Cars. Again, although the figure for cars is higher than buses/coaches and bicycles, it is still a lot lower than motorcycles. Cars have a wider frontal area than motorcycles and can be used at similar speeds – so why is their involvement so much lower than motorcycles?

I want to answer these questions by referring to two key factors which have to be considered as we work backwards from involvement rates to a proper measure of danger:

Potential kinetic energy dispersed on impact

This is the key element of what we mean by “road danger”. It is essentially a product of the MASS of the vehicle (what most people understand as “weight”) and the SPEED it is travelling at when it hits a pedestrian. (When it hits another vehicle, the speed and mass of both vehicles have to be considered).

It’s why we in the Road Danger Reduction movement spend so much time seeing motor vehicle usage as the problem: it isn’t because of the personalities or intentions of drivers, it’s because of the physics involved. (This point is made nicely by the journalist Peter Walker  ).

It’s why anybody concerned with pedestrian safety has been urging communities to accept that motor vehicles should go no more than 20 mph if there are pedestrians in the vicinity. Partly this is because of the biomechanics of injury sustained by pedestrians – 20 mph is at the upper limit – but also because as speed goes up the energy potentially released increases exponentially: the usual figures quoted for pedestrian death rates in collisions with motor vehicles are 10% (or lower) at 20 mph; 50% at 30 mph and right up to 90% at 40 mph.

This is all shown above by comparing motorcycle and bicycle involvement rates: essentially motorcycles can be used at much higher speeds than bicycles (particularly well above 20 mph) and also have much greater mass.

But it doesn’t explain why cars, vans and buses are as low as they are. Buses tend not to go that much over 20 mph on routes in London, but cars and vans can and do. What is the reason for these levels of involvement being lower than we might expect just from looking at potential kinetic energy released on impact?

Pedestrian behaviour

A crucial element of the Road Danger Reduction approach is to accept that human beings constantly adapt their behaviour to their perceptions of danger. After some time being exposed to motor traffic – and the instructions from anxious parents and others – pedestrians tend to develop an awareness of what may pose a threat to their safety. This will affect how they actually behave in the highway environment.

So, I would suggest the following possible explanations for the data shown above:
1. Despite some awareness of the danger posed by HGVs, there is a problem with non-Direct Vision HGV cabs, and the consequences of making even small mistakes are very extreme. The figures for Serious Injuries (SIs) are less than twice as high as those for Killed – whereas the average for all vehicles is over ten times as high.

 2. Buses are very large and generally coloured red in London, taking up predictable positions in traffic, frequently in specific bus lanes. This would suggest a high level of pedestrian awareness of the threat, and accordingly a higher level of care taken.

3. By contrast with 1 and 2. above, motorcycles have a much narrower profile and are less easy for pedestrians to predict. I would argue this is a key factor in the high level of motorcycle involvement in pedestrian deaths.

4. Cars are a lot easier to see than motorcycles, and along with vans always make up a significant part of the traffic on roads in urban areas. People expect them. Therefore their involvement rate is lower than motorcycles, and not much higher than bicycles.

5. So why are bicycles at the level of involvement that they are? Their lack of mass and speed puts them far below motorcycles, with which they have a similar profile. But why are they not that far below cars (and possibly even at the same sort of level as vans)? I would suggest that pedestrians are not only less likely to be aware of bicycles because of the narrower profile, but also that pedestrians are aware that the danger level (because of lower speed and mass) is so much lower. This may be amplified by the fact that bicycling tends not to be seen as a “serious” form of transport in the UK. (I would urge readers who both drive and cycle in an urban area to consider this: do you find that pedestrians are more willing to step out in front of you when you are cycling or driving?)

Conclusion

I have attempted to present collision involvement rates, but also look at what lies behind them. This should indicate where practitioners should focus their attention when it comes to reducing danger. As ever, the indications are that attention should be paid to motor vehicles of all types – with particular issues around each of the motorised modes – before cyclists. Finally, we note that this type of discussion is unusual among transport professionals, and hope that it sparks comment and debate.

On the occasion of my 10-year anniversary I decided to get something special: a 360 degree camera! When you watch my future rides, filmed with this camera, you will be … Continue reading →

Delft was the third city in The Netherlands to experiment with modern cycling infrastructure, aided by the national government. After the experiments in Tilburg and The Hague in the 1970s, … Continue reading →

Assen's first railway station was built in 1870. It was completely demolished and replaced in 1989 by a modern design of station. That station has now also been demolished and replaced with another entirely new design. The new station opened a few months ago. There are still a few details of the work to be completed, but everything is in place now. As was promised, the cycle-parking has again David Hembrowhttps://plus.google.com/114578085331408050106noreply@blogger.com0http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2019/02/assens-new-railway-station.html

Another “real ride” in this week’s post. One from the main square in my hometown (very close to my home) to the city’s hospital. The city hospital of ʼs-Hertogenbosch used … Continue reading →

When you follow my blog and Twitter stream and saw my recent posts, you could get the impression that we have much snow in the Netherlands and that we constantly … Continue reading →

Two weeks ago the Netherlands was covered with a thin layer of snow. Enough snow to make cycling very uncomfortable if the roads and cycleways hadn’t been treated, but they … Continue reading →

While quite some of my followers are suffering from the heat in Australia, most of you are in the northern hemisphere, like we are in the Netherlands, where it is … Continue reading →

A video in French, that is the not so usual treat I have for you in this week’s blog post. In March 2018, a professional film team was working in … Continue reading →