Ten years of serious and fatal cycle collisions in Hackney

At the end of last year I wrote about fatal and serious cycle collisions within Hackney from 2009-2014. I have since acquired the same statistics for cycle collisions from 2004-2009 and so now have a complete breakdown of all 2095 collisions within Hackney involving people cycling that caused some kind of an injury for the ten year period up to the end of June 2014. Of these 2095 collisions 283 of them resulted in either serious or fatal injuries to the person cycling and I have mapped all of those collisions here:

Click here to view the map

Once again I've included the vehicles involved, age and sex of the person injured or killed and a brief description of the collision itself (again please note that these descriptions are lifted directly off the police report and not my own words). Here is a breakdown of the statistics:

Of those 283 collisions 271 resulted in serious injuries with 12 of them fatal. 65% of the collisions occurred on the main roads and 35% on B or unclassified roads.

Once again the A10 is the worst road in the borough by quite some distance for serious collisions with a staggering 28% of all cycling KSIs occurring on it. The A10 is a clear desire line for people cycling in the borough as it is a direct route though the heart of Hackney linking Stamford Hill, Stoke Newington, Dalston, Haggerston, Shoreditch and the City together within a few miles . I know I used this quote from the Hackney Council cycling plan in the last post but it is worth repeating here:

It is inevitable that cyclists will continue to use our busy high streets and strategic roads that carry high volumes of vehicular traffic because often they are the most direct and quickest routes.

I'll save my thoughts on the recently announced Cycle 'Superhighway' 1 for another time. The Shoreditch Triangle, Green Lanes and Mare Street in Hackney Central were also other collision blackspots

Statistics on the age and sex of those involved in the collisions is not that surprising: 42% were aged 18-29, 26% were aged 30-39 and 7% were children. 72% were male and 28% female.  If you've spent any time on a street corner in Hackney watching the demographic of people cycling then it will not come as any great surprise that over 70% of people involved in these collisions were both male and under the age of 40.

As for the type of vehicles involved in the 'serious injury' collisions more than 70% involved people cycling being struck by a car with buses, lorries, vans and two cyclists colliding all accounting for about 5% each.

As for the twelve fatal collisions six of them, precisely 50%, occurred on the A10. Two were on the A106, one on the A102, one on the B113 Morning Lane (the point where it is a dual carriageway outside Tesco) and one occurred on Broadway Market. Five of the people killed were aged 18-29, six were in their thirties with the death in Broadway Market classed as "age unknown". Eight were male and four were female. As for vehicles involved again it is probably no great surprise that a Lorry was involved in just over half of the deaths, two involved a car and one each for bus, taxi and two cycles colliding. The fatal collision on Broadway Market was the fatal collision which involved two bicycles colliding; whilst the main roads in the borough are the most dangerous for people cycling, these tragic collisions can still occur in the most unlikely of circumstances.

Please take time to view the map and feel free to use it for your own research. In the eight months since this data was collated another two people cycling in Hackney have lost their lives and no doubt many more have suffered serious injuries. Lets hope that Hackney can learn from other countries and make improvements to the roads where these collisions occur.