| Topic: | Reply | |
| Posted by: | Francis Rowe | |
| Date/Time: | 21/01/26 09:00:00 |
Michael has a bit of a tell. When he dangles some statistics which he claims supports his argument and refuses to quote the data in detail, it is always worth taking a closer look.
What you will learn that only one cyclist has been seriously hurt on Hammersmith Bridge by a motor vehicle so far this century.
Firstly, apologies for dragging up the past to anyone who was connected to anyone killed or badly hurt in any of the incidents referred to below. It wasn’t me who initially misrepresented these tragedies thus making clarification imperative.
The data on collisions ‘in the vicinity’ of Hammersmith Bridge is helpfully compiled by CycleStreets.net which aims to provide safe routes for people on bikes.
The data they use is the same STATS19 data referred to earlier by Michael. Map co-ordinates are provided so you can pin point where collisions occurred.
This shows two fatal collisions involving in the area over the last three decades. One in 2011 and one in 2022. Neither of these was actually on the bridge. The 2011 death was on Queen Caroline Street and the 2022 was at the junction with Riverview Gardens and Castelnau.
As for collisions involving cyclists there have been ten in which serious injury resulted in the period covered by the data which appears to go back to 1999. Interestingly, the occurrence of serious injury seems to have risen since the bridge was closed with four of these collisions having taken place after 2019. That is what you would expect as there are clearly many more cyclists in the area than there used to be.
Of the six serious injuries that occurred prior to closure only one actually took place on the bridge.
The important point to take from this is that the evidence is that crossing Hammersmith Bridge is no more dangerous when it is open to traffic than when it isn’t. Hopefully this will encourage people who have switched to bikes to stick with that mode of transport when the bridge reopens and ignore cycling campaigners who seem determine to stress how riding a bike could lead to your death or serious injury and will exaggerate and distort to make a point.
If you are interested to investigate further the link to the underlying data is here. |