CTC has been campaigning on behalf of cyclists and cycling for well over a century, and we always try to take a positive view; we’re passionate about the benefits of cycling and we want more people to enjoy them.

However, it is impossible not to feel anger after a terrible nine days in which six cyclists have been killed on Britain's roads – five of them in London and all of them involving large vehicles. We believe urgent action is needed.

During the period 2008-12, 102 cyclists were killed by heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) in Great Britain, an average of 20 each year. Goods vehicles represent only around 3.6% of non-motorway motor traffic mileage on all the roads of Great Britain, yet are on average involved in 18% of the road deaths of cyclists each year (and, in 2012, 15% of deaths of pedestrians).

Most collisions between cyclists and goods vehicles occur during lorry manoeuvres or at junctions. Roundabouts and left turns are a particular problem.

These figures aren’t improving. During 2013, CTC’s Road Justice campaign has already recorded six cyclists killed by HGVs in England (outside London) and one in Scotland – see details below.

Many cyclist fatalities involving goods vehicles happen in London. Large goods vehicles were involved in five of the 14 cyclists’ fatalities there in 2012 (that is, over a third), and already during 2013, we know of eight cyclists killed in collisions with HGVs in London, including two within eight days earlier this month (November 2013).

Our detailed analysis of casualty rates outside London from 2005-09 shows that they were particularly high in Lincolnshire, Greater Manchester, Northamptonshire, Wiltshire, Cambridgeshire and Essex. The youngest victim was 10 years old, the oldest 91.

CTC has long campaigned on this issue, and we provide detailed briefings on policy around HGVs and safety. However, the haulage industry has completely failed to take responsibility for tackling its shortcomings.

In Dublin and Paris, certain HGVs have been banned from using city streets at busy times of day.& Yet in Britain, even though we know that HGVs cause preventable deaths of cyclists and pedestrians, we continue to allow them free access.

The industry could move to using safer vehicles with low driver positions, which are already on the market, but chooses not to introduce them in significant numbers.

Instead they run occasional schemes called ‘Exchanging Places’, in which cyclists are invited to sit in lorry cabs and see for themselves how limited the visibility is. In other words, hauliers are demonstrating how unfit to share the roads their vehicles are, and expecting vulnerable road users to take responsibility for avoiding them.

We know from the Freight Transport Association’s disparagement of even modest efforts on behalf of cycle safety by government that hauliers refuse to take this issue seriously. Until they do, CTC would like to see the leaders of the haulage industry called in to see the Transport Minister and explain themselves in person every time their HGVs kill a cyclist.

The Minister has an opportunity open to nobody else; by dramatising the problem and causing personal discomfort to those responsible he can focus their minds on making changes that are already available to them and already effective outside the UK.

This approach has been used by the chairs of influential Parliamentary Committees to capture the attention of similarly complacent industries such as banking and energy.

Cyclists and pedestrians needn’t be dying due to HGVs. CTC recommends a number of actions that could save lives and calls for further research into them. We would be glad to work with the Government to develop policy accordingly, and we strongly believe that stricter regulation of this dangerous industry is needed.

But this is urgent. As a starting point we have today written to urge the Transport Minister to adopt our dramatic new approach, which will require no legislation and cost the government nothing, but will finally put the safety of vulnerable road users at the front of the minds of those running the industry responsible for this appalling number of avoidable deaths.

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The tables below list the cyclists killed and injured in London and the rest of the UK by lorries in 2013 that have been reported by CTC’s Road Justice campaign. If you know of others that are not listed here, please get in touch.

Table 1: Cyclists killed in London by lorries in 2013

Table 2: Cyclists killed in UK (outside London) by lorries in 2013 

Table 3: Cyclists injured in London by lorries in 2013

Table 4: Cyclists injured in UK (outside London) by lorries in 2013

Guardian Journalists Peter Walker and Guy Grandjean last week produced this excellent first-hand report on cycling the superhighway.