Ms Greenfield’s comments came in a question and answer session with forensic collision investigator Mark Crouch focusing on minimising the risks to the many thousands of Londoners expected to start cycling as the lockdown eases.
Advice ranged from basic preparations on bike maintenance – ensuring brakes are working, tyres pumped and lights fitted with batteries – to advising cyclists to wear bright colours and not to ride wearing headphones.
Route-planning was said to be vital – with novices advised to try to avoid large roundabouts and busy junctions. The TfL website journey planner allows cyclists to choose less direct routes that tend to be on quieter roads.
Mr Crouch said that cyclists who found themselves near HGVs should “stay back” and not ride on the inside of the vehicle or seek to get ahead of it in moving traffic.
Establishing eye-contact with the driver while waiting at traffic lights was also worthwhile, he said.
They said they were trying to give helpful advice rather than seeking to blame cyclists for collisions. They said that in most cases in their experience the cyclist was not at fault.
Mr Crouch said: “The real issue with HGVs is the limited vision. You can be cycling alongside a HGV and see its mirror, but the driver has got six or seven mirrors to look in at any point.
“If in doubt with these kind of large goods vehicles, just stay back. Cycling up the near side has an inherent level of risk, as does cycling out just to be in front of them.
"As soon as they start turning left…you need a lot of space around a heavy goods vehicle.”
But one Londoner criticised TfL’s “genius idea” of reducing the northbound carriageway on Park Lane from two lanes to one to create the pop-up bike lane, which runs parallel to a north-south bike lane 20m away in Hyde Park.
Park Lane is on the boundary of the congestion charge zone, meaning it carries large volumes of traffic seeking to avoid the levy, which will increase to £15 next month.
David Tarsh, who filmed a video on Park Lane, said: “Normally a three-lane highway, but now TfL has put in a segregated cycle lane, a bus lane and forced all the rest of the traffic into one lane in the middle.
“As you can see, there are no cyclists, no buses and a great degree of congestion. How on earth can you call that a good management of the traffic?”
