This last week hasn’t been great for cyclists in London, with 3 incidents on one day on Thursday leading to the deaths of a cyclist in South London and another in nearby Surrey; and a seriously injured unicyclist in East London. While the story of the hundreds of locals working together to lift the bus off the injured man went viral (with good reason as it was a powerfully heart-warming story of community action) the stories of the dead cyclists barely caused a ripple, despite the fact they were both hit by HGVs, bringing the number of cyclist deaths in London alone to 6 – with 5 of them killed by HGVs.

Despite the stats that suggest that the vast majority (98%!) of serious or fatal pedestrian injuries are caused by motor vehicles - even on a pavement, a pedestrian is more likely to be injured or hurt by a motor vehicle than a bike - the rhetoric in the media remains the same. Cyclists are dangerous rule breakers who are a risk to themselves and others. While the story of a little girl injured by a cyclist was shared all over the place with comments like “HELP FIND THIS CYCLIST” (he handed himself in) the sad story of a 7 year old cyclist killed by a car barely made the front pages, even though the police are in fact appealing for witnesses. Perhaps this is because people are killed all the time by cars, but an injury caused by a cyclist is rare enough to make the news. We’re used to car-carnage. Depressingly so.

It’s strange to me that so much focus is put onto the behaviour of cyclists, or so much made of individual rare incidents, when it’s pretty damn obvious that we should be focussing on those motor vehicles which are causing serious harm to more vulnerable road users. Why do we find it so hard to point the finger at cars, HGVs and buses when they are demonstrably the ones causing so much damage?

Look at the stats – in London in 2011, HGVs made up 4% of the traffic, but were involved in 53% of the cyclist fatalities. Seeing as this year almost all of the cyclist deaths have been down to HGVs I suspect this statistic is unlikely to improve. And yet in Paris, where there are restrictions on times HGVs can drive, there were zero cyclist fatalities.

I am very wary of HGVs; not only because of the terrible safety record in London but because I actually saw the aftermath of a three-way bike/car/HGV collision on my usual commute. I also saw how much blame was thrown at the cyclists before any facts had been established at all. (Since this accident the council have actually made changes to that particular section of the road to make sure that cyclists are not having to veer out into the road.) I know where HGV blind spots are and do everything in my power to avoid ever being in one. I make an effort to make eye contact with HGV drivers so I know they’ve seen me. And when in doubt, I stay the fuck away from it. All this vigilance perhaps helps, perhaps not, I don’t know, but what it has made me realise is that it’s not HGVs that I have the most problems with on my usual commute. It’s buses.

I would guess that on average, out of the usual 5 days a week I cycle to work and back, I have some sort of bus-related incident, scare or weirdness at least once a day. Buses overtaking me too close, too fast. Buses overtaking me right before a stop and then suddenly pulling in across me – sometimes trapping me between the bus and the kerb, sometimes forcing me to either wait behind in their exhaust fumes or pull out into fast traffic to overtake them. (When this happens I often scream WHYYYYYYYYY because seriously? The stop is right there. RIGHT THERE. IF you wait literally 10 seconds I will be past the stop and will probably have gone a good half a mile before you catch up with me. If you ever catch up with me at all because I don’t have to stop every 3 minutes.) Bus drivers driving right up behind my back wheel when they can’t overtake because of traffic.

I had two particularly scary incidents recently where I genuinely feared that I would be hurt. Once where I’d pulled in on hearing a police siren, and was waiting for the car to pass, and a bus driver behind me had clearly decided to keep moving forwards for as long as he could before pulling in, resulting in him pulling in *onto me*. I’d actually looked at him while waiting for the police car to pass to try to work out what he was doing, and he looked me right in the eyes before he suddenly pulled in, so I find it hard to believe he hadn’t seen me. When I realised he was driving straight at me I leapt off my bike (thank goodness for drop frame bikes) onto the pavement and just avoided being squashed between the bus and the pavement. Another experience was when a ‘driver under instruction’ overtook me at a pinch point – very a narrow bridge with a barrier between the other lane (in fact, mere yards from the site of the 3 way accident I mentioned earlier) meaning the bus couldn’t move out to overtake me. Once again I was forced to fling myself onto the pavement to avoid being squashed. I knocked on the door of the bus and tried to point out that I could have been badly hurt, and while the trainee driver started to look over the instructor stared resolutely ahead, deliberately ignoring me, and I clearly saw him instructing the learner driver to ignore me.

I’ve also had cause to make formal complaints about buses at other times; amongst others when a driver on a route I wasn’t familiar with drove in a terrifying way; going through red lights, taking corners at speed, violently honking a horn at a cyclist who had the right of way, and just going far too fast for the narrow roads. Other passengers were gripping on for dear life, people standing fell over, and all the passengers were doing the very un-Londoner-like thing of making eye contact to make very Londoner-like ‘tut tut’ and ‘goodness me, what on earth’ faces.

The responses to my formal complaints were woefully inadequate, and they always followed the same course. That my complaint had been forwarded to the company in question. That either they were very sorry they were unable to identify the driver, or they were unable to verify the incident. On the rare occasions that they were able to identify the driver or ‘verify the incident’ the action taken was that the driver in question would be talked to and made aware of their expectations. The trouble with this approach is that it treats all incidents like this on a ‘one rogue driver’ approach, assuming that driver behaviour is all down to the individual. It doesn’t look at why there are so many incidents involving buses on the London roads, or consider how incidents like this add up to some really worrying questions over London bus safety.

London Buses have been run by various different companies since they were privatised in the 90s. That means that they are run for profit. There’s no cohesion across the services over pay, conditions, or how complaints are treated. Bus drivers have tight schedules to keep to, routes to drive where they are expected to complete the route within X timeframes, potentially leading them to have to drive too fast or cut corners. If you put difficult to meet targets on to an underpaid, overworked workforce, you are going to have accidents and issues. When that underpaid overworked workforce are driving a 12 ton metal machine? Ouch.

It’s no wonder that during the period 1 April 2007 to 9 May 2015, TfL Buses have been involved in 4714 Collisions with pedestrians and 1641 Collisions with cyclists. That’s an average of about 1 per day with cyclists and 2 collisions per day with pedestrians.

Since my ‘driver under instruction” incident I’ve lost a great deal of confidence in London bus drivers, as their bad behaviour towards cyclists, pedestrians and passengers, and their lack of care and attention is clearly something that starts right from the training stages. It’s a culture, not a case of ‘one rogue driver’. But it’s not the drivers I blame as much as the operators taking an individualistic approach to poor driver behaviour on the roads.

Bus companies need to take a more holistic approach to incident investigation and concern reporting, similar to those in the aircraft industry, so they can identify what issues require cultural change rather than just speaking to one individual driver and expecting that to clear the matter up. Because it won’t. A similar approach needs to take place with HGV drivers , car drivers, cyclists; taking the focus away from individual road user behaviour and addressing how we can systematically create safer ways for us all to use the roads. WHY are there so many HGV drivers killing cyclists? WHY are so many cyclists feeling safer on the pavement or jumping lights? WHY are bus drivers driving so fast? WHY aren’t car drivers seeing cyclists? We need to recognise and accept that this is something that needs systemic change, and that we have to stop treating every incident as One Rogue X and thinking that sanctioning or blaming that one person will solve the problem of the danger on our roads.

I have two flatmates, one cycles, one doesn’t. 5 years ago I’d have been all GET A BIKE, WHEEE to the non cycling flatmate, but these days things are so bad on the roads that I no longer feel I can say that. If I hadn’t already been cycling in London for around 10 years I am not sure I’d be cycling either! We need to look at sustainable holistic ways to improve the safety of our roads - for everyone.

All pictures used are copyright Bikeyface. Go check out the blog, it’s brilliant.