Cyclist Collision Data For Canada Do Not Exist

by | May 18, 2025 | News

Data for cyclist collisions in Canada are ghosts and invisible.

You will see many more white ghost bikes tied to urban infrastructure than you will ever see any useful Canadian data about how those cyclists were killed. What reality exists while many municipalities continue to promote cycling as a way to reduced greenhouse gases. Any available data comes from summaries of police reports yet those reports only provide a small sliver of the whole pie of the total number of collisions that actually exist.

Below-average temperatures during the 2024-25 winter season in southern Ontario, followed by cool spring has meant that the number of cyclists observed in London Ontario has been reduced. Yet warmer temperatures in the first part of may 2025 has seen an explosion of cyclists riding along London’s roadways. But has there also been an explosions of cyclist collisions? No one will know because such data just does not exist.

Collision data as a whole in Canada has never been very detailed or available and any useful trends must be estimated by looking at other sources such as the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). But even the NHTSA data is limited. A figure about cyclist collisions is taken from the NHTSA website and shown below.

The fine print at the bottom of this graphic indicates “This data visualization does not include pedalcyclist crashes that do not involve motor vehicles”. So, just like the Canadian data, there is not information about what kind of cyclist collisions occur except those where a cycle interacts with a motor vehicle. This is a very large part of the collision pie that is missing.

Another interesting fact about the NHTSA data is the percentage of fatalities in terms of gender. Males represented 87% of the fatalities while females only represented 13%. However, the observational data from Gorski Consulting studies in London show that, over the last five years, females observed riding along London’s roadways were only about 13%, or exactly the same percentage as the female fatalities in the U.S. But how many cyclists in the U.S. are of the female gender? No such data exists. In London the percentage of female riders appears to be reduced during the winter months and then increases as the warmth returns.

In this view from January, 2025, a female is observed riding her cycle westbound in the curb lane of Hamilton Road toward an area where a cyclist was killed a couple of years earlier. This is a dangerous scenario where vehicles driving on this arterial roadway must give cyclists a one-metre lateral clearance. Yet such clearance is not always possible when traffic volume is high and visibility of the cyclist is poor. In this view a London City Police cruiser is seen changing lanes to avoid the cyclist.
A closer view of the female cyclist shows that she is not wearing a helmet. This is a common problem in winter conditions where typical helmets do not provide the protection from low temperatures and higher winds causing cyclists to use warmer hats instead.

The observational data from the Gorski Consulting studies shows some interesting trends with respect to the characteristics of cyclists in various neighbourhoods and roadways. More dangerous cycling conditions have been observed along arterials roadways such as the Horton-Hamilton corridor and Dundas St between Highbury and Clarke Road. Alternatively it has been observed that safer conditions exist along corridors such as the Upper Queen and Ridout area where a cycling lane is present. In the past year the Gorski Consulting observations have been more focused these areas to determine whether a real difference in cyclist characteristics exists and whether this also plays a part in collision safety.