another cyclist killed by a lorry in London

[beardy]

mostly based on stereotypes

Which is probably quite suitable as we are talking about the interaction between two groups rather than two specific individuals.

[TonyR]

There are certainly design features of construction vehicles that are likely to make them more likely to crush people. They are higher with bigger heavier wheels so there is a greater chance of being dragged under and run over, rather than being pushed over to the side.

More crucially construction lorries are exempt in legislation from having side bars to prevent cyclists falling under the wheels. That is about to change in London in September when Crossrail standards will become mandatory for all HGVs in London.

[661-Pete]

On the issue of women cycling in cities - another article worth looking through:
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/ ... led-female
For once I think the comments are reasonably balanced - though things may change once the trolls latch on....

[mjr]

On the issue of women cycling in cities - another article worth looking through:
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/ ... led-female
For once I think the comments are reasonably balanced - though things may change once the trolls latch on....

Looks like it's changed, with people blaming dead cyclists for riding up the left of lorries, ignoring that some are left-hooked and others are just obeying the crap lanes that highways authorities mark out for cycling which direct you to ride up the left of lorries.

Over all, that's an article that calls women a species and once again, lots of people are focusing exclusively on only one of the groups underrepresented in cycling, ignoring the others. We all want nicer places to ride, don't we?

[Flinders]

Okay, for those who think the stats may reflect women being more likely to go up the inside of vehicles in general, why is it one particular type of HGV that is over-represented? Do women, for some strange reason, only go up on the inside of tipper trucks? Or does that sort of truck have worse arrangements for mirrors?

There are certainly design features of construction vehicles that are likely to make them more likely to crush people. They are higher with bigger heavier wheels so there is a greater chance of being dragged under and run over, rather than being pushed over to the side.
http://lcc.org.uk/articles/lcc-challenges-construction-industry-to-adopt-its-safer-urban-lorry-to-reduce-lorry-cyclist-deaths

However, I'm not sure that a particular type of HGV is that grossly overrepresented when you allow for exposure. The figures I have seen compare the overall milage of different types of truck - typically trucks will do most of their milage on motorways between distribution depots away from town centres so will rarely encounter cyclists. London is a vibrant rapidly growing city with a lot of cyclists and a lot of building work going on so if you are a cyclist in London and encounter a truck it is more likely to be a construction vehicle than say a livestock transport vehicle, and vice-versa if you are riding on a country lane.

I'm female, and I don't go up the inside of trucks,

And neither have you been killed by one

but I have seen men doing it. Trucks also overtake me, sometimes close to/on junctions, however far over I am. Do they never overtake men or something? Do all men, or even most men, take the centre of the lane? I honestly doubt it.

A greater tendency for females to do X doesn't mean that ALL females do X while NO males ever do - or even the majority of females do X.
If say 1% of male cyclists regularly undertook left turning trucks and 3% of females then that would be sufficient to account for the difference in the casualty rate.

There is something else going on here, and we need to know what it is. Speculation has gone on long enough, we need hard evidence.

While most of the discussion on this thread is indeed speculation (mostly based on stereotypes), the tendencey for women to overtake on the wrong side is base on evidence:
See: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22931179
Bicyclist fatalities involving heavy goods vehicles: gender differences in risk perception, behavioral choices, and training.
Frings D1, Rose A, Ridley AM.

Abstract
OBJECTIVES:
Females are typically involved in fewer collisions when pedal cycling than males. However, female cyclists appear to be overrepresented in the number of fatal collisions involving heavy goods vehicles (HGVs). These collisions often involve cyclists passing HGVs on the side furthest from the HGV driver (nearside). It is hypothesized that this pattern of fatalities may be partly due to differences in how males and females perceive the risk associated with various cycling maneuvers. It is also hypothesized that this difference may be overcome with advanced training.

METHODS:4,596 UK cyclists completed an online questionnaire in which they reported their level of cycle training and rated the risk they perceived to be associated with various cycling maneuvers, the likelihood that they would engage in them, and history of collision involvement.

RESULTS: Females perceived a slightly greater level of risk to be associated with cycling. However, males differentiated between the risks involved in nearside and offside overtaking to a greater extent than females. Risk perception was significantly correlated with the reported likelihood that participants would engage in risky maneuvers such as overtaking on the nearside and also with past collision prevalence. Advanced cycling training was correlated with higher levels of perceived risk associated with overtaking on the nearside; however, basic cycle training was not.

CONCLUSIONS: Cyclists who do not correctly differentiate between the risks associated with nearside and offside overtaking may be more at risk of being involved in HGV-related collisions. Advanced cycling training is linked to more accurate risk perception. To reduce fatalities, public awareness campaigns should focus on the increased risk of nearside overtaking and encourage cyclists to take advanced training.

Two things strike me about that post.

One is that an online questionnaire is by definition not a random sample, just for starters, and some of the conclusions are dodgy to say the least.

The other is that we are talking about actual accidents where someone was hurt or killed, so we need hard evidence of what happened in those specific cases before we can say what the causes may be, even a better conducted piece of research on general everyday self-reported behavior has very little to contribute. It's perfectly possible that the general behavior of every cyclist actually was deviated from in all the cases, some of them, or none of them.

I think thirdcrank's earlier post which included the suggestion that the stats themselves may even be misleading is the most thoughtful post so far, and raises a number of things that 'could be followed up with profit', as they say.

[Flinders]

I'm female, and I don't go up the inside of trucks,

And neither have you been killed by one

But I could easily have been left hooked by one, as I have been overtaken by trucks more times than I can possibly remember, so what is your point?

[Vorpal]

Women are perhaps at greater risk because they have less awareness of dangers on the road and are also less able to perceive these dangers. And also your average female cyclist might just be less experienced on the roads than your average male cyclist that might have been riding longer and that might clock up more miles in any given period.

I'm sorry, but unless you have some evidence to support this, I simply don't believe it. There may be more men than women on the roads, but that doens't make the women less experienced, it only makes them fewer. The study that Pete Owens linked to does look at behaviour, but I've read it, frankly, while it does show that women are *slightly* more likely than men to think the risk of overtaking on the inside is similar to that of overtaking on the outside, they still recognized that it was safer to wait behind. It doens't look at actual behaviour (just what people report on surveys).

Even if there is something to what you say, how does it help? I think that we are looking in the wrong place to solve the problem.

In general, I agree with TC, there is more that we don't know, than do know, and the statistics may be misleading. It's not easy to sort out.

In many cases, the causes of these accidents is not known. For a few, we have a published inquest, a driver arrested, or other other information. But most are little more than statistics to most of us. Furthermore, Stats19 data do not distinguish between types of HGVs (they are separated somewhat by weight), though I expect it would be possible to figure out, if one downloaded the raw data and went through it in detail.

The insurance industry may well have some statistics on the incidents that tipper lorries are involved in. But the pieces of informaiton available are diverse and not readily gathered together.

These fatalities deserve very careful investigation, by TRL or another 3rd party. Until we have something like that in hand, all we can do is speculate.