Cycling safety

 photo: www.NZHerald.co.nz - photographer Steven McNicoll

There has been a spate of car v cyclist deaths and serious injuries in the last week and as a result there is much noise made by various interest groups and the public – as Shakespeare would tell us – full of sound and fury, not necessarily achieving much.

If you look at each of the incidents they all occur in circumstances which conform to previously identified risk factors.  Although most cycling injuries occur in urban areas, more serious accidents occur on open roads where speeds are greater, so you would expect the worst accident to have occurred there – which it did.  Highest rates of accidents in urban areas for adults are during major commuting times – which happened.  Children and teenagers are at worst risk, and we saw both groups injured or killed this weekend.  That it all happened over a short period may simply be a statistical anomaly.  In fact cycling deaths are still way below the 1990 total of 27 killed.

Either party may be responsible for an accident (in serious crash injuries about 25% are cyclists fault, and in 13% there is some fault of the cyclist), but in all cases the consequences for a cyclist are greater, due to their relative instability and much lower protection.  Having said that, statistically, cycling is still a much lower risk than riding a motorcycle.

People have an interesting relationship with driving and their vehicles and most treat it as an extension of their personal space, happily engaging in activities in their vehicles they would otherwise only do in the privacy of their homes.  It is hardly surprising then that we treat apparent obstacles to our progress – such as cyclists – the same way as we would treat a direct marketing call or Jehovah's  Witness visit at dinnertime.   Our reactions to these events reflects our personality.  Motorists get particularly upset when cyclists flout the rules, and although there are cyclists who are arrogant or ignorant, most will tell you they do so because our roads are particularly poorly designed to accommodate cyclists – for instance most traffic lights don't recognise cyclists presence, meaning they will only get a green light if a car happens to be in their lane (imagine how many motorists would go through red lights if the situation was reversed).  The LTSA believe, paradoxically, fewer cycling accidents would happen if there were more cyclists, both through “safety in numbers”, and demand for better road design.  Since the majority of accidents with cyclists happen at intersections, separate cycle lanes can actually increase the risk to cyclists by putting them out of the motorists “zone of observation” until they enter the intersection.

Recent research on happiness placed a figure of nearly 50% as the time our mind wanders from the task we are performing, and around 50% of serious injury accidents between cyclists and motor vehicles where the driver was at fault are due to inattention or diverted attention.  We have a limited ability for “directed attention” - our ability to concentrate despite distractions.  This is a task carried out by the inhibitory attention system, which can become fatigued - unsurprisingly called directed attention fatigue (DAF), with symptoms that include; impatience, forgetfulness, feeling stressed, cranky or distracted; and can lead to bad judgment, apathy, and accidents.  Sound familiar?  Many people have commented on the level of distraction in modern society, so maybe DAF is becoming more prevalent.

So what can be done?  Back in 2003 a town in the Netherlands called Drachten - population 45,000 - looked at this same issue and came to the conclusion that many of the problems were due to the number of rules and directions on the road.  The founder of this philosophy, Hans Monderman said "We're losing our capacity for socially responsible behaviour, ...The greater the number of prescriptions, the more people's sense of personal responsibility dwindles."  Their solution was removing signs, roadmarkings, traffic signals, and blur the distinction between pavement and roadway to force drivers to interact with others rather than comply with “artificial” rules.  These included intersections with over 20,000 traffic movements per day.  By making the road theoretically more dangerous they reduced traffic flow issues, reduced the number of accident injuries and eliminated deaths.  This concept is called “shared space” as it removes the segregation of motor vehicles, pedestrians and other road users.   It has been trialled in a number of cities around the world including some streets in Auckland.

Shared space in Brighton, England (photo from Wikipedia)

Although there are ways of specifically targeting cyclist safety, many of the safety issues are common with other road users, such as poor road design, and lack of knowledge and experience.  Some, such as driving while intoxicated are wider social problems – so there is no simple solution.  The appeal of shared space as one component of a solution comes from a couple of simple messages often forgotten – pay attention! and be nice to one another.