5.1 Serious injury statistics for cyclists compared with other road users
There are two sets of source data related to road user incidents:
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STATS19 which is a record of accidents which become known to the police
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Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) which are records of all patients admitted to NHS hospitals in England
More accidents are recorded in the HES data base than the STATS19 data base
The chart below is derived from Hospital Episode Statistics published by the NHS (Ref http://www.content.digital.nhs.uk/catalogue/PUB22378 , spreadsheet external causes.xls). It shows that more cyclists than any other road users are seriously injured.
‘More cyclists than any other road users are seriously injured’
Think twICE
10638 of these cycling serious injuries were due to non-collision incidents i.e. incidents in which no other road user was involved. That represents 65 % of the total. Unfortunately the HES data provides no further breakdown.
It is estimated that only 4 % of non-collision incidents are attended by the police and therefore recorded in STATS19.(Source: European Transport Safety Council (2007) Social and Economic consequences of road traffic injury in Europe).
As there is no publicly available data on the contributory causes to cycling non-collision incidents a survey was undertaken of over 1000 cyclists to provide this information. The results of this survey were published for the first time as part of the Big Book of Accident Prevention in 2013, an annual Rospa publication under the title ‘ROSPA :Delivering accident prevention at local level in the local public health system – Case study : Non collision injuries in Bristol’ .
Analysis of the survey shows that 26% of all reported non-collision incidents happened as a result of slipping on ice. This may appear surprising to some. However the analysis presented in section 5.3 concludes :-
A survey of English local authorities across the country showed that, on average, ice occured every 2-3 days from Nov to March in the last 10 years.
This frequency of ice helps to support the 26 % figure above