wrote:
In article


Those figures read dangerous to me. How many bendies are there and how
many accidents involving other buses are there, and how many of them are
there?


339 in intensive daily service, many 24 hours a day, so as John points
out, given the tiny number of serious incidents there's a large margin
for error - one cyclist killed by a bendy tomorrow would skew the
figures enormously, which in itself suggest they aren't dangerous.

The death toll of cyclists rose last year to 19, incidentally. Lorries
seem to be the big killers. According to TfL:

"Every year, more than half of all cyclist deaths on London's roads
follow a collision with a goods vehicle."

"In 2006, nine of the 19 cyclists who died on London's roads were
involved in a collision with a goods vehicle. Provisional data from the
Metropolitan Police Service for 2007 indicates that nine out of the 16
cyclists who died on London's roads last year were involved in a
collision with a goods vehicle."

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/medi...hive/7695.aspx

Which is more dangerous, a type of vehicle that kills nearly ten
cyclists a year or one that hasn't killed anyone in six years?

The bendy replacement plans currently available*, apart from being
expensive, result in far more buses on the street. I don't think the
figures of accidents per million miles are adjusted for bus capacity, in
which case the replacements are actually likely to have more accidents
purely because of the increased mileage (along with using more fuel and
employing more drivers and generally costing more to operate).

The main point is still 'who told Boris they squished cyclists, or did
he just make it up?'.

Tom

* 3 for 2 replacement with 12m single deckers on the 507/521 Red Arrows,
7 for 5 replacement with double deckers on the 38. One of the Red Arrow
routes would have something insane like a bus timetabled every 120
seconds to keep capacity up. I'm half-convinced they're drawing up the
plans to show Boris his ideas are wrong, in a Serpell Report kind of way.