All 19,000 cycle casualties in 2013, mapped

Each type of casualty is labelled to show the gender using colour or symbols - with the figures representing fatalities, drop shapes serious casualties and small circles slight injuries.

The data, published last week, show, unsurprisingly, that casualties are predominantly in urban areas, where 80% of the population live and where 68% of cycling occurs. See full screen.

To get a true picture of the risks of cycling, several years of data is required for each road, as well as exposure data for the amount of cycling that is taking place. We'd therefore urge caution before saying that such a location is 'more dangerous' than another, as it may very well be that the more dangerous locations have low levels of cycle casualties because most people wouldn't ever dream of cycling there to begin with. 

However, each casualty represents a failure - a failure to create infrastructure which is inherently safe, and, in many cases, a failure to adequately protect the public by enforcing road traffic law and keeping recidivist bad drivers off the streets. If you want to see better conditions for cycling and fewer casualties, write to your local councillors asking for Space for Cycling, and find out about CTC's campaign for Road Justice.

For the data that lie behind this, and to compare local authority performance, see the Department for Transport's Road Collisions data website.