page_title: Cycling in London
section_title: 2013 deaths
hierarchical_section_title: Cycling in London / Safety / 2013 deaths
caption_attribution_description: English: Participants in the Space for Cycling (on Twitter, "#space4cycling") campaign's Big Ride demonstration cycling towards the Palace of Westminster in London. The campaign calls for safer road conditions in Britain for cyclists.
context_page_description: Cycling in London is a popular mode of transport and leisure activity within the capital city of the United Kingdom. Following a national decline in the 1960s of levels of utility cycling, cycling as a mode of everyday transport within London began a slow regrowth in the 1970s. This continued until the beginning of the 21st century, when levels began to increase significantly - during the period from 2000 to 2012, the number of daily journeys made by bicycle in Greater London doubled to 580,000. The growth in cycling can partly be attributed to the launch in 2010 by Transport for London of the Santander Cycle Hire system throughout the city's centre. By 2013, the cycle hire scheme was attracting a monthly ridership of approximately 500,000, peaking at a million rides in July of that year. Health impact analyses have shown that London would benefit more from increased cycling and cycling infrastructure than other European cities.
  Cycling conditions in the city have in recent years been perceived as unsafe by cyclists.
context_section_description: In November 2013, six cyclists were killed on London streets within a two-week period, bringing the number of cyclists killed in London in the year to 14, nine of which involved a heavy goods vehicle (HGV). In response, the Metropolitan Police announced an initiative called Operation Safeway, in which 2,500 traffic police were stationed at major junctions throughout the city to issue fixed penalty notices to road users breaking road traffic laws and offer advice to vulnerable road users. Following the deaths, Boris Johnson stated in an interview on BBC Radio that cyclists were endangering their lives when not following road traffic laws, making it "very difficult for the traffic engineers to second-guess [their actions]". The comments were immediately condemned as "deflecting blame onto cyclists [and] grossly insensitive" by Roger Geffen, campaigns and policy director of the Cyclists' Touring Club, and as "dodging responsibility" and "an insult to the dead and injured" by Darren Johnson, the Green Party member of the London Assembly. Former Olympic cyclist Chris Boardman, policy director for British Cycling, the national governing body for cycle racing in Great Britain, called on Johnson to ban HGVs from some London roads during peak hours, saying that Johnson had made a verbal promise to him "to look at the successful experiences of Paris and many other cities in restricting the movements of heavy vehicles during peak hours". Johnson stated in a radio interview that he was unconvinced by the idea, but was however considering banning cyclists from wearing headphones while riding. However, the traffic division of the Metropolitan Police were unable to identify any serious cycling incidents in which headphone use could be identified as a contributing factor.
  Two weeks after the sixth death, a protest campaign organised via social media held a die-in - modelled on the Dutch "Stop de Kindermoord" pro-cycling demonstrations of the 1970s — outside the headquarters of TfL, in which over 1,000 cyclists lay silently in the road and held a vigil for cyclists and pedestrians killed by road traffic.
  A BBC poll taken in December 2013 found that one fifth of regular cycle commuters had stopped cycling to work as a result of the recent spate of deaths. A fifth of the survey respondents had also been involved in a collision, and 68% believed that London's roads were not safe to cycle on.
caption: The Space for Cycling campaign's Big Ride approaching the Houses of Parliament.
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