The London Cycling Campaign has released a progress report on its Safer Lorries, Safer Cycling campaign and it's not good reading for those cycling in Tower Hamlets. Our council has been given the lowest possible mark for their inaction on committing to use the safest lorries and best-trained drivers.

The LCC's summary report is below together with links to the campaign pages and actions. Write to LBTH today to let them know that you think they should be leading on improving lorry safety on our borough's roads.

LCC Safer Lorries, Safer Cycling: Only two councils in London have committed to using the safest lorries and best-trained drivers, even though half of cyclist deaths in the capital involve lorries.

See the rating for all councils on our borough map

The shocking fact is that - while Islington and Waltham Forest councils have committed to the highest standards of lorry safety - a total of 10 councils have done almost nothing to protect cyclists from lorry danger:

Barking & Dagenham, Barnet, Bexley, Croydon, Greenwich, Kingston upon Thames, Merton, Richmond upon Thames, Tower Hamlets and Wandsworth.

We applaud Waltham Forest and Islington councils for committing to our Safer Lorries pledge, and hope your pressure can persuade many more councils to take our pledge too.

LCC chief executive Ashok Sinha said, "Our councils have a duty to only use the safest lorries and best-trained drivers.

"The inaction of the 10 worst councils stands in sharp contrast to the great work on lorry safety being done by the best councils and other major lorry transport users such as Transport for London."

• LCC has been in contact with all 33 councils in recent months, lobbying them to raise their standards of lorry safety.
• 2000 LCC supporters have already used our online letter-writing tool to write to their council leader calling on them to take our Safer Lorries pledge.
• 200 supporters have shared our letter-writing campaign with friends or on social media.

Yet despite this, 10 London boroughs are putting cyclist lives at risk daily by using inadequately equipped lorries and under-trained drivers.

Another 20 councils, despite taking some steps towards improving lorry safety, have failed to match the standards demanded by our Safer Lorries pledge.

Figures released from the 2011 census show that Tower Hamlets is the fourth highest local authority in the country in terms of proportion of households with no cars or vans. Top is the City of London, followed by Islington then Hackney then Tower Hamlets. The proportion of households without vehicles is about 63%, allowing for my maths. That means that car owners in Tower Hamlets are a minority of the population.

We need to further research the figure from the 2001 census but we think that this is an increase of 3%. Of course in Tower Hamlets this non-car owning population includes those who choose not to own a car as well as those who can't afford to.

As to the usually resident population the census estimate was 254,100 residents (March 2011). This is a 29.6% increase on the 2001 census results.

Thanks to our consultant demographic historian Humphrey Southall.

Tower Hamlets Wheelers were saddened to hear that yet another cyclist has died on the borough roads.

We offer our condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Javed Sumbal who died when hit by a LGV in Commercial Road on Thursday, 6th December during the morning rush hour (around 08.20). Javed worked as a delivery cyclist for Darwin's Deli in Shadwell to fund his MBA studies and was on his way to work.

THW campaign for improved conditions for cycling in the borough and in London generally and therefore we urge support of campaigns such as the London Cycling Campaign's Safer Lorries Safer Cycling campaign. We also urge support for the work of Road Peace, the national charity for road crash vicitms, and their campaign, See Me Save Me, dedicated to reducing lorry danger.

It is important that witnesses of the collision contact/are encouraged to contact the Metropolitan Police Road Death Investigation Unit on 020 8597 4874.

This month last year Brian Dorling and Svitlana Tereschenko were both tragically killed in collisions with trucks at Bow roundabout. 40 days after Svitlana's untimely death her family placed a 'ghost' bicycle in her memory at the place where she died. Unfortunately the bike was vandalised with the wheels, brakes and basket stolen principally because it was a vintage bike with hard to find spare parts however, this is lack of respect is inexcusable. With the permission of her family we removed the bike just before the council disposed of it and restored and repainted it.

Today on the anniversary of her death the bike was returned to Bow roundabout and her family, who had made the trip from the Ukraine, and her friends met to rededicate the bike which has now been placed on the railings above the canal towpath.

Wheelers would like to thank Colin Smith of Waltham Forest Bike Recycling, Steve Davies a friend of Wheelers and an unnamed London taxi driver for their generous help with the bike's restoration. We would also like to thank Andrij Bebko for acting as the family liason and RebelRebel of Broadway Market for their kind donation of flowers.

Long time Wheelers workshop attendee, Kumi, has set off on an epic journey riding to Cape Town.

Kumi has been on several touring adventures before including crossing Turkey. This time she and her fellow adventurer Dan aim to cycle around 1700km per month, hoping to arrive in August 2013. You can follow their journey at london2capetown.net where they are posting updates as often as they can.

They are also looking to use the ride as a means of raising money for St Catherine's Hospice. Visit their donation page for full details.

Good luck to them both from all of us at Tower Hamlets Wheelers.