Our Ref:         FOI-2980-1920

Thank you for your request received on 7 January 2020 asking for information about incidents on the Santander Cycle Hire Scheme.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm we do hold the information you require.

Over 87 million journeys have been made using the cycle hire scheme since it started in July 2010. Safety is TfL’s top priority and each of 12,000 Santander Cycles in London has an annual service to ensure that they are safe and each part is working correctly.

Reducing road danger remains at the heart of many of the improvements we are making to cycling in London and is fundamental to the Mayor’s Transport Strategy and Vision Zero goal of eliminating death and serious injury from London’s roads by 2041.

Please find information on the number of reported Cycle Hire casualties in the table below:

Date period 30th July 2010 – end 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016*  2017 2018 2019**
Fatal 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0
Serious 2 7 10 5 7 2 4 7 16 14
Slight 15 30 42 28 66 33 22 83 72 63
Total  17 37 52 34 73 36 26 90 88 77

Please note that the table above does not include any other casualties injured in collisions involving a Cycle Hire bike.

*2016 is currently missing any Cycle Hire casualties from November and December due to a change in the reporting system of the Metropolitan Police Service 
**2019 data is provisional and may be subject to change at a later date

Absolute changes in the number of reported serious, slight and all injuries from 2017 onwards partly reflect improvements in the reporting of injury severity by the police and the introduction of online self reporting. As a result figures for 2017 onwards should not be directly compared with previous data collected by the police using severity based reporting systems.

See http://content.tfl.gov.uk/casualties-in-greater-london-2017.pdf and http://content.tfl.gov.uk/casualties-in-greater-london-2018.pdf

Personal injury road traffic collisions occurring on the public highway are reported in accordance with the Department for Transport (DfT) STATS 19 national reporting system. Further information on casualty severity definitions is available on the DfT’s website:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/743853/reported-road-casualties-gb-notes-definitions.pdf

If this is not the information you are looking for please feel free to contact me.

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal

Yours sincerely

Gemma Jacob
Senior FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London

[email protected]