City cycling vs Countryside cycling

If you were to watch videos on Youtube by helmet camera cyclists, you will be forgiven to think that cities are the most dangerous place to cycle. Surely more cars and more cyclists should make it more dangerous.  But is this really the case? Sadly, there are a lack of statistics for us to argue against which is more dangerous. We could just say there are X amount of accidents in cities and X amount of accidents in the countryside by looking at the BBC crash map. But this doesn’t give figures of how many people are cycling around that certain area. This would mean that 1 death in the countryside is 50% of all the riders in that area, and 1 death in the city is only 0.5% of the riders.

Design of the roads

Inner city roads usually have a lot of roads connecting them from the sides, whereas roads in the countryside do not. The more side roads, the higher the chance of encountering things such as left hooks and SMIDSYs surely. I’d guess driveways and farm entrances are on the same wavelength as side roads. Whereas cyclists can usually position themselves to make themselves as visible as possible whilst crossing side-roads, it is harder to do so at driveways and farm entrances. This is down to it being unwise to ride in primary all the time. Most driveways have a pavement outside them, so you can have some reaction time to move to a more visible position if you see a car wanting to come out. But farm entrances do not have these, and they are usually not very easy to spot where they are due to hedgerows. I’d say that cities pose a higher risk for side-roads, but in my opinion farm entrances are much more dangerous than driveways. The design of most inner city roads now mean that road users can see much further ahead of them thanks to straight roads which do not have blind corners or hidden dips. But the typical countryside road where I cycle is windy, with many blind corners and has a few hidden dips. All of these factors mean that road users cannot see as far in front of them. This means that there are far less safe overtaking chances on countryside roads. Although we are not counting oncoming traffic in this section, we will touch on that later. Countryside roads are usually single lanes, whereas inner-city roads have one or two lanes going in each direction. With countryside roads, if a car is oncoming to you, you/they will have to go up onto a grass verge/edge of the road. Combine this with blind bends and hidden dips, you can potentially have a very dangerous situation arising. Also, should a car want to overtake, they will not have as much space as an city road, so overtaking will be much closer. The segregated lanes in cities do create problems with cars changing lanes without looking, or you being in the road users blind spot. City roads also have features like pinch points in them, which create problems. Cities have roundabouts, and road designers love to use roundabouts! Navigating a roundabout on a bicycle can be very tricky, and dangerous. I can’t even remember the amount of times I have seen on youtube someone pulling out on a cyclist on a roundabout. It happens, frequently.

Traffic

Cities obviously have a higher amount of traffic, and the law of common sense tells you that the more vehicles on the road, the more risks there are. We also need to take into account a few more things.

The speed of inner city driving isn’t that fast. Look at London, I read somewhere that the average speed in rush hour is only 10 MPH, and speed limits will range from 20-40 MPH.. Compare this to the speed of country roads. The speed limit will be the national speed limit of 60 MPH, although cars will be doing less than this taking into account the type of road. I’m no scientist (I do study physics at sixth-form), but I can tell you that an accident at 60MPH is going to hurt alot more than an accident at 10 MPH.

Buses are also thrown into the mix in cities. When you have vehicles of their size around little people like cyclists, it obviously makes it dangerous. All you have on country roads are tractors and cars really, with the odd sunday motorcyclist.

Surface problems

Since it’s the countryside with fields, this means farm traffic use the roads quite often. These drag mud (and other brown substances) onto the road and when wet, it causes a big risk.

With more cars in cities, and stop-start traffic, the chances of oil spills is much higher. When they do happen, they end up being in a big blog, rather than a fine trial.

When the weather turns for the worse (cold), then ice forms on the countryside roads faster than city roads due to having lower temperatures. They are also less likely to be gritted due to having a lower traffic flow.

Other Factors

There are never rows of parked cars in the countryside meaning that the risk of getting doored is non-existent. And since dooring is one of the biggest causes of cycling injuries, this reduces the danger countryside cycling, whilst increasing city cycling.

We then have cycle lanes in cities. The things designed to keep us safe. These are mainly only located in cities. But whilst intended to keep us safe, they can also do the opposite. People just like CroydonCyclist argue that badly designed lanes encourage close passes, and reduce visibility. Overall, I’d say that cycle lanes do reduce the risk of cycling in cities as it allows some sort of segregation.

Pinch points are pretty much only found in cities, increasing the risk if you have an impatient road user behind you. Then again, single lane roads in the countryside also create the same problem.

There are very few pedestrians walking around in the countryside which pose a danger. All the pedestrians I have encountered always move onto the verge when they see me plodding along. But when you look at cities, there are a huge amount of pedestrians and they will be one or two who will cause a problem. When filtering through stopped traffic, there is a risk of pedestrians wanting to cross the road as well.

Conclusion

Both cities and the countryside are dangerous places to cycle. I don’t think it would come as a surprise, but I’d say a city like London is more dangerous than cycling in the countryside. I’d say cycling in smaller cities like Nottingham and Leeds, with less traffic,  is less dangerous than countryside cycling. At least in cities you can see what is going to happen if you are a smart, and avoid it. You cannot avoid accidents in the countryside as easily in my opinion. A car coming around a blind bend on a single lane road is much less avoidable than a SMIDSY. It  would really be interesting if there were more statistics available for us to use. I think this video shows the dangers of boy racers, with blind bends. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv9AjcSiZ2U

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