Cycling: Accidents

Department for Transport written question – answered at on 26 March 2018.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Fabian Hamilton Fabian Hamilton Shadow Minister (Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs), Shadow Minister (Defence)

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate he has made of the number of (a) deaths and (b) serious injuries of cyclists that were attributable to poorly-maintained local roads in England in each year since 2007.

Photo of Jesse Norman Jesse Norman Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

The numbers of reported cyclist fatalities and serious injuries that have been recorded on local roads in England for each year since 2007 where poorly maintained roads could be considered to be a contributory factor is provided in the table.

Reported cyclist serious and fatal injuries on local roads in England where poorly maintained roads is reported as a contributory factor1

Poor or defective road surface

Inadequate or masked signs or road markings

Year

Reported Cyclist Fatalities

Reported Cyclist Serious Injuries

Reported Cyclist Fatalities

Reported Cyclist Serious Injuries

2007

2

12

0

5

2008

0

15

0

6

2009

1

28

0

5

2010

6

21

0

6

2011

2

37

0

4

2012

1

38

0

3

2013

1

34

1

10

2014

0

46

0

10

2015

1

42

0

9

2016

4

52

0

7

Source: DfT STATS19 reported road casualties

1 Includes only casualties where a police officer attended the scene and in which a contributory factor was reported. In 2016, this related to 72% of reported accidents that took place on local roads in England.

By way of context, cycling in England has increased over the time period in question, rising from 3.7 billion kilometres in 2007 to 5.0 billion kilometres in 2016.

It should be noted that contributory factors assigned by police officers do not assign blame for the accident to any specific road user, however they do provide some insight into why and how road accidents occur. They give an indication of which factors the attending officer thought contributed to the accident. Officers do not need to carry out a full investigation of the incident before allocating contributory factors; they usually use professional judgement about what they can see at the scene.

Not all accidents are included in the contributory factor data; only accidents where the police attended the scene and reported at least one contributory factor are included. A total of 72% of accidents reported to the police in 2016 on local roads in England met these criteria although each accident can have multiple contributory factors attributed to them.

Does this answer the above question?

Yes0 people think so

No0 people think not

Would you like to ask a question like this yourself? Use our Freedom of Information site.