Road Safety Minister reportedly backs 'dangerous cycling' bill, but DfT says no decision made

Here is a blog that throws some legal insight into the whole issue. Some of the comments are pretty good also.

http://ukcyclerules.wordpress.com/

Personally I feel that there are enough laws to cover failings of cyclists under the Road Traffic Act without a law that would possibly put individuals off cycling at all. If you read other posts of 'blond wig' this actually becomes more apparent.

If the police actually issued FPNs to those who give us a bad name then maybe more would cycle responsibly on the roads rather than pavements and change the behaviour of motorists towards vunerable road users.

I also feel that Andrea Leadsom would be better putting energy into ensuring that motorists received a punishment that fitted the crime. I mean to say, how many motorists have been imprisoned in the last 10 years for taking the life of a ped or cyclist or even another motorist? Any clue Tony??

I don't know the facts of the case and beyond listening to an understandably emotionally distraught mother on the radio today have no detailed knowledge though she claimed the cyclist was riding on the pavement.

I listened to 5 live drive this afternoon and Peter Allen had a chap from the CTC on. He was very reasonable and objected to Mr Allen trying to shout him down when he advanced the argument of relative risk around motorists actions and cyclists actions. When further challenged Mr CTC (sorry didn't get his name) said that he had no problem with cyclists who break the law being prosecuted. This rather took the wind out of Mr Allen's sails. However it does raise the interesting point that many will try to excuse the cyclists actions by saying "but cars do far worse to us". In fairness I thought the CTC made a good fist of this one saying that demonising cyclists is pointless and that road safety laws relating to dangerous / careless driving should be harmonised and penalties appropriate to the crime handed out. (Pretty much Tony's quote from the CTC in fact).

We need to do more within our own community rather than just looking outwards for fairness. I'm in London this week for a few days and have already seen more than my fair share of red light bandits, lane weaving and signals that look like the rider is dropping some ash of the end of his fag. Whilst I'm not saying we should go all Cycling Proficiency on it, our own need educating as much as ignorant drivers and pedestrians.

I wonder if the Minister will take on board the regular comment made by the Police/CPS when dealing with accidents involving motor vehicles? When asked why drivers are charged with "driving with undue care" as opposed to "dangerous driving" the response is that the latter is so hard to prove. Surely this would then be even harder to prove with a bicycle (though I assume if you are riding on the footpath you will be instantly proven to have been riding dangerously)?

Tony - how on earth was it proved that the cyclist entered the Cul-de-sac at 20mph and hit the girl at 17mph? Was this done forensically? Seeing as motor accidents can't always have speeds proven this is yet another dubious aspect of that whole case.

Formulating specific laws for causing death by dangerous cycling is a bit like inventing a law to cover murders committed with spoons. I'm sure it is possible to kill with a spoon, but the ratio of deaths by spoon to deaths by knife if probably similiar to the ratio of deaths by caused by cyclists to deaths caused by drivers. Except courts actually do incarcerate most people who stab their victims, while seemingly rarely doing so for people who run them down.

I don't know about the national picture, but the City of London Police provided me with their stats for the latest three year period and those stats showed that 66% of road collisions causing injury to pedestrians were found to be the fault of the pedestrians themselves, in many cases due steping out in front of vehicles, due to excessive alcohol or drugs. Only 25% of the collisions causing injuries to cyclists were judged to be the fault of the cyclist.

As for Penning's remarks, if he really is going to consider the Leadsom bill as part of a wider review of policy, perhaps there is some hope that the law on dangerous driving will be tightened? In that context I can't see a problem in cycling being treated the same.

On the other hand, the Sunday Times apparently thinks (yesterday's editorial) that the "war on the motorist" has not yet quite ended.

Got to say, that I've seen nothing in any of the reports of the court case at the time to suggest that the group Rhiannon was a part of had been drinking or playing chicken. Jason Howard did admit though that he could have swerved to avoid them, but chose not to - the other thing to note is that this accident occurred in a cul de sac and Howard entered it doing 20mph and he hit Rhiannon doing 17mph and he was riding a mountain bike so something relatively heavy.

The issue here is not whether he was at fault because he clearly was, but whether a new law should be brought in to tackle a very rare occurrence - especially when the existing laws covering forms of transport that kill pedestrians on a daily basis are not rigorously applied. Indeed it was the rarity of this sort of tragedy that made it news in the first place, had Howard been driving a car Rhiannon's death would have barely made the news pages even in her home town, and her parents calls for something to be done would have fallen on deaf ears as do the complaints of the loved ones of the many hundreds of pedestrians killed by motorised traffic on our roads every year.

As Kevin Mayne of the CTC said back in 2008 there would be no problem with cyclists being covered by dangerous driving legislation so long as dangerous driving legislation was applied properly to all road users that caused death or injury.

I have read on Bikeradar that the group with Rhiannon Bennett were playing chicken with the cyclist. I also understand they had been drinking alcohol and were under 18. Does anyone have any further evidence of this?

As anyone who has ever encountered drunk pedestrians will tell you, some of them like to stand in the road deliberately to block your path.

On you and Yours today the debate completely missed the point that the death of Ms Bennet was as a result of a collision between her and a cyclist on the road and turned up stats on footway deaths involving pedestrians and cyclists and vehicles drivers with their respective machines.

The whole issue in the case has very shakey ground for pursuing the cyclist further - a group of young people who had been drinking walking on the carriageway (not as many try to claim the footway and a cyclist correctly using the carriageway warns of his approach but through a failure of the deceased to act in an appropriate way AND the cyclist's failure to adjust his speed and direction of travel delivered a collision. Naturally the weight of responsibility does fall to the user of the moving vehicle who failed to have sufficient control to stop in time, but the absence of a reliable independent witness has left many doubts as to whether a deliberate act of 'chicken' was being played out, something many of us experience when riding past a group on foot.

In almost every collision BOTH parties carry an element of liability. Yesterday I was cut up by and made contact with a mini-coach (the coach ended up with a handlebar height scrape down the side), but in retrospect holding a stronger primary position would have prevented the coach getting in to the danger zone position with me on the nearside.

Another case of bivalent standards occurred in Bath recently when a cyclist collided with a pedestrian in the carriageway and ended up in the cells for 4 hours with the potential charge of involuntary manslaughter hanging on the pedestrian's recovery. Now if that happens for cyclists - why don't the Police make a precautionary arrest of all motorists who are party to a fatal collision - or one with a potentially fatal outcome?