When I receive a PR email which begins, “We’ve done a study about cycling,” I inwardly wince. This is based, I’m afraid, on bitter experience.



Who could forget the infamous 2009 “study” by insurers Liverpool Victoria which claimed cycling accidents had shot up because of hordes of inexperienced riders taking to the roads? Among many errors the company managed to sufficiently mangle the data that they doubled the actual numbers of cyclists on the roads.

In 2012, the Institute of Advanced Motorists said 57% of cyclists admit to jumping red lights. Aside from the fact this was based on a self-selecting web survey it emerged that only 1.9% said they regularly did it, with the IAM lumping these in with those who did so rarely or had done so only once or twice.

Thus the scepticism alarm had already sounded when I started reading what insurance giant Aviva was proudly trumpeting as a major study on cycle safety in and around London.

It’s based on a mixture of police data and Aviva’s own claims statistics, and a few elements are interesting in their way. For example, as someone who commutes daily around the vast, speedy and traffic-choked Elephant and Castle gyratory system it’s illuminating to find that from 2009-2013 it hosted 80 road incidents involving cyclists of sufficient seriousness for police to be called, more than anywhere else inside the M25.

And while it’s well known that lorries are disproportionately involved in crashes with cyclists, Aviva’s own claims statistics also show 37% of serious incidents with bikes involved vans.

But that’s about as good as it gets. I have two main worries about this exercise: one about a particular statistic, and then the overall tone.

First the statistic. One of four headline findings in the press release is the eye-catching claim that among serious incidents that took place after dark a third involved cyclists not using lights.



This struck me a surprising. Not using lights is, for me, very silly, all the more so when modern bike lights are increasingly tiny, powerful and cheap. But the Aviva statistic doesn’t tie in with other studies.

The most exhaustive national research, a Transport Research Laboratory paper based on three years of police data, found a lack of cyclist lights was cited as a factor in just 2% of incidents where a rider was seriously hurt or killed.

Transport for London (TfL) has done similar studies. Its figures for 2010 found that of 3,338 factors ascribed in incidents where a cyclist was injured, a lack of lights in the dark or in poor visibility totalled just 38 of them. That’s 1.1%, not 33%.

I asked Aviva where their very different figure came from. The first worry comes with the source. This isn’t police data, it’s claims data – this is, potentially, a driver just saying, “The cyclist had no lights”. Aviva stresses these are settled claims, where the issue of lights was agreed. But without examining all the cases it’s hard to know how robust the explanations might be.

The next concern is the sample size: just 100 incidents in all, according to Aviva, and so a mere 33 where no lights were supposedly involved. We can argue all day about how prevalent a safety issue is cycling without lights – my own observations is that even in London fewer than 5% of riders do so – but I just don’t think a sample of 100 is nearly enough to make such a bold claim, especially one that ties so neatly into the popular narrative that cyclists are often injured because they are reckless or negligent.

Next, the tone. In part it’s just facile. The press release announces that a third of all badly hurt cyclist around London are “Mamils”, that infamous species/acronym of the middle-aged man in Lycra. What they actually mean is just men commuting to work aged 40 to 49. Aviva’s by now long-suffering press office conceded there was no data about what clothing might have been worn, and that the Mamil reference was “in retrospect, a bit silly”.



Far worse is the new and glossy Aviva cycle safety video, which you can view here. It‘s clear the people who made this believe it exudes reasonableness and everyday common sense. It’s equally clear those same people have very little real idea about cycling.

For a start, it’s stupidly alarmist. The film begins with helmet camera footage of riders being cut up and knocked off. The main talking head, Aviva’s chief underwriting officer, Simon Warsop, gravely explains that in the last five years there have been 23,000 “accidents” involving bikes inside the M25. Heart-rending strings swell as he talks about “the human cost”.

Warsop is perfectly right that London could and should be a far safer place to cycle. But he’s over-playing the risks, missing the context. Somewhere between 10 and 20 people die on bikes per year in London. That’s far too high. But if you extrapolate national figures then inactivity – people not doing exercise like cycling – kills around 20,000. By repeatedly stressing cycling dangers is the video really helping the overall human cost? Or is it just that one human cost is normalised?

And what do Simon Warson and Aviva suggest as a way to cut cycle casualties? Yes, helmets and high vis. I’m not opposed to either in theory. But when 50% of the cyclist deaths in London involve drivers of lorries with massive blind spots crushing cyclists as they turn left, helmets and high vis are not the answer, irrespective of whether you think bad driving or bad cycling is the main cause of this.

Also not the answer are the platitudes presented by Warson and by the three cyclists who speak on the film (all men, all in or around middle age). Be less angry and “show each other a bit more love”, suggests one rider. I’m not about to disagree with the sentiment in general, but if he really believes this will significantly cut the cyclist casualty toll the man needs to spend a bit less time loving and a bit more time thinking.

The whole film is predicated on the notion that cyclists’ actions are as much to blame for their injuries and deaths as drivers. And that’s just not true. The same 2010 TfL study mentioned above shows that in incidents where a cyclist was hurt, factors connecting the cyclist behaviour were cited 3,338 times. The figure for drivers? 7,856. That means cyclists contribute 29% of the factors.

In 43% of all the cases drivers not looking properly, or misjudging a cyclist’s speed, or just being reckless, were seen as to blame. However much love the cyclist shows, that’s not going to help here.

So what does keep cyclists safe? Proper infrastructure, that’s what. Safe, segregated lanes, with protected junctions and bike-friendly traffic lights. On this, Aviva’s press release and film are oddly silent. The company has a big headquarters in London’s City district, not far from the planned new east-west segregated cycle superhighway. But when lots of businesses spoke out in favour of the scheme during a recent consultation process, Aviva was not among them.

The most frustrating part of all this is that Aviva almost certainly mean well. The press officers were endlessly stressing how much the company supports cycling. But if they think flaky “statistics” implying cyclists are the architects of their own demise are helpful, they’re wrong. If they think a combination of helmets, high vis, and some generalised goodwill is all that’s needed to improve cycle safety, they’re wrong. They want to be a force for good. Instead they’re just yet another part of the problem.

10.45am update

A bit belatedly I’ve realised I was, in one element, slightly unfair on Aviva. While the video does not mention infrastructure, and as far as I can tell they did not formally back the new London cycle superhighways, their press release does have this quote from Simon Warsop, which I initially missed: