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news
Cree XML lightEssex cyclist fined £225 for riding without lights
A cyclist in Essex has been fined £225 by magistrates – for failing to have lights or reflectors on his bike.
Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court also ordered Roman Abramov of Grays to pay £90 in costs and a £22 victim surcharge after finding him guilty, reports the Essex Chronicle.
The 23-year-old had been stopped on 19 February by police carrying out a casualty reduction patrol on London Road in Purfleet.
They found that his bike had no lights or reflectors, both required in the hours of darkness under the Road Vehicle Lighting Regulations 1989 as amended by subsequent legislation.
Police Sergeant David Martin commented: "Cycling in the dark without lights is extremely dangerous both for the rider and for other road users.
“This result shows that illegal behaviour by cyclists will not be tolerated in Essex."
Usually, the offence of riding without lights would attract a fixed penalty notice of £50 – and in some areas, cyclists can avoid paying the fine altogether if they can prove they subsequently bought lights.
The amount of the fine imposed on the cyclist in this case may therefore seem excessive, compared with, for example, the £100 fixed penalty notice for using a handheld mobile phone while driving.
However, as with that and other driving offences, the fine here will be higher because the case went to court.
Essex Police offers cyclists who commit offences such as riding on the footway or without lights, or failing to comply with road traffic signs, the chance to complete an online cyclist education course.
Costing £19.50, the course takes approximately half an hour to complete and police say that if the offender fails to complete it, action will be taken through the courts – as happened here.
Yesterday, we reported how a Freedom of Information request by road safety charity IAM discovered that Essex Police had convicted more drivers for careless driving than any other police force.
While police now have the power to issue a £100 fixed penalty notice for that offence, again the approach in Essex is to try and educate offenders.
According to data obtained by IAM 2,958 people stopped by Essex Police for careless driving undertook a course while 484 went to court.
– Essex tops list for number of careless driving convictions
Last month, Chelmsford Crown Court fined a man who entered a late plea of guilty to the charge of careless driving £600 plus costs of £500.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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43 comments
That's rubbish. I prefer night rides at this time of the year. The roads are quieter and if you are prepared with reflectives and proper lights you stand out better than you would on busy roads in daylight.
But the context of the discussion is cycling in the dark without lights. (And, probably, without reflectives beyond the legal minimum, assuming that if the cyclist being fined didn't have legally required reflectors either, that would have been mentioned too.)
That's also not very dangerous in a street lit area with low speed traffic, but it is dangerous enough that no-one is recommending it, and that it's illegal.
(There was a time when road users were expected to be able to use their front lights to avoid other road users without rear lights, but that time is long past - https://beyondthekerb.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/the-wedge/)
By the statistics, it looks like Essex Police are taking road offences, commited by whoever, more seriously than around here, Milton Keynes! There are so many cylclist around here cycling without lights and on the pavement. Despite comments to the contrary, we cyclists are a community, of sorts. We are more likely to get compared to the idiots cycling through red lights, on the pavement, without lights, wearing dark clothing and up the wrong way on a one way street than the law abiding, riding safely and considerately with lights, bright and reflective clothing cyclist! A bit like the bad BMW driver is the stereotypical view of all BMW drivers!
This is nonsense.
I have lights. The police are free to tick off those cyclists who don't (though massive fines seem a bit unnecessary, when contrasted to the ludicrously lenient penalties for bad or lethal driving). But there is no 'we'. That self-serving motorists choose to imagine there is, is no reason for me to accept their delusions.
Well IMO all new bikes should by law be sold with front and rear lights. For what a set of cheap LED lights cost it beggars belief that these are not fitted as standard kit. Therefore there should be no excuses for not having lights after dark. Naturally it would not be illegal to not have them fitted in daylight hours as in current legislation.
That's a good idea as they are so cheap. However, the people who are happy cycling without lights would be the ones who wouldn't bother replacing the batteries when they run out, so it's only going to help a little. It would send a good message though about being seen, but also the wrong message about cycling being dangerous.
But surely cycling in the dark IS dangerous. This has nothing do do with messages it is fact.
Depends what you mean by dangerous. It may be more dangerous than cycling in the daytime (although I'd be interested in stats on that) but it's not necessarily more dangerous than crossing the road in the daytime whilst looking at your phone. There's always danger involved in transport so it's worth looking at the relative risks.
From http://www.rospa.com/road-safety/advice/pedal-cyclists/facts-figures/:
So, the most "dangerous" times to be cycling is not when it's dark.
Surely that's because there are at least probably 10 times more daylight cycling trips to those in taken darkness hours. The numbers you quote don't take this logic into account.
Any Cyclist not taking reasonable steps to make him or herself visible at night deserve to be fined £225. And ,dare I say it , knocked off their bike because of their invisibility !
ROSPA does acknowledge that the most dangerous times are those when the most cycling takes place. It doesn't change the fact that you're more likely to be involved in a collision during the day even though the risk per journey may be higher at night. To simply state that cycling in the dark is dangerous is simply stating your opinion and can be argued either way. Personally, I've had more near-misses (near-hits?) cycling at busy times during the day than at night. I think it's to do with motorists being in more of a rush during the day as night-time driving is less involved with being stuck in traffic jams.
People in general are very bad at estimating comparative risks as people will remember big news-worthy accidents and forget about the everyday kind of accidents.
danthomascyclist and vbvb
I take it you have no objection to people leaving unlit skips in the road and they don't even move.
PS I can find no news article where a skip was reported to have been damaged by a cyclist, car driver or motorcyclist crashing into it, but plenty where unlit cyclists did get hurt in a collision.
I have zero objection - I would never hit an unlit skip as at night I drive to the conditions and I have lights on my car. If you manage to plough into a six foot wide lump of metal you shouldn't be driving.
Unlit skips? No problem, no. Are skips normally lit? Not in Edinburgh.
Re reports, I linked a coupla posts back to a government study saying lack of bike lights is a very small cause of KSI collisions. It's official. You mention reports of unlit casualties but the govt report is discussing unlit causality, quite different.
Unlit cyclists employ self-preservation techniques as we all do - they know they are unlit. I would take issue with unlt cars, I suppose, as the driver is endangering others, more than themselves, and humans aren't good at regulating behaviour without self-interest rewards.
Broke the law, offered a cheap solution and a bit of education, ignored the offer, paid the price...
Fair enough, we're road users and when using the public highway should abide by the law... And just for clarity as some people on here suddenly start bleating on about crap car drivers using phones etc... Yes they should be brought to book too... It's simple common sense and this lad seems to have lacked bucket loads of it.
I am not condoning his law breaking, but I have lost count of the number of drivers who have seen a cyclist with no lights and then gone on to describe what they were wearing in astonishingly minute detail.
Because I do sort of believe in the idea of a cycling community I often add these on to my Amazon orders. They are an 'add on' item and you can only order a maximum of 5 sets at a time.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00D12SC2M?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00
I hand them out to my children's friends when they don't have lights. I have also been known to give them to other cyclists that I talk to at traffic lights or in passing when they don't have any lights and it's getting dark. I have never received an unkind word for doing so.
Like it or not, unofficial communities do exist and benefit their members. I myself have benefited from unexpected kindness from a stranger just because he recognised a fellow rider in need of some help. What goes around comes around, do unto others and all that stuff.
Now Munge, that's classy work with those lights, and well done, but you are mixing up two things here, group empathy and group punishment. We are 10 million roadusers with little in common. Like other road users, we should quite rightly expect fair provision of infrastructure and safe passage without having to debate the inefficiency of group punishment at scale.
Maybe a suitable punishment would be to be forced to walk down a pitch black lane dressed only in black with a set of lights attached to ankles, wrists and chest. Fast moving motorbikes ride down the lane in the opposite direction. They must walk the length of the lane without being mowed down. Plus, the lights on their body will turn on for a few seconds at random to illuminate them to the oncoming riders.
This will make them appreciate the importance of being well lit. When the lights turn off again, they will seriously wish they were back on and will have to make the perilous journey to the end of the lane while being much harder to see, and thereby much easier to accidentally hit!
From a legal perspective this may not be workable, but it certainly should be a good motivator in any future, alternate world! What'cha think then?
my input....
Not sure why anyone would try and make up reasons to even partially defend him! And IMO some of the comments have tried to make out its not that much of an issue.
If you use the road you should apply to the rules, the same as you 'should' as a car driver. It annoys me that we are pigeon holed into cyclist, drivers, white van man etc etc. We are road users, we should have lights, signal at road abouts and junctions and not jump lights!
As for the comments about 'what harm will it do, scratch a car etc. If the driver knocks off a cyclist and kills them, that is something they have to live with for the rest of their lives.....that's a pretty big deal to me.
Finally, the comment about a cycling community......there is a community in cycling, however when I am on the road I am a road user and during the week I am getting from A to B (home to work). HOWEVER, to say others actions don't change peoples opinion of you (someone on a bike) is wrong IMO. I have had first hand experience of people saying 'you cycles are all the same', or 'why don't I stop at red lights' when I tell them I cycle.....where in fact I always abide by the rules.
I had a mate who got stopped by the police and questioned when he was walking home from the pub as had a black hoodie on. The reason he was questions is because he was wearing a hoodie and hoodies were the choice of clothing for a few 'wrong-uns' in the area........i.e. he was judged because of what he was wear because of the acts of others...
It's a shame the drivers who speed, use their phones, get distracted by kids, pull out witout looking or otherwise drive like idiots don't think about how awful it would be if they kill someone. Or is it worse if it's not their fault?
In any case, they do still have the responsibility to drive within the limits of what they can see. Not what they hope they can see, or should be able to see. Sure, he should have had lights (although you try getting agreement on which lights), but there is little evidence for no lights as a major cause of KSIs, certainly less than for driver 'errors'.
It's a shame the drivers who speed, use their phones, get distracted by kids, pull out witout looking or otherwise drive like idiots don't think about how awful it would be if they kill someone. Or is it worse if it's not their fault?
In any case, they do still have the responsibility to drive within the limits of what they can see. Not what they hope they can see, or should be able to see. Sure, he should have had lights (although you try getting agreement on which lights), but there is little evidence for no lights as a major cause of KSIs, certainly less than for driver 'errors'.
[/quote]
Yeah, you're right. Why bother trying to make yourself stand out that little bit more when it is just easier to blame the bad road users out there - of which there are many.
Surely everyone wants to give them self the greatest chance of being seen?
As for all the other issues about bad driving you mention.... Yes they also need to be sorted and anyone doing 1 of those who ends up killing a cyclist also has to live with the consequences however to that isn't what this section is discussing.
But hey, let's just blame everyone else and not take responsibility for our own actions
Yeah, you're right. Why bother trying to make yourself stand out that little bit more when it is just easier to blame the bad road users out there - of which there are many. Surely everyone wants to give them self the greatest chance of being seen? As for all the other issues about bad driving you mention.... Yes they also need to be sorted and anyone doing 1 of those who ends up killing a cyclist also has to live with the consequences however to that isn't what this section is discussing. But hey, let's just blame everyone else and not take responsibility for our own actions[/quote]
Let's not conflate two separate things
1. Should a cyclist fit lights to ride at night. Yes, of course.
2. Should prosecuting those who don't be given more priority than dealing with motorists. Well, not if we want to use scarce resources to best advantage. Stopping cyclists may make drivers and 'proper'cyclists feel better, but it's a stupid way to improve safety.
I always cycle on the pavement if I've forgotten my lights.
Stop defending him. Comparing the fine with other offences is a fruitless and unnecessary exercise. Riding without lights is dangerous, the rider is completely invisible. They are selfish and irresponsible. Not only are they endangering their own lives and the future of their family but regardless of blame it will sit with some motorists for life if they were to strike and kill someone. So don't do it. It's not fair on you and the people around you.
I agree with what you're saying, but I think it's reasonable to compare punishments across other road traffic offenses and consider if they're waited for/against sections of the public.
It sounds to me like the offender was being a dick about getting caught without lights as most of the time the police would just caution someone rather than taking them to court (if only to avoid all the paperwork).
Didn't actually notice anyone defending him.
But 'completely invisible' is usually hyperbole. And these poor motorists should still be driving at an appropriate speed, because deer don't wear lights!
He would have done well to drive in his car and run someone over on the way. Would probably get a similar sentence but would have a lot more sympathy from the general public.
I can't find a single newstory where a cyclist has caused harm or damage to a third party as a result of not having lights. The article says this is "extremely dangerous to other road users". I'd suggest that what he's really saying is "potential risk of scratching the paintwork of a car of a motorist who isn't properly watching where they're going"
Risky cycling rarely to blame for bike accidents, study finds
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/15/cycling-bike-accidents-study
Not only do they not inflict danger on others, they barely make things more dangerous for themselves. See linked government study. Bike lights are about speed. They let me cycle quicker, and let drivers drive much quicker. If that helps safety, I am surprised.
Cyclists who ride without lights are a menace. If we - as a community - want to be taken seriously by other road users then we need to start acting the part. Hell, in some parts of europe you can get a standard €50 fine for being without a bell.
In Holland you will definitely be fined for not having a bell. This lead some Dutch guy to start this: http://www.hidemybell.cc/
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