Cyclists don't count as road users

[whole diary]

[ChrisB]

Fine, so insurance until your utopia for cyclists comes about?

[Tim]

I'll just ask you one question - if you were out on your pushbike, cycling along and were perhaps momentarily distracted by ecstatic thoughts of all we have to look forward to once GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) have finished "Building a Greater West", and in your euphoria failed to see someone using a pedestrian crossing, mowed them down causing serious injuries, how would you finance the consequent claim for compensation?

Similarly, if you were the victim and the perpetrator was uninsured and unable to compensate you, how would you feel?

If someone was being seriously injured by cyclists and cast aside uncompensated every hour of every single  day you would have a very strong argument for compulsory insurance.  But that doesn't happen.  Reality is plenty of minor injuries and very occasionally a cyclist-caused tragedy.

Contrast that with motor vehicles and you are looking at dozens of life changing injuries and 7 deaths caused every single day.   

The scale of the damage caused by motor vehicles is completely and utterly out of proportion to the damage caused by cyclists.

We could have a society where everyone is insured for absolutely every risk (and whilst I wouldn't be in favour of that, I can certainly see that there are good arguments in support of going in that direction), but until we do it is not illogical to demand insurance against the major risks and not the minor ones.

[TaplowGreen]

I'll just ask you one question - if you were out on your pushbike, cycling along and were perhaps momentarily distracted by ecstatic thoughts of all we have to look forward to once GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) have finished "Building a Greater West", and in your euphoria failed to see someone using a pedestrian crossing, mowed them down causing serious injuries, how would you finance the consequent claim for compensation?

Similarly, if you were the victim and the perpetrator was uninsured and unable to compensate you, how would you feel?

If someone was being seriously injured by cyclists and cast aside uncompensated every hour of every single  day you would have a very strong argument for compulsory insurance.  But that doesn't happen.  Reality is plenty of minor injuries and very occasionally a cyclist-caused tragedy.

Contrast that with motor vehicles and you are looking at dozens of life changing injuries and 7 deaths caused every single day.   

The scale of the damage caused by motor vehicles is completely and utterly out of proportion to the damage caused by cyclists.

We could have a society where everyone is insured for absolutely every risk (and whilst I wouldn't be in favour of that, I can certainly see that there are good arguments in support of going in that direction), but until we do it is not illogical to demand insurance against the major risks and not the minor ones.

You seem to be arguing with yourself. No-one is challenging the greater and more regular threat caused by cars, and no-one is suggesting that everyone is insured for every single risk.

Your suggestion that cycling represents a minor risk is entirely your subjective opinion. In relative terms it is obviously smaller than the risks from cars but that does not make it minor per se. As someone who on a daily basis witnesses the behaviour of cyclists in Central London and has witnessed pedestrians mown down I would absolutely challenge it.

I am asking BNM a specific question based on his own comments, I am sure he will respond accordingly when he has time.

[JayMac]

If I was subject to serious injury by a cyclist I would not be concerned if they had third party insurance. There are other routes to compensation.

A civil claim is one. Another, if the cyclist is prosecuted for a criminal offence, is a claim for compensation following their conviction. If the person prosecuted or taken to civil court is of limited means then so be it. That's life.

The chances are miniscule though of me being seriously injured by a cyclist.

If there's voluntary insurance held by the cyclist then that's a bonus as an additional avenue to compensation.

So. Compulsory cyclist insurance is a "no" from me, no matter what may arise from an incident involving myself and a negligent cyclist.

[Red Squirrel]

I found this FOI^▸ (Freedom of Information) response:

Deaths (Persons)
Year	(a) Pedestrian hit by	(b) Pedestrian hit by
	pedal cycle	car, pick-up or truck
2006	3	233
2007	6	267
2008	3	247
2009	0	141
2010	2	123

These figures are for the whole of the UK^▸ (United Kingdom). The ONS^» (Office for National Statistics - website) are unable to distinguish whether these collisions took place on the road or on the pavement, but it would not be unreasonable to assume that in significant number of cases the pedestrian was to some degree culpable.

By way of adding a little perspective, here are comparable figures for the number of murders in the UK:

Deaths (Persons)
Year	(a) Recorded murders	(b) Of which, shootings
2006	749	56
2007	772	53
2008	668	39
2009	626	39
2010	648	58

So if I read this correctly, you are much more likely to be shot dead than to be killed by a bicycle, but the risk of being killed by a car is far greater than either. From this I conclude that either (a) gun criminals should be forced to take out insurance, or (b) the risk of being killed by an errant cyclist is actually vanishingly small.

[ChrisB]

Not much use is compensation if you are killed though.

More interesting would be number of pax hospitalised by cyclists cycling....

[Red Squirrel]

These are the pedestrian casuality figures for 2009 to 2013:

	Lorry	Van	Bus	Car	Motorbike	Bicycle
% of GB▸ (Great Britain) traffic	5	13	1	78	1	1
% of pedestrian deaths involved in	13	7	7	68	3	1
% of pedestrian serious injuries involved in	2	5	5	81	4	2
% of pedestrian slight injuries involved in	1	5	5	82	4	2
% of pedestrian casualties involved in	2	5	5	82	4	2

You will note that buses seem disproportionately effective at killing their would-be customers; you'll probably be less surprised to see that lorries punch above their weight in the carnage stakes. However (whilst bearing in mind that the numbers are so small that rounding errors could creep in) it does look like bicycles injure rather more people than they should.

Van drivers on the other hand can bask in the knowledge that they kill and injure fewer people than expected.

[mjones]

These are the pedestrian casuality figures for 2009 to 2013:

	Lorry	Van	Bus	Car	Motorbike	Bicycle
% of GB▸ (Great Britain) traffic	5	13	1	78	1	1
% of pedestrian deaths involved in	13	7	7	68	3	1
% of pedestrian serious injuries involved in	2	5	5	81	4	2
% of pedestrian slight injuries involved in	1	5	5	82	4	2
% of pedestrian casualties involved in	2	5	5	82	4	2

You will note that buses seem disproportionately effective at killing their would-be customers; you'll probably be less surprised to see that lorries punch above their weight in the carnage stakes. However (whilst bearing in mind that the numbers are so small that rounding errors could creep in) it does look like bicycles injure rather more people than they should.

Van drivers on the other hand can bask in the knowledge that they kill and injure fewer people than expected.

You have to take account of relative exposure when comparing distance-based measures. A high proportion of motor vehicle traffic is on roads with few or zero pedestrians (e.g. motorways), so the pedestrian casualities they are involved with arise from a small proportion of their total mileage. In comparison, cycle trips are predominantly in and around urban areas and streets where most pedestrians are to be found.

So rather than looking at the likelihood of each driver or cyclist hitting a pedestrian per km driven or cycled, we really should look from the point of view of the pedestrian: which mode is most likely to kill or injure them per trip or km walked. And looked at like that, it is quite clear that cyclists present a very small part of the total risk to pedestrians. I'd add that this doesn't mean the risk from cyclists should be ignored, but that should be considered through appropriate design of highway and cycling infrastructure, in particular not converting footways to shared-use 'cycle paths', a wholly inadequate form of cycling infrastructure that is bad for both groups.