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Cyclist riding through pedestrian area - image via Graeme Paterson on Flickr.jpgDfT report says there is a “strong” case for a dangerous cycling law
An independent report commissioned by the Department for Transport has concluded that there is a strong case to change the law to tackle dangerous and careless cycling that causes injury or death. Ministers have yet to decide whether to accept the report’s findings.
STATS19 reported road casualty data reveals that between 2011 and 2016 there were a total of 2,491 collisions between cyclists and pedestrians that resulted in a pedestrian casualty. Of these, 20 resulted in a pedestrian fatality and 546 resulted in serious injury to the pedestrian.
While acknowledging that the figures do not indicate whether there was fault on the part of the cyclist, the report concludes that this is “not an insignificant number.”
The report was commissioned shortly after Charlie Alliston was found guilty of causing bodily harm by wanton or furious driving following the death of pedestrian Kim Briggs – a crime under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act.
Referring to this offence, the report’s author, Laura Thomas of Birketts LLP - a Deputy Traffic Commissioner and former board member for the Freight Transport Association - reasons: “The use of a historic offence aimed at carriage driving does not fit with the modern approach to road safety; it is difficult to define, is not objective in scope and does not allow for a transparent and consistent sentencing practice focused on culpability and harm. Moreover, the maximum sentence available does not appropriately reflect the harm in cases involving serious injury or death.”
Suggesting that a law change could have a positive impact for cyclists, she argues, “cyclists are in danger of facing manslaughter in circumstances where drivers would not as there are prescriptive driving offences.”
She also makes the point that legislative change would provide a benefit with regards to the rise of e-bikes and would to some extent future-proof the law.
Cycling UK says that in the last ten years 99.4 per cent of all pedestrian deaths involved a motor vehicle and the charity believes the wider point is that cyclists and pedestrians are regularly being failed by the existing laws on careless and dangerous driving.
Only 27 per cent of drivers convicted of death by careless driving are sent to prison for sentences on average of only 14 months. In contrast, Alliston was jailed for 18 months after being found guilty of causing bodily harm by wanton and furious driving.
Duncan Dollimore, Cycling UK’s Head of Campaigns, said: “What’s needed is a full review of all road traffic offences and penalties, something the Government promised back in 2014 but has yet to deliver.
“Whether someone is prosecuted for careless or dangerous driving is often something of a lottery, as are the resulting sentences, leaving thousands of victims and their relatives feeling massively let down by the justice system’s failure to reflect the seriousness of bad driving.
“Adding one or two new offences specific to cyclists would just be tinkering around the edges, especially when the way that mistakes, carelessness, recklessness and deliberately dangerous behaviour by all road users is dealt with hasn’t been fit for purpose for years.
“That system can’t be fixed simply by bolting on one or two new cycling offences to something which isn’t working now.”
British Cycling campaigns manager Martin Key said: “British Cycling supports in principle any change to the justice system which leads to an improvement in safety for road users and the way that victims of road collisions and their families are treated.
“The trial of Charlie Alliston last year highlighted that there is a gap in the law concerning death caused by careless or dangerous cycling, and we recognise that the outdated law used to convict Alliston was not fit for purpose in the 21st century.
“However, the adoption of this new law alone will not lead to a marked improvement in the safety of our roads. Between 2011 and 2015 the average number of pedestrian fatalities was 365, of which just three involved a bicycle, and last year the total number of fatalities increased again to 448. We look forward to hearing how the government plans to combat this increase going forwards.”
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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33 comments
There maybe a case for dangerous cycling being made law. There is no need for any cyclist to worry though, as the police don't enforce the current dangerous driving for vehicle drivers
Possibly true, but when it's a case of man bites dog, especially when the man doing the biting is a cyclist, the media get themselves in a frenzy. This then puts pressure on the police and the CPS to actually do something.
If every cyclist killed by a motorist got the same media attention as Kim Briggs' death did and there was the same frothing at the mouth outrage, then there'd be less of a need for a review of motor offences, as the current ones would be enforced and the sentences would actually reflect the crime that was committed.
There maybe a case for dangerous cycling beingade law. There is no need for any cyclist to worry though, as the police don't enforce the current dangerous driving for vehicle drivers
I'm confused. The headline says "strong" case but I haven't read anything to support this.
It is deliberate misuse of language to create the opposite impression of the truth e.g. damning report.
A harsher penalty for dangerous cycling would probably have made no difference to the outcome of the Alliston collision. The cyclist in such collisions is just as vulnerable to injury as the pedestrian, if not more so.
In the Alliston case, a life might have been saved if:
1. There were harsher penalties for riding a bike without a front brake (and it was enforced).
2. There were laws about pedestrians using crossings where available and penalties for not doing so (again, needs enforcing).
As pointed out, the sentences given to motorists under dangerous driving laws are on average more lenient that this particular case anyway. I'm not sure new legislation would have resulted in a harsher sentence for Alliston.
I don’t thing we’ve ever ha d a jaywalking law in the uk and I don’t think it would do anything to improve the safety of cyclists, or pedestrians. it would just reinforce the motorist view that they own the road.
Agree!!
Well, at least Mr Briggs can now go to sleep at night confident that he's made the world a better place...
The quotation made in:
"While acknowledging that the figures do not indicate whether there was fault on the part of the cyclist, the report concludes that this is “not an insignificant number.”
Is incorrect. The "not an insignificant number" refers to cyclist-pedestrian collision numbers with reference to the cyclist-motor vehicle collisions. This is in 15.4.
The report does apportion fault in cyclist-pedestriin collisions on page 26, footnote 30:
"For completeness, not all of these fatalities were attributed to cyclist error:“15/20 fatalities were assigned at least one contributory factor, with 6/20 assigning a factor to the pedestrian only, 5/20 assigning a factor to both the pedestrian and the cyclist, and 4/20 assigning a factor to the cyclist only.”"
So infact collisions in which the cyclist is at sole fault occur at a lower proportion that pedestrian or both fault.
This is quite important and very strange to see road.cc hasn't picked up on it.
THIS NEEDS TO BE PUBLICISED!!!!!!!!!!
That is interesting.
My earlier comment states that I would guess that cyclists are more likely to be blame for collisions, but those stats show that I'm wrong.
That makes this law even more laughable.
Indeed, it suggests there is a greater need for a carless or dangerous walking law!
Given the trend of designating paths as shared use and as a consequence, encouraging conflict between pedestrians and cyclists, maybe they should consider introducing an offence of death by dangerous infrastructure design.
Double post
Reading the report it is disappointing to see:
"11.4 Whilst one can never truly ascertain what was in a jury’s mind, the Alliston case could perhaps be taken as an example of a jury being reluctant to convict of manslaughter. In this case the unlawful act giving rise to unlawful act manslaughter was said to be the fact that he was riding a bike with no brakes; which is a criminal offence."
A bit nitpicky perhaps, but you might expect someone in this position of responsibility to be able to report accurately.
The only issue that would concern me, if such a law is introduced with "Strict Liability" imposed on the cyclist, where the cyclist is deemed to be at fault, by default. As another comment rightly pointed out, the STATS19 data only refers to pedestrian injury, there seems to be a presumption the cyclist was the guilty party.
I'm in favour of strict liability laws, myself. It shouldn't be a big issue in cyclist/pedestrian collisions as they usually happen in busy areas with lots of witnesses, so the strict liability wouldn't make any difference.
It would be an issue if a pedestrian jumped out at a cyclist in the middle of nowhere with no witnesses, but I don't see why pedestrians would be aiming to do that.
As a cyclist, I'd consider most cyclist/pedestrian collisions to be more the fault of the cyclist (if there is to be blame assigned) as they are the faster moving and thus should have more duty of care. Obviously, there's lots of exceptions to this.
That said, this law is a complete waste of time and the govt. should be ashamed at how little effort they are putting into tackling air pollution that kills far more people than this law will affect.
I found the best response to this in a surprising place, the comment section in the Daily Mail.
Ok. Now let's deal with the other 99.8%+ of road deaths.
Fundamentally flawed from the outset, commissioning a report by somebody who has a historic vested interest in the FTA makes the independent nature of the report questionable. This report relates to phase 1 of the cycle safety review focusing on cyclists as the issue. Phase 2 focusing on road safety issues relating to cycling is still to be done. Given that more cyclists have been killed by HGVs than pedestrians by cyclists these reports should have been done in the reverse order and any credible lawyer should have had the gumption to push for this, so I have to question her historical vested interest.
I can see this discouraging cycling - not sure I'd risk using a shared use path given how inattentive pedestrians are. That means I'd be forced onto the roads where I'd get punishment passes from drivers pissed off that I'm not using the path. Also means I'd have to start running a front camera because lets face it Tom Robinson had more chance of a fair trial in To Kill a Mockingbird than a cyclist. Fortunately most of my current commute is ped free but only because I'm already favouring using the road than the adjacent shared use path.
All cyclists should now look forward to being able to use "sorry mate did not see you" "he/she/they came out of nowhere" or "the sun was in my eyes" to avoid any sort of reprimand in line with other road users.
STATS19 reported road casualty data reveals that between 2011 and 2016 there were a total of 2,491 collisions between cyclists and pedestrians that resulted in a pedestrian casualty. Of these, 20 resulted in a pedestrian fatality and 546 resulted in serious injury to the pedestrian.
While acknowledging that the figures do not indicate whether there was fault on the part of the cyclist, the report concludes that this is “not an insignificant number.”
Missing from the article - it may be in the report, I don't know - is the number of collisions between cyclists and pedestrians that resulted in a cyclist casualty.
In a collision between someone walking and someone riding a bike, both parties are just as vulnerable. Maybe there should be an offence of causing death by dangerous walking.
I'm sure I read a while ago (around the allison case) that at least 6 cyclists a year are killed by at fault pedestrians? There was a case in court just after allison got convicted where a drunk man staggered across a street from a pub without looking to buy sweets (no really), knocked a cyclist lit up a xmas tree off then tried to blame the dead cyclist for causing it (thankfully there were witnesses).
Apparently there is no law the police can use in these cases to prosecute a pedestrian - a police officer told someone he could prosecute if the cyclist was injured but not killed.
This got zero attention in the media of course...
https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/reading-berkshire-news/helmet-would-not-saved-life-13583669
You remember correctly. Benjamin Pedley was killed in March 2017 by a drunk pedestrian who, conveniently, remembered nothing of the incident.
Sorry, fucked up the position of the URL. It's at the top. Christ, this forum software is clunky.
https://www.birketts.co.uk/our-lawyers/ipswich/laura-thomas
"formerly a board member for the Freight Transport Association (FTA)"
The same FTA that paid (now ex-) MP Rob Flello to call for the removal of cycle lanes and blamed bikes for congestion?
Well, this is starting to look a bit cosy, isn't it?
That's also worth adding. Thanks.
this is a bit like asking the NRA to review gun control laws!
The NRA don't need to review gun control laws - they wrote them in the first place.
Oh wait, now I get your point...
"Referring to this offence, the report’s author, Laura Thomas of Birketts LLP, reasons: “The use of a historic offence aimed at carriage driving does not fit with the modern approach to road safety; it is difficult to define, is not objective in scope and does not allow for a transparent and consistent sentencing practice focused on culpability and harm. Moreover, the maximum sentence available does not appropriately reflect the harm in cases involving serious injury or death.”"
With the sole change of deleting "carriage" from the above, it applies exactly to driving offences. So what is the point of this except to punish cyclists for a single incident involving an arrogant teenager and a woman who has an influential husband?
Cycling UK is right, and if the current laws aren't protecting pedestrians and cyclists, in large numbers, why is the government even looking at the damage caused by cyclists, which despite the claims, is relatively insignificant.
Funny how this comes the day after a government press release encouraging local authorities to invest in cycling, something that same government refuses to fund. I'm sure there have been more ineffectual governments, but this lot make Mr Bean look good.
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