101 reasons to love cycling #22 - it keeps you sane

And so we continue with our 101 reasons to love cycling in London, and reach number twenty two...


Mental health must be one of the last great taboos in our society: nobody wants to talk about it, but it effects more of us than we care to admit.  And with our busy modern lifestyles it's hardly any surprise that mental health conditions are on the rise...  Who hasn't, at some point in their life, found things a little hard going in their heads?

It would seem our medical professionals are begining to realise that cycling can help combat this issue.  Guidance from the Government's Chief Medical Officer says ""Physical activity is effective in the treatment of clinical depression, and can be as successful as psychotherapy or medication, particularly in the long term."  And cycling, of course, has no negative side effects; only positives.  Cycling can be many things to many people; you don't have to be battling your way to work each morning for cycling to have something positive to give you.

Tower Hamlets, the London borough where I live, has pioneered the first ever cycling on prescription service.  Dr Rachel Bower, one of the architects of the project, explains:

""Exercise can also be as effective as antidepressants for treating some types of depression, and can protect against other diseases such as dementia, osteoporosis and some cancers."


Keeping fit of mind and fit of body?  It's reason 22 to love cycling in London!

101 reasons to love cycling in London #15 - not killing off those old brain cells...

This week's reason to love cycling in London comes from blogger The Bronze Bombshell in Georgia, USA.  She came across a couple of studies that show cycling is better than driving a car at keeping those valuable ever-diminishing grey cells of ours sharp - if like me you're convinced most mornings that you have early-onset Alzheimer’s, this is really something!

She found a study (via Anna at Cycling is Good For You) that shows that "Cardiovascular fitness is associated with cognition in young adulthood." ie. exercise keeps your brain sharp.  The other study she found showed that exposure to unleaded fuel can encourage aggression and anxiety, and furthermore that the changes happening in the brain as a consequence of this exposure can be described as 'damage'.  No thanks....

In a seperate study traffic-sourced air pollution has been observed to reduce the I.Q of children - we'll come back to this later...

Lots of people I know believe that cycling through a big city like London must be like a perpetual battle through the smog of a hundred and one engines, but I rarely find this is the case - most of my route is on quiet back roads and where I do cycle on a main road (High Holborn, which, incidentally has some of the worst air pollution in the UK) being out in the open and breathing fresh rather than recycled air is enough to keep me feeling free.  That master of cycle advocacy discourse Mikael Colville-Anderson of Copenhagenize first alerted me to a study which showed that air quality inside a car is much, much worse than outside of it.

Keeping mentally alert whilst pootling along on your push bike?  It's reason number 15 to love cycling in London!

Raising your kid's I.Q by getting them to ride a bike? Call it reason 15 and a half ;)

P.S  I'm well aware that there's a couple of inches of snow on most people's doorsteps at the moment and that cycling might be the last thing they'd consider doing right now - that's why I've included so many links in this post - reading about cycling is a close second best for brain-warming!

101 reasons to love cycling in London #9 - more free time

Time is the scarcest commodity in all our lives - it's why we have incidents of road rage; not because someone cuts up a driver but because they slow the driver down and use up their time.

And so it is that we find ourselves in the entirely post-modern situation of hurrying home by car in order to have enough time to go to the gym (in all probability to use machines that replicate the motions of 'walking' and 'cycling')

Here's an idea - cycle home instead of driving or using public transport and you'll be getting enough exercise for you not to have to go to the gym, and you'll have the time you would have spent at the gym to yourself.

Having more time on your hands?  It's another happy reason to love cycling in London!

101 reasons to love cycling in London #7 - the sound of silence

I challenge anyone who finds what I am about to say odd or in anyway outlandish, to walk or cycle the length of Old Street between the Old Street roundabout and Shoreditch at peak rush hour on a Monday morning, and then assess again what I say here:

We should love cycling in London because, as a machine, bicyles are the most silent of all for transporting us around the city.  I love the idea that we can propel ourselves down broad city streets with nothing but the whirr and hum of gears and tyres on tarmac.  Anyone who has been on a mass participation cycling event on roads that have been closed to other vehicles will vouch for the fact that they are almost eerily quiet.

Automobiles, of course, are a different matter all together - each internal combustion engine makes noise - each tonne of car pressed onto the road makes surface sounds.  One engine makes a row - a hundred make a cacophony.

Now, recent studies are helping us to understand the impact of this noise on our lives within urban environments more.  Traffic noise, it seems, is so bad for us that it does, in fact, kill.  It contributes to stress, high blood pressure, to coronary disease, and prolongued exposure can lead to tinitus.

All this aside, there is something joyeous about the quiet progress of a bicycle - and, perhaps more importantly, that progress is not to the detriment of others.  Who ever heard of a bike making you deaf, or worse?
 
The quiet, almost silent sound of a bicycle is the sound of good health all round - yet another reason to love cycling in London.

Cyclists condemn mayor's decision to disband police lorry safety unit

I don't like to talk about cycling in terms of death and danger, essentially because it's safer than walking down the street & I don't like to perpetuate the 'cycling is a dangerous activity' myth, as oppose to promoting it as being ordinary and everyday.  But, in this instance, I think this story is worth highlighting and shows how our 'cycling Mayor' has made a terrible mistake of a decision.  Story lifted straight from the pages of our friends over at the London Cycling Campaign - all credit to them.

Cyclists condemn mayor's decision to disband police lorry safety unit

The mayor Boris Johnson has been strongly criticised for his decision to disband a specialist lorry safety unit run by the Metropolitan Police force.

The decision to axe the Commercial Vehicle Education Unit (CVEU) comes in a year when 8 of the 10 cyclists fatalities in London have involved collisions with lorries.

70% of the vehicles checked by the unit since 2005 have been found to be defective, and it is the only such unit in the country.

LCC cycling development officer Charlie Lloyd said, "It's difficult to believe that our cycling mayor is disbanding the only police unit in the country that has the power to properly investigate unsafe lorry operators, and bring them up to standards set by Health and Safety law.

Eight of ten 2009 cyclist fatalities involve HGVs
Despite the high proportion of cyclist fatalities involving HGVs, the mayor has claimed that the voluntary scheme for haulage companies, the Freight Operators Recognition Scheme (FORS), provides adequate protection for cyclists and other vulnerable road users.

Lloyd said, "The mayor sings the praises of the Freight Operators Recognition Scheme, but there's a significant minority of operators who will never consider joining. It's for these people that the police need expert powers to pursue them until they comply with the law."

Mayor "badly informed" on cyclist/HGV safety
Jenny Jones, London Assembly Member for the Green Party, said, "Not enough is being done to stop cyclists and others from going under the wheels of HGVs in London. What little has been done has mostly been carried out by the police officers in this unit.

"The mayor is badly informed if he thinks that the small back-street haulage firms and businesses will sign up to his voluntary scheme."

Boris Johnson said, "The three sergeants and nine constables [of the CVEU] are being directed to other jobs as part of savings in the police budget.

"That's only happening because we're confident that the freight operators, through the FORS, will implement safety measures."

What is the Commercial Vehicle Education Unit?

Since 2005 the CVEU has completed over 3000 roadside checks of freight vehicles, finding fault in over 70% of cases. The unit has also visited over 400 companies to examine procedures, agree action plans, and issue improvement notices under the Health and Safety Act.

The unit costs Transport for London less than £1 million per year. The funding goes to the Metropolitan Police Service under a  parterneship agreement with the Transport for London Freight Unit.

The combined budget for the police and transport in London in 2009-10 is over £11 billion. 

Children in deprived areas "at greater road risk"

The following press release, from the press agency Reuters, is reasonably balanced and tells a story.  It's a sad story about young people and how they are more likely to die on roads in areas like where I live, Tower Hamlets in London, because of their socio-economic standing.  It also discusses a minor issue amongst the cycling community, and approaches to road uses in general.  So far, so straight-forward.  I encourage you to read it and then re-join my for a little analsis at the bottom...

LONDON (Reuters) - Children in deprived areas are four times more likely to be killed in road accidents than those in wealthier locations, a report by MPs said on Thursday.

The Public Accounts Committee also said more should be done to examine the "irresponsible behaviour of some cyclists" and what impact they had.

Although Britain is one of the safest countries in the world in terms of road deaths, the death rate of child pedestrians was worse than in many other countries, the committee said.

In 2007, 646 pedestrians and 136 cyclists were killed, with more than 30,000 pedestrians and 16,000 cyclists injured.

The committee called for the Department of Transport (DfT) to introduce more road safety measures, such as speed humps, 20 mph zones and speed cameras, saying the current child casualty rate was unacceptable.

The committee said the higher death rate in deprived areas might be because children in such places were more likely to be unsupervised and to be near roads when they returned from school.

"The department's approach towards child deaths must be one of zero tolerance," said the PAC's chairman Edward Leigh.

"It should give priority to promoting child pedestrian road safety schemes in deprived areas, which suffer disproportionately from such casualties."

The MPs' report said the number of deaths and injuries of cyclists had fallen since the mid-1990s but that from 2004 to 2007 there had been an 11 percent increase, despite no significant rise in the amount of cycling.

It said the DfT appeared unaware that many people thought some cyclists were a "hazard to themselves and other road users."

"Some cyclists are perceived to behave irresponsibly, such as riding on pavements and disregarding red traffic signals, thereby posing a danger to themselves and making other road users including elderly pedestrians feel unsafe," they said.

The DfT said only a minority of cyclists were irresponsible.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Steve Addison)

© Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved.

So, the general gist of this story is that, tragically, 646 pedestrians and 136 cyclists killed in 2007.  I only know of ONE death to a pedestrian by a cyclist in recent history.  Which means the other 781 deaths must have been caused by something else, some awful child-killing monster lurking on our streets.  The press release doesn't mention what this killer must be, but I would hazard a guess that it is the automobile...

And what did our national broadcaster interpret this press release as? 

"Cars kill kids"?

Nope.

"Poor kids more likely to die on our streets because they are poor"?

Nope, not that either.

"Lots of people die on our roads but some cyclists are a little bit of a nuisance"?

Nope, not even.

Yes, you've guessed it, the BBC, our national and venerated broacaster, interpreted this story like this:

"Target pavement cyclists, say MPs"

Never mind all those dead kids in our roads, what about those pesky cyclists?!!

I am beyond words, really, I am.

101 reasons to love cycling in London #4 - avoid the congestion charge!

If you're one of those people who make up the two fifths of car journeys which are under 3 miles in the UK and are coming to London, here's a big tip: don't drive, ride!  The congestion charge costs £8 a day for the benefit of driving a private motor car in central London, and added up over the working year (227 days a year) that's a massive £1816 a year - and this, of course, on top of car value depreciation, vehicle emmisions tax, MOTs and servicing and the price of fuel.  So let's recap - by cycling around central London instead of driving you're getting to your destination faster, you're getting fit, you're reducing carbon emissions in the city with the WORST air pollution levels in Europe and, perhaps most importantly to your Average Joe, you're SAVING nearly two thousands pounds a year.  Sounds good to me.

101 reasons to love cycling in London #3 - gets the heart rate going.

As a family we don't historically have the most robust of hearts.  And whilst I consider myself reasonably fit, if I didn't cycle I wouldn't be getting a whole lot of any other exercise.  So, whilst I am peddling to and from work and enjoying the streets of London, in the back of my head I am also glad I am getting the old heart rate going, as an hour of cycling a day can reduce the risk of coronary heart disease by up to 50% - I like to think of it as an investment in my future.