It is a bright early spring morning in central London, and inside Regent’s Park the birds are chirping as the sun rises sleepily over the lawns and lake. On the road which encircles the park, however, the mood is anything but lazy.
Scores of cyclists are riding on the 4.5km Outer Circle – some of them clearly commuters, others on racing bikes and dressed in Lycra or the colours of a cycling club. In one five-minute period before 8am, travelling anticlockwise alone, more than 150 riders pass, some in clumps of up to 15.
To many, this is a scene of success, with Londoners using the capital’s green spaces to exercise, or minimising pollution by commuting to work by pedal power.
But these cyclists, and others like them, have found themselves at the centre of a political and media storm, after the conclusion earlier this month of an inquest of an elderly woman who died after being struck near Regent’s Park by a cyclist who had been travelling above the motor vehicle speed limit of 20mph.
Hilda Griffiths, 81, died almost two months after she stepped out into the path of a cyclist in July 2022, giving him no time to stop, he told the coroner. An eyewitness testified it had not been the cyclist’s fault, and the coroner found that the collision had been an accident, but the dead woman’s son, Gerard Griffiths, called for a change in the law, saying: “Unfortunately, my mother was the victim of it but at some point, something like that was going to happen because they neither have the will nor obligation to stop.”
Separately this week, MPs voted to introduce a new offence of causing death and injury by dangerous cycling, carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years in jail. It was introduced by the former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, in response to the death of another woman, Kim Briggs, who was killed in 2016 by a cyclist who was riding a bike with no front brake.
“This is not, as is often accused by people who say anything about it, anti-cycling,” Duncan Smith told the Commons. “Quite the opposite, it’s about making sure [cycling] takes place in a safe and reasonable manner.”
Few will argue with measures that will make roads safer. But for many who ride bikes, this week’s debate around “killer cyclists” has been frustrating and disproportionate, given the very small numbers of casualties from cyclists compared to the 30,000 killed and seriously injured each year by motor vehicles in the UK.
“Everything that has been said has been spun to a degree that is quite honestly outrageous,” said Justin McKie, who was riding a folding Brompton bike through the park around 8am when he stopped to speak to the Guardian. McKie is the chair of the Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill Safer Parks panel, which liaises with police over safety issues, including involving cyclists.
“This is a very safe park,” said McKie. “There have been 70,000 cyclists who have completed 7m laps at this park in the last 10 years, broadly without incident. The average speed of a cyclist going around the park is about 16mph.” In addition, he said, the cycling clubs that use the park were active in trying to improve safety and behaviour, with a recent campaign leading to what he said was a dramatic fall in riders jumping red lights.
Though subject to normal traffic rules, this idiosyncratic stretch of road is part of the royal park and closed to through traffic between midnight and 7am, meaning many serious cyclists use it very early in the morning. McKie, for instance, had already been there at 5am on Friday morning, when he cycled 25 miles.
Armed with a handheld speed camera, the Guardian observed cyclists at one of the fastest stretches of the route; most were below or around the 20mph mark, though the fastest was riding at 25mph. Here as with elsewhere on British roads, though, cyclists are not subject to the motor vehicle speed limit as they don’t carry speedometers.
In the same period, however, the majority of cars on the road were recorded travelling faster than 20mph; two passed at 33mph. Most dangerous of all was a motorbike who zoomed past the Guardian at 53mph, then swerved to pass a traffic island on the wrong side. Trade vehicles were common.
To many of those using the pavements and park on foot on Friday, the cyclists were welcome. “We are excited to see them,” said Ramesh Kumar Pangasa, 74, from Lucknow in India, who with his wife, Shashi, 69, visits their daughter in the area for six months of the year, when they go to the park every day. “They should be given more liberty to use it for exercise.”
“I’d say they should bring in safe infrastructure for cyclists before they start blaming them for anything they cause,” said Gale Blackburn, 51, visiting from her home in Salford, despite having had a near miss with a delivery rider earlier that morning. “A bike is going to cause less damage [than] a car.”
But Megan Bryer, 30, jogging around the Outer Circle with her partner, said there had to be a balance between the rights of cyclists and pedestrians. “Sometimes with cyclists it feels that it’s the cyclist’s access first, and then everyone else.”
And there is no question that pedestrians sometimes feel intimidated by cyclists riding quickly or in a large peloton, a point acknowledged by Sean Epstein, the chair of the Regent’s Park Cyclists, which brings together the 35 cycling clubs which use the park.
“I agree that crossing that road, or crossing some bike lanes in central London as a pedestrian, is not a pleasant experience. And it’s not a safe experience.
“To me, the issue is one of infrastructure – and that’s an issue that has been solved in other countries.”
Epstein said he had “no issue” with the new legislation increasing sanctions for dangerous cyclists, but questioned why other recommended measures to tighten sanctions against drivers had not been implemented by the government.
“My concern is that by presenting this as a solution, a narrative is formed that cyclists are the enemy of pedestrians.” Instead, he said, cyclists and pedestrians “should be trying to work together to advocate for safer travel”.
