thirdcrank wrote:It's been suggested that there's been some sort of official study which has been leaked but not published....
....It wouldn't be much of a labour to look at all the investigation reports of these deaths to consider all the possible links to see what common features if any there were beyond the obvious ones which have already been highlighted.
The possibility of digging out the files raises the issue of other crashes where the rider was injured but survived. For obvious reasons, there is generally more publicity surrounding fatal crashes than those where the casualty is gravely injured but survives. In these cases, the difference between death and survival may be as much a combination of luck and the skills of the medical people as the exact cause of the crash. So, if all so-called KSI crashes involving cyclists were looked at it may be that the numbers of male casualties would be found to be higher. To make this clear, I'm not suggesting that men are more likely to survive being run over by a truck than women, just that in this set of events, men have been less unlucky.
That line then raises the countless near misses, "damage only" crashes and the apparently increasing number of injury crashes which are recorded but not investigated.
"When I was a lad" I was knocked off my bike by an overtaking lorry on North Street, Wetherby, when it formed part of the Great North Road AKA the A1. I was uninjured other than minor bumps, but the wheels crushed my rear wheel. It was purely by my good luck that this forum was not spared 20,000+ posts. The police took a report but even in those days it will not have been recorded for the stats.
TfL and Loughborough University looked into all available fatal and serious injury collision files in London from 2008 to 2011 that were investigated by the Met's specialist Serious Collision Investigation unit. This took place in 2013 into 2014 if I remember correctly. The people at Loughborough Uni spent a huge amount of time going through every piece of paper for every collision to see what they could find to see if there was something being missed other than the obvious. They worked with the Met Police and were passionate about what they were doing but to look beyond the 'obvious' issues was not a simple task.
Getting the files together was not as easy as just 'digging them out' and in fact took many months as they were all at different stages in many locations - ongoing, waiting for court hearings, inquests and others completed.
As to any hidden report - I doubt it as I was one of the ones who worked with LU.
Sadly no simple answer that is achievable has been found