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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.
Latest Comments
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If you bothered looked at the link you would see that it is not one of their reflective jackets, it is fluorescent with only a small number of...
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You need to get out of Derby then. Go somewhere else, because while not perfect, Derby is streets ahead of the vast majority of places I've lived...
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Driver injured after car flips onto its roof https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy0g9rpp8x9o
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£100 bonus.
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43 comments
There we are with that insidious collective responsibility bollocks again.
I am not a "community", I am not responsible for some other random idiot riding without lights, RLJing or pavement riding any more than I am responsible (when I'm driving a car) for other drivers using mobiles, RLJing or parking on the pavement.
Carlton Reid called out GCN on a recent video of theirs which has a voiceover saying "remember, when you ride a bike you're respresenting all cyclists..."
No I'm not, I'm getting from A to B. How other people do that and the laws that they do or don't break along the way are nothing to do with me!
Yet here you are, on a bike forum, opining to the rest of the collective.
Just sayin'
Just saying? Readers are a collective? Well, in that case, you should not be allowed on the internet until you get your house in order. Why should we let you read this webpage until you stop all the other readers swearing online. I once saw someone reading on a pavement. Get your house in order. Bloody readers, in their lycra, paying no webtax. Get a real computer! Probably reading this without a helmet, it's your own fault if I drunk drive over you while you read.
Community wanker.
Half a good point, half a foolish one!
Probably good to have lights in the dark - both so you can see where you are going, and that pedestrians and other cyclists can see you. At a push it may be asking too much of drivers to be able to see you when its actually dark - unlike during daylight, cyclists might genuinely be 'invisible' even to a driver who is actually looking.
But the whole 'community' and 'taken seriously' thing is just piffle. I've never taken drivers seriously in my life, given how badly many of them behave, but they don't seem to spend much time agonising about how it affects their 'community'.
There is no 'we'. But I don't object to the police having a word with the full-on Ninjas out there.
£22 victim surcharge? Who was the victim?
It applies to all cases that go to court, it is a way of getting people to accept cautions or plead guilty. It's a bit dodgy and there have been Magistrates resigning over the issue.
You may be thinking of the Criminal Court Charge (though at least the first bit may be equally true of the Victim Surcharge).
http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/oct/16/criminal-court-charge-punishe...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/criminal-courts-charge-ma...
I believe in at least some cases, the victim surcharge is a proportion of a fine, and the magistrate can take ability to pay into account when setting a fine, but the charge is a fixed amount that the magistrate has no power to vary, making the charge more unfair to poor defendants.
There doesn't have to be a victim. It's a standard surcharge that's applied to all convictions. The money goes into a fund to help victims of crime.
Serves him right, why waste the court's time with that?
So he was (potentially) offered a £20 course or a £50 FPN. Took - or ignored - both options and got nailed for £337. Sounds fair enough.
It's that "potentially" that's a bit dubious. The story says "Essex Police offers cyclists ... the chance to complete an online cyclist education course". But is that all cyclists committing similar offenses, or a general policy that wasn't followed in this case for unstated reasons?
If he was offered the course and ended up in court instead because he couldn't be bothered, it's not so disproportionate.
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