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The provisional figures released by the Department for Transport showed a 10% rise in the number of cyclists killed or seriously injured since the year ending September 2007 to 2,770.
These statistics have started a new round of the blame game, with cyclists pointing the finger at drivers and vice versa - so who's right?
In my opinion, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other. On its own a vehicle, whether it's a car, van, HGV, bus or cycle is very unlikely to cause injury or death. What does cause the stats to rise is the person controlling the vehicle.
Human beings have and will always continue to make mistakes and take risks, so we need to ask how we can reduce the risk to cyclists? The obvious issue here being that if a motor vehicle and bike collide, it doesn't matter who made the error, as the cyclist is going to come off worst.
If you look at the other figures you will see a reduction in all other categories. Pedestrian, motorcycle and car user casualties fell by 3%, 8% and 4% respectively.
This is due to many reasons, not least the improvements in vehicles. Modern vehicles have many features designed to protect the occupants in the event of a collision. However, the bicycle hasn't seen any major changes that protect the rider.
I'm not an expert in bicycle design but apart from making it compulsory to wear a cycle helmet, I can't think of any way of reducing the chance of death or serious injury to a cyclist.
So the only other answer, if we accept that we humans in cars and on bikes will continue to make mistakes and take risks whilst using the roads, is to separate cyclists from other vehicles.
However this is not possible without major investment. Even if you build cycle lanes, they will need to cross roads, and crossing points will continue to result in collisions. If that's not the answer then we're back to a need for cyclists and drivers to ride/drive along the same roads safely.
But can this be achieved when we hear of tensions between the cycling fraternity and motor vehicle drivers resulting in a blame culture?
As a road safety professional I know that many accidents are caused by poor driver attitude. If drivers respected cyclists and vice versa, I suspect we would see the death toll begin to lessen. That means we drill down, yet again, to the fundamentals of road safety - it's about attitude.
Whether you speed, choose to use your mobile phone, overtake in dangerous places or perform any other bad habit in your car, van, truck, bus or on your bike! Its cultural change that's needed - not finger pointing to pinpoint blame.
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