IES Blog

Image Credit *Sally M* Under Creative Commons

IES runs a Cycle to Work scheme, I have taken the opportunity to buy two bikes through the scheme and I now cycle to work pretty much every day.  After getting hit riding to work on my bike by a white van the one thing that pretty much everyone asked me is why don’t you wear a helmet.

The website http://cyclehelmets.org/ gives some good information on the helmet use for cycling.  The data in this blog is taken from that website.

People’s view on the relative risk of cycling is far off the mark.  It is viewed as very risky to mix bicycles with motor vehicles but the data shows a different story.

Data giving risk relative to cycling based on fatality rates per participant in the UK shows perhaps unsurprisingly that you are you are 137 times as likely to die climbing as cycling.  Horse riding is also more risky, you are 29 times more likely to die.  More surprising though is the risk of tennis and football.  You are 4.2 times as likely to die playing tennis as cycling, for football the figure is 4.9 times.  Golf is safer though, only 0.83 times as likely to die as compared to cycling.

In the US there has been studies done on risk per time doing an activity which shows that you get 0.26 fatalities per million hours of cycling.  As I my commute is about 1hour a day I reckon it will take a while for me to reach a million hours of cycling.

Fatalities per million hours for other activities run at:
0.027 fatalities per million hours of living at home
0.15 fatalities per million hours of flying
0.26 fatalities per million hours of cycling
0.47 fatalities per million hours of passenger car use
1.07 fatalities per million hours of swimming
1.53 fatalities per million hours of living (all causes of death)
8.8 fatalities per million hours of on-road motorcycling
128.71 fatalities per million hours of sky diving

So cycling is 10 times more dangerous than being in your own home but it is 6 times safer than what people do with their time on average.  That sounds to me as if cycling is not dangerous at all.

The department of health have some statistics for the amount of head injuries for hospital admission the 2002/2003 period.

Proportion of all injuries that involve head injury:
All causes: 34.2%
Cyclists: 37.6%
Pedestrians: 43.7%
So cyclists being admitted to hospital are only slightly more at risk of a head injury than the average of all accidents and less likely to have a head injury than pedestrians.

The Highway Code in the UK advises the use of helmets without making it a law.  There is much debate with many non-cyclists to make helmet use law but I feel this would be a mistake.  In countries where helmet use is made law there has been a drop off in the number of people cycling.  Western Australia saw a 26% to 38% drop in overall cycle use but in children this rose to more than a 50% drop.  British Columbia in Canada saw a 28% drop in cycle use after their cycle helmet law was introduced.  Melbourne, Australia has invested in a bike hire scheme as Paris and London have done.  In Melbourne the bicycles lie in their dock stations unhired because of the helmet laws.  Who is going to carry a helmet with them just in case they want to hire one of the cities bicycles?  The only other option is to wheel the hired bike to a cycle shop to purchase a helmet.

By the way when I got hit by the van I didn’t hit my head.  My ribs were hurt though.  Plus helmets ruin my hairdo.  I rest my case

For more blogs on cycling laws see Treehugger and for more on this debate see Planet Green.

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Tags:Australia, cycle to work, cycling, cycling helmet, IES, safety

Reading Pete’s blog (Plastic Bags! on 18 May this year), I was interested to note his local green group planned to introduce a public bike program.  Having recently visited Amsterdam earlier this year (sadly no photographic evidence is available) I was really impressed (and quite envious) of the public transport links around the city where cars happily coexist with buses, trams and pedestrians on bikes.  As far as I ventured outside the city centre people were happily making use of the bike lanes.  A number of the staff here at IES cycle to work but in Glasgow I personally don’t fancy the idea of going up against the buses and cyclist-unfriendly traffic and the cycle paths are quite limited.  I do hope that things can improve for cyclists so that one day even I might finally stop relying on buses to get me around, this is why I sit up when I see any scheme which encourages cycling.

Recently NVA released 50 white bicycles across Glasgow to be freely used by the public to get around venues at the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art.  This was a tribute to the original Provos Witte Fietsenplan (White Bike Plan) where 50 bicycles painted white were released across Amsterdam for public use to make a statement against consumerism, congestion and pollution.  I can only assume statements such as this encouraged the city to grow its own cycle networks and introduce one of the world’s first Public Use Bicycle (PUB) systems which I have seen in use in many other European cities including the new system that is currently being installed in London.

“The White Bicycle Plan proposes to create bicycles for public use that cannot be locked. The white bicycle symbolizes simplicity and healthy living, as opposed to the gaudiness and filth of the authoritarian automobile.” Provo manifesto

The outcome of the scheme, both in Amsterdam and in Glasgow 2010, of course was that a number of the bicycles were stolen but if this encourages the city to embrace cycling and provide more infrastructure then it will have been worth it, if we can achieve anything like Amsterdam then perhaps even I will finally stop hanging around at bus stops.

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Tags:Art, Central Station, cycling, IES, NVA, white bikes

It was on a recent trip to Sweden that I met a very colourful gentleman called the Swedish Chef. On discussing how to design a true sustainable building he replied “Don’t worry if you have to design a sustainable building, just use the VE!”

Sweden as a country has a great reputation in sustainability and energy efficiency and has recently been selected as the European Green Capital for 2010.

During my trip there I spent a number of days in Stockholm and learnt that it was the city council’s holistic vision that has lead the way for Stockholm becoming one of Europe’s most sustainable cities. It combines both growth and sustainable development. The city council has an ambitious target of becoming fossil fuel free by 2050 and many design teams are using BREEAM Europe to ensure buildings are playing there part in achieving the 2050 goal.

Overall Stockholm can be depicted as a city with very strong green programmes and effective measures across the board. Innovative ideas such as vegetated roofs have been put into practice. The city has an excellent structure of green and blue areas and, in fact 95% of the population lives only 300m away from green areas, thus catering for better well being, recreation, swimming, boating, water purification, noise reduction, enhancement of biodiversity and ecology.

The local transport system has taken several positive steps towards sustainability over the last ten years. A very broad and extensive range of measures have been adopted, including a successful and pioneering congestion charging system with good documented results in terms of reduced car use, and an increase in public transport share, included cycling. More than 75% of fuel stations in Stockholm now offer ethanol or biogas and all petrol solid in the region contains 5% ethanol.

As far as CO2 emissions are concerned, there has been a 25% reduction per capita in Stockholm emissions since 1990 which I believe can act as a bench mark for the rest of Europe.

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Tags:BREEAM, Building, cycling, free, reduce, Sustainability, Sweden

From goats to green roofs and organic composting to affordable green housing, cities across the states are working on creative ways to save the planet.   People are used to recycling programs and the promotion of public transportation, but some cities are going above and beyond those steps to ensure that our planet fights global warning.

These cities are rated in the Natural Resource Defense Council’s top 10 smart cities.  The ranks were defined by a number of different categories including alternative energy, affordable housing, energy efficiency, and public transportation.  Topping this list was Seattle, Washington who has begun using goats instead of pesticides to clear away unwanted shrubbery. 

Austin Texas made the list at number 6 for their energy saving insulation and sealing.  The city of Austin, provides free installation for the energy conserving upgrades for low and moderate income homes.  They are also running a program that allows residents to sell excess energy from their solar panels back to the city.

My home city of Boston ranks as number 8 on the list of smart cities for their implementation of one of the largest public transportation systems.  Boston is adding to their bicycle structure adding new bike lanes and more racks.

To find out more, or see how your city ranks, please see the Natural Resource Defense Council’s website, http://www.nrdc.org/about/ or http://green.yahoo.com/blog/greenpicks/249/top-10-u-s-cities-of-the-future.html

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Tags:Boston, cycling, free, recycle, recycling, Sustainability, Texas, USA