I am sorry, but it is a time-limited debate.
The City of London police take cycling breaches seriously, but MoJ data for the country more widely demonstrates that enforcement actions are vanishingly low—just three prosecutions for the whole of last year for ignoring traffic directions, for instance. Bikers themselves pay a very high price for using the road. It is very difficult to get figures; I have asked the Library for figures, and I think we will hear figures in this debate that are inconsistent. I do not know what the true figures are but, in the figures I have seen, each week two die and around 80 are seriously injured. I had a colleague seriously handicapped for life when a lorry knocked her off her bike at a roundabout and rode over her legs with his rear wheels.
Pedestrians suffer too in collisions with bikers. Fatalities are rare, though one is too many, but around 500 pedestrian injuries, some serious, are recorded each year—again, I do not know whether that is the right figure—as a result of pedestrian/biker collisions.
What should be done? First, the Highway Code, which I read recently for the first time in many years, is a confusing blend of advice and legal requirements,
and it plainly needs revision. We should consider, for instance, legally requiring cyclists to wear helmets and high-vis jackets. Wearing a helmet, it is estimated, reduces the risk of head or brain injury in an accident by 60%. Secondly, we need better education for novice bikers, and more intense public information campaigns for all bikers. Thirdly, the Home Office needs to press the police to take proportionate action to encourage a culture of compliance, especially in city centres.
Biking is a wonderful activity, but let us make it safer for bikers and for the rest of us.
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