(Press-News.org) A new government-funded study is to be carried out into how Britain's roads could be made safer for cyclists to reduce the risk of cycling injuries, encourage more people to use bikes and improve public health.
Amid fresh calls for action on road safety after the recent separate accidents involving world-famous cyclist Bradley Wiggins and the top cycling mentor Shane Sutton, researchers at The University of Nottingham are leading a study which will assess the effectiveness of the current cycling infrastructure and ask 'which features installed for cyclists are most effective at reducing the risk of injury to cyclists?'
The research has been funded by the National Institute for Health Research Public Health Research (NIHR PHR) Programme and the team of public health researchers are working with members of cycle campaign groups, PEDALS and Nottingham University Hospitals Trust's Bicycle Users Group. The work will examine and compare the effectiveness of a wide variety of cycling infrastructure in developed countries including the UK, USA and Australia.
Keen cyclist, Dr Caroline Mulvaney, who has worked in injury prevention at The University of Nottingham for more than 10 years said: "At a time when we hear much about increasing levels of obesity and reducing levels of activity, the benefits of cycling cannot be underestimated. There is a wider benefit to public health in fewer car journeys and therefore cleaner air. However, in 2011 in England there were 107 pedal cyclist fatalities and 3,085 reported seriously injured casualties. There are many more cycle-related injuries that are not reported to the police and thus do not appear on the police databases but nevertheless require medical attention. Tackling the fear of injury is a priority to persuade more people to get on their bikes."
Hugh McClintock from PEDALS said: "Recent months have seen a very high profile for cycling both as a sport and as a means of daily transport and also for the potential risks that are too often still faced by cyclists of different kinds on our roads and streets. This clearly increased interest makes the focus of the Cycling Infrastructure study even more timely and important. A wide review of modern cycling infrastructure like cycle lanes, cycle boxes at traffic lights and cycle specific regulations and signage is essential and will inform future improvements to the road network for cyclists."
Cycling infrastructure includes measures to manage cycle traffic and motorized traffic to varying degrees and generally takes one of three main forms:
Road layout that manages the road space for shared use by both motor vehicles and cyclists and includes cycle lanes.
Separation of cycle traffic from motorized traffic which includes special routes for use exclusively by cyclists but which may also be shared with pedestrians.
Management of the traffic network including traffic regulations that ban certain types of traffic from making particular turns and speed management.
There is already some evidence to show that infrastructure can positively influence cycling rates with cyclists choosing to use routes serviced by bicycle facilities. There is also some evidence that infrastructure is effective at reducing injuries. This study aims to review relevant websites, databases, cycling surveys and controlled trials of road systems to determine the effectiveness of various forms of infrastructure at reducing cycling injuries in cyclists.
###
'Maximising cycling safety to improve public health' is a Cochrane Review. These are systematic reviews of primary research in human health care and health policy, and are internationally recognised as the highest standard in evidence-based health care.
How safe are our roads for Bradley and the nation's cyclists?
2012-11-14
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
What lies beneath? New survey technique offers detailed picture of our changing landscape
2012-11-14
A new surveying technique developed at The University of Nottingham is giving geologists their first detailed picture of how ground movement associated with historical mining is changing the face of our landscape.
The new development by engineers at the University has revealed a more complete map of subsidence and uplift caused by the settlement of old mines in the East Midlands and other areas of the country and has shown that small movements in the landscape are bound by natural fault lines and mining blocks.
It appears to support concerns that movement associated ...
Lmod: The 'secret sauce' behind module management at TACC
2012-11-14
It's likely that fellow users on your favorite supercomputer have widely varying needs. The applications, compilers, and libraries that you need are probably different from the ones other users need. That is where modern environment module systems come in. A good module system "sets the table " for users by loading the packages each user needs.
The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) has developed an innovative module system that addresses some unique challenges facing modern computing centers.
Life in the world of computing has become much more complicated since ...
Rare parasitic fungi could have anti-flammatory benefits
2012-11-14
Caterpillar fungi (Cordyceps) are rare parasites found on hibernating caterpillars in the mountains of Tibet. For centuries they have been highly prized as a traditional Chinese medicine - just a small amount can fetch hundreds of pounds.
Scientists at The University of Nottingham have been studying how this fungus could work by studying cordycepin, one of the drugs found in these mushrooms. They have already discovered that cordycepin has potential as a cancer drug. Their new work indicates that it could also have anti-inflammatory characteristics with the potential ...
In financial ecosystems, big banks trample economic habitats and spread fiscal disease
2012-11-14
Like the impact of an elephant herd grazing on grassland, multinational banks shape the financial environment to an extent that far outweighs their small number. And like a contagious person on a transnational flight, when these giant, interconnected banks succumb to financial ills, they are uniquely positioned to infect wide swaths of the financial system.
Researchers from Princeton University, the Bank of England and the University of Oxford applied methods inspired by ecosystem stability and contagion models to banking meltdowns and found that large national and international ...
Tolerance to malaria by means of iron control
2012-11-14
Malaria is a life-threatening condition that exposes approximately half of the world's population to the risk of developing a severe and often lethal form of disease. In a study published in the latest issue of the journal Cell Host & Microbe*, Miguel Soares and his team at Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), Portugal, discovered that the development of severe forms of malaria can be prevented by a simple mechanism that controls the accumulation of iron in tissues of the infected host. They found that expression of a gene that neutralizes iron inside cells, named H Ferritin, ...
Want better employees? Get somebody else to rate their personalities, suggests new study
2012-11-14
Toronto – Businesses will get more accurate assessments of potential and current employees if they do away with self-rated personality tests and ask those being assessed to find someone else to rate them, suggest results from a new study.
Previous job performance studies have shown that outsiders are best at rating an individual's personality in terms of how they work on the job. But observers in these studies have always been co-workers.
The recent paper by Prof. Brian Connelly, who is cross-appointed to the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and ...
Brain waves make waves
2012-11-14
This press release is available in German.
Naturally, our brain activity waxes and wanes. When listening, this oscillation synchronizes to the sounds we are hearing. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences have found that this influences the way we listen. Hearing abilities also oscillate and depend on the exact timing of one's brain rhythms. This discovery that sound, brain, and behaviour are so intimately coupled will help us to learn more about listening abilities in hearing loss.
Our world is full of cyclic phenomena: For ...
USC scientists 'clone' carbon nanotubes to unlock their potential for use in electronics
2012-11-14
The heart of the computer industry is known as "Silicon Valley" for a reason. Integrated circuit computer chips have been made from silicon since computing's infancy in the 1960s. Now, thanks to a team of USC researchers, carbon nanotubes may emerge as a contender to silicon's throne.
Scientists and industry experts have long speculated that carbon nanotube transistors would one day replace their silicon predecessors. In 1998, Delft University built the world's first carbon nanotube transistors – carbon nanotubes have the potential to be far smaller, faster, and consume ...
Teenagers' brains affected by preterm birth
2012-11-14
New research at the University of Adelaide has demonstrated that teenagers born prematurely may suffer brain development problems that directly affect their memory and learning abilities.
The research, conducted by Dr Julia Pitcher and Dr Michael Ridding from the University of Adelaide's Robinson Institute, shows reduced 'plasticity' in the brains of teenagers who were born preterm (at or before 37 weeks gestation).
The results of the research are published today in the Journal of Neuroscience.
"Plasticity in the brain is vital for learning and memory throughout life," ...
Life-saving role of heart attack centers confirmed in new study
2012-11-14
Recent studies questioning the role of specialist heart attack centres produced misleading results because doctors tend to send the sickest patients to have the best care, according to new research.
Many heart attack patients in the UK are sent to a specialist centre for primary angioplasty - a surgical procedure to reopen the blocked artery. Randomised trials have found that angioplasty is much more successful than drug treatment alone, but research based on "real-world" data suggest that patients given an angioplasty don't tend to do better.
Now researchers at Imperial ...