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news
Cyclists Stay Awesome bell (credit: road.cc)MP calls for mandatory bell law for cyclists “to warn pedestrians”, as Iain Duncan Smith renews ‘dangerous cycling’ law campaign and claims e-bikes are causing “major danger”
A Conservative MP has called for cyclists to be required by law to fit and use a bell when riding a bicycle, as the party’s former leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith renewed his campaign to introduce tougher laws to punish dangerous cycling.
During a debate on the Labour government’s new Crime and Policing Bill, Duncan Smith argued that his proposed legislation – which, despite attracting cross-party support last year, was shelved due to the general election – would crack down on people “genuinely abusing” the Road Traffic Act, as well as e-bike riders “causing major danger” to pedestrians on paths.
The second reading of the Crime and Policing Bill, branded “one of the biggest legislative updates to policing for decades”, took place in the House of Commons on Monday. Labour says the legalisation aims to clamp down on anti-social behaviour, shop theft, and street crime, including giving police officers more power to search for stolen mobile phones.
However, clause four of the bill could affect people riding bikes in pedestrian zones or on footpaths, by enabling police officers or local officials to issue fixed penalty notices of £500 to anyone found to be breaching a council’s public space protection order (PSPO), replacing the current £100 ceiling for on-the-spot cycling-related PSPO fines.
And, as Monday’s Commons debate turned to cycling, Duncan Smith urged the government to consider including his proposals for tougher ‘dangerous cycling’ laws as part of the Crime and Policing Bill.
Cyclist in London with pedestrians in foreground (credit: Simon MacMichael)Last year, the former Conservative leader spearheaded a campaign to introduce an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill, which would lead to tougher sentences for people who kill or injure while cycling dangerously.
The amendment looked almost certain to pass last summer, but was stopped in its tracks by Rishi Sunak’s decision to call a general election in July, meaning there was insufficient time for the legislation to pass through parliament.
Meanwhile, during the election campaign, Labour said it would support new laws “to protect people from dangerous cycling”, although little has been heard on the matter since the party entered government.
Faced with this apparent lack of progress, Duncan Smith questioned on Monday whether his ‘dangerous cycling’ proposals were still being considered by the government, asking: “Is that gone?”
“The main point I was making was we have had deaths on the street where cyclists cannot be prosecuted for having killed someone,” the Chingford and Woodford Green MP said.
“We are still using a piece of legislation from the mid-19th century, which was offensive and wild carriage driving, which is not acceptable but it hardly ever commits anybody and convicts them either.”
He continued: “So, I would encourage the government to please look again at dangerous cycling where people genuinely abuse the Road Traffic Act and nothing ever seems to be done for them, particularly now on e-bikes which are very dangerous and they’re used in the pathways. Even if they’re not committing a criminal offence in the sense of it, they are causing major danger.
“And ASB – antisocial behaviour – is a big thing our constituents notice and they feel very threatened by people who ride them down on the pavements. It may seem small, but it’s not.”
Following Duncan Smith’s intervention, Labour’s policing minister Dame Diana Johnson noted that the government was looking at introducing new dangerous cycling laws “in detail”.
“The issue of dangerous cycling we are looking at, and we recognise what a doughty campaigner he is, so we are certainly looking at that in detail,” Johnson said.
> Iain Duncan Smith's anti-cycling crusade is anti-reality
Expanding on his former part leader’s proposals, Sir Julian Lewis – the Conservative MP for New Forest East – also called for a new law requiring cyclists to fix bells on their handlebars.
“It would also help if it were made mandatory for all cyclists to have a bell so they could at least warn pedestrians of their approach,” Lewis suggested.
In response, Duncan Smith said he would take his fellow MP’s mandatory bell suggestion “into consideration” as he attempts to revive his campaign for updated cycling legislation.
Bike bells were last on the agenda in parliament in March 2022 when, incidentally, the then-Conservative government insisted that it had no plans to make bell usage mandatory.
The Labour MP for Putney, in west London, Fleur Anderson had raised the issue with the Department for Transport, asking then-Transport Minister Grant Shapps whether he had made any assessment “of the potential merits of requiring all bicycles to include a bell?”
In reply, Trudy Harrison, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary and now the chair of the Bikeability Trust, rejected the idea on behalf of the government.
“Rule 66 of The Highway Code recommends that bells are fitted to cycles, and that people who cycle should always be considerate of other road users, including by calling out or ringing their bell if they have one,” she said.
“All cycles are required at point of sale to be fitted with a bell, but we do not intend to legislate to make the use of bells on cycles mandatory, as there are other ways for people who cycle to warn other road users of their presence.”
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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47 comments
so, instead of having both hands on your brakes controling your steering and being ready to avoid a collision, you now are required to imperil yourself and others to ring a bell when your voice can be far more effective providing guidance (eg. "I am passing you on your left")....perhaps we cyclists should seek to gain representation and enact similar stupid laws for the unfit to contend with
A few points to consider :
Will cyclists be required to ring the bell whenever they pass a pedestrian, while riding on the road? Just in case the pedestrian steps out without looking?
Will electric car drivers be required to honk the horn in a similar situation?
When riding on a path,shared with pedestrians, is it it a good idea to brake with one hand, while using the other to ring a bell?
Isn't it better to shout a warning, rather than ride one handed?
Hasn't Ian Duncan Smith got anything more important to do? Will he campaign for bells to be fitted to Russian & North Korean tanks, prior to invading Britain?
Seems fair enough. I'll do more bellwork when people stop monging around with their faces 4" from a phone screen with a noise-filled wastepaper bin sized can over each ear.
I absolutely agree with your point, but please don't use "monging" as an insult, it derives from "mongoloid" which was the old term for Down's syndrome (called at one time "Mongolian idiocy") and is deeply offensive to those who have the condition.
“The main point I was making was we have had deaths on the street where cyclists cannot be prosecuted for having killed someone,” the Chingford and Woodford Green MP said.
Is that actually true?
Nope. Otherwise Mr Charlie Alliston (the t**t who killed Kim Briggs) would not have been prosecuted. Which is of course the case that really ignited this stupid debate.
Do you really have to ask?
Pick either "yes":
- because "ah but we can only prosecute them for 'wanton and furious driving' ergo they are not being prosecuted for killing". (Ignoring that in practice cyclists who have killed people in crashes have been convicted AND got comparable penalites to drivers who do so)
- because in particular cases it was considered there was not sufficient evidence to prosecute - exactly the same as in cases where vulnerable road users have been killed in collisions involving drivers. (So nothing to do with the particularity of specific cycling offenses I suspect - I'm not a lawer...)
Or "no":
- because in fact cyclists have been prosecuted and convicted as above, so really he's talking nonsense (or at least needs to present some evidence other than "the police couldn't be bothered - just another RTA to them" which also applies to motor vehicles...)
- because in fact cyclists have been prosecuted and convicted as above, so really he's talking nonsense (or at least needs to present some evidence other than "the police couldn't be bothered - just another RT
AC to them" which also applies to motor vehicles...)There, fixed that........
I think the complaint - if it is in good faith (which is a question...) - may stem from:
a) People are accustomed to cars, but less to cyclists - so this worries them. Disproportionately perhaps - but people do get genuinely startled when a cyclist "came out of nowhere" - because much quieter than a car.
b) "In our space" - we've allocated the lion's share of carriageway space to motor traffic. We've also learned that while the main lanes are "for motor traffic" the little that's left should a) be for pedestrians and b) be "safe for pedestrians". (Though in fact every year more people are killed on the pavement by drivers than are killed by cyclists in total...)
c) Cyclist-pedestrian collisions are so rare they're highly salient. A "road traffic accident" (now collision) involving a motor vehicle is something we're inured to.
d) The tiny numbers perhaps focus us on the personal / trigger our intuitions about fairness and personal choice e.g. "they chose to cycle". And "someone must be held accountable". However our intuitions about baseline rates for prosecutions never mind criminal convictions in many types of crime are way too high.
Specifically in the case of motor vehicles the motor industry has done an incredible PR job of flipping our feelings on this from "why did they choose to drive when that immediately increases the chances of someone being killed / injured" through "sad but accidents happen" to "why didn't the victim take more care / stay out of the road / wear hi-viz / wear a helmet?"
100 years of big auto propaganda will do that so it's time for #VisionZero to fight back as No death or serious injury is acceptable.
I think the argument is that the maximum penalty for wanton or furious driving is 2 years, which may be insufficient in some cases. Although that ignores the fact that a cyclist who kills someone could be charged with manslaughter which has a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Yes, drivers are killing people on the street all the time and the CPS doesn't seem to want to prosecute cyclists for these deaths!
IIRC his most recent public campaigning on this topic had been around Regents Park following the death of Mrs Griffiths, and that I believe is the example he keeps citing where he states cyclists couldnt be prosecuted for having killed someone.
so it is true, but from a certain point of view.
But they could have been prosecuted; it was just that there was no realistic prospect of a conviction. That's not the same as can't be prosecuted.
This has precisely 0% chance of getting into legislation. It's just unworkable. But that isn't the point.
instead, the purpose of this call for bells ends up being another salvo in a culture war
So essentially an attempt by the feckless or incompetent to deny their Hierarchy of Responsibility obligations..
I have a bell, but it's of no use, nor is any other audible warning device, when many pedestrians have earphones on/in and are oblivious to what's going on around them.
I wonder if this is how IDS tackles all the challenges in his life.
Fire burning down his house:
Call the fire brigade to put it out and save his house, or use his watering can to save the shed?
Liz Truss crashing the economy:
Call for her to resign, or send HM Treasury a fiver in the post to help out with buying guilts?
Point being he an waffle on about cyclists all he likes but it'll do little to save the 5 deaths a day caused on British roads because the vast vast majority of them are not caused by cyclists.
I know, I'm singing to the choir here.
To be fair, on current evidence, Liz Truss could do with a few more of those.
Any.
'Don't you blow that f.....g dog whistle at me!'
More nonsense from IDS. Why do you need a bell? When I last checked most cyclists have a tongue in their heads. Nothing wrong with a friendly 'coming through'.
The suggestion came from Julian Lewis, not IDS. It'll go nowhere. Even if you mandate fitting a bell, mandating its use is unworkable and unnecessary, as you (and a former government) highlight.
Because (looks in book of shit excuses) some people can't understand English. I'm sure something something disabled and old people can be shoehorned into there as a good justification.
"Ding ding" or "Oi!" don't require any particular language skills
Genuinely interested to know whether people say "ding ding" in e.g. France, Germany, Spain, or if their verbal approximation is different.
Just checked with my Dutch partner...she says "ding ding" is acceptable here 😂
"Le ding ding"?
"Dang dang" in France, if I remember my Frere Jacques right.
Also, you don't need to move your hands away from brakes etc. if you call out. It's much easier to change the volume of your voice to fit the situation than it is to get a bell to work with pedestrians.
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