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“CYCLISTS often don’t help themselves,” says a police community support officer, leaning on his yellow bicycle by the Bow roundabout in east London. He points at a man on a single-gear bike waiting at traffic lights, and explains how he has misread the signals and put himself in danger.

It has been a particularly brutal month for cyclists in the capital. On November 18th, a man in his 60s died in a crash with a lorry in Camberwell, south London—the sixth death in just two weeks. The Bow roundabout, where another cyclist died on November 13th, has become a symbol for many of what is wrong with cycling in London. They argue that infrastructure installed in the capital by Boris Johnson, its mayor (and a keen cyclist himself), is dangerous. Mr Johnson says that his cycle lanes are safe, and that some cyclists ought to be more careful—not wearing headphones, for example.
Taking a bike on to Britain’s roads is not as dangerous as it once was. Estimates from the Department for Transport show that, per million miles cycled, the number of cyclists killed or seriously injured has fallen by 33% since the 1990s (see chart). But the rate has recently moved up again, even as the number of road accidents in general has fallen sharply.