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OPINION
Involved in a crash? Here's a modest proposal
Tue, Aug 29, 2017 16:53
145
Crash (CC 2.0 BY-NC Edmund white|Flickr).jpgIn the aftermath of the Alliston case, what should you do if you are a cyclist involved in a crash with a pedestrian?
I have one word of advice for you: Leave.
That’s right. Leave the scene. Get out of Dodge. Get away from the situation as fast as you can. Say nothing to anyone. Give nobody your details. Don’t hang around long enough for anyone to get their phone out. Split. Bugger off. Go home the long way — down as many alleys and across as many parks as possible to avoid CCTV.
Say nothing about the crash to anyone. Don’t discuss it in forums. Don’t tweet or post on Facebook about it. Don’t search on Google for news of the crash or its aftermath. Don’t get your bike repaired. Carry on with your life as if nothing happened.
“But, John,” I can hear you say, “that’s awful advice. Ethically you should stop and help, and isn’t leaving the scene an offence?”
Road Traffic Act: leaving the scene
Last point first: no, it isn’t. Section 170 of the Road Traffic Act makes it an offence for the driver of a motor vehicle to leave the scene of a crash, but it specifically only applies to drivers of “mechanically propelled vehicles” as it quaintly calls them. (That means an engine or motor; your bike’s chain and gears don’t count as the propulsion comes from your legs.)
Section 168 makes it an offence to refuse to give your name and address to “any person having reasonable ground” to require it. But they have to ask for it first. Leave before anyone can ask your name, and you’re in the clear. Martin Porter QC, who drew my attention to this part of the Road Traffic Act, added: “I have never yet been supplied with name and address by [a] motorist I have reasonably suspected of careless driving. Asked a few times.”
Ethically, yes, all of this is dreadful. But the Alliston case has put cyclists in the position where we cannot be sure of being dealt with justly. In fact, we can be sure that we will not be treated justly.
There is no way that Charlie Alliston was guilty of manslaughter, and he was rightly acquitted.
But there is also no way he was riding furiously and wantonly. He was riding at 18mph. Traffic and parked vehicles around him left him with nowhere to go and when he yelled to warn Kim Briggs she stepped back into his path. If that’s furious and wanton riding, I’m a banana.
The brakeless fixie issue
You could argue that Alliston would not have ended up in court in the first place if he hadn’t been riding a bike that wasn’t street legal. Would the Met and the CPS have gone after him if he’d been riding a fixie with a front brake? I believe they would.
The tide is turning against cycling in London. The nonsensical claims that a few short stretches of protected cycleway have caused huge increases in congestion and pollution have stuck. Mayor Sadiq Khan has cancelled or postponed shovel-ready cycling schemes and TfL has mysteriously forgotten how to design new ones if its hopeless, inept Nine Elms and Fiveways schemes are anything to go by. I expect that before the end of Khan’s first term, TfL will announce that Cycle Superhighway 3, the world-class protected cycle lane along the Embankment is to be ripped up.
Meanwhile cycling and walking commissioner Will Norman doesn’t realise that his job is to enable active travel, not to run spin for Sadiq Khan’s preference for roads and buses. Khan is running a PR mayoralty, all talk and no delivery, and calling on others to fix problems like air pollution that are well within his power. But to do so would put him into conflict with the influential bus, taxi and haulage lobbies.
With public opinion increasingly hostile to cycling, the Met and the CPS would have gone after Alliston anyway. After all, a mother of two was, tragically, dead. Something Had To Be Done, and prosecuting Alliston was Something. Alliston had dug a huge hole for himself by his forum and Evening Standard postings. He really was a dream defendant — if you’re a prosecutor.
Given the general ignorance about cycling, a fixie with a front brake could still be easily represented as the equivalent to a Formula One car, and equally inappropriate for the streets. Alliston’s lawyer failed to challenge the Met’s nonsensical braking distance tests in either premise or execution; it’s vanishingly unlikely he’d have been able to mount a defence against the charge of furious and wanton cycling even if Alliston had been riding a bike with brakes.
And I don’t believe the bike made any substantial difference. The instinctive reaction when a pedestrian steps into your path is to try and avoid hitting them. Yes, you’ll slow down too and Alliston did, but Kim Briggs stepped back into his path, they butted heads and she fell to the ground. Had he been going slower (as he would not have had time to stop, despite the Met’s staged video), she might still have fallen, she might still have hit her head on the ground. We just don’t know, and we cannot therefore know that Alliston’s inability to stop faster was the primary cause of Kim Briggs’s death.
The not guilty verdict shows that the jury did not think it was. If Alliston was guilty of an illegal act in not having a front brake, and that illegal act led to Kim Briggs’s death, then he was guilty of manslaughter. If he was not guilty, then his illegal act did not cause Kim Briggs’s death.
That also makes the conviction for wanton and furious driving unsafe too, unless the jury took the view that the injuries that Kim Briggs sustained as a result of Alliston riding into her did not cause her death. That would be a somewhat bizarre conclusion, but that’s juries for you. However, I’m not a lawyer and there may be some twist to the legal reasoning here that I’ve missed. Happy to be corrected in the comments or via Twitter.
The justice system is stacked against cyclists
More broadly, the Alliston case is only the latest example of the justice system failing a cyclist, but it’s unusual in that the rider was accused of perpetrating a fatal crash, instead of being its victim.
London’s police have largely been on the back foot when it comes to cycling since the debacle of Operation Safeway, in which the police targeted minor cycling infringements after several cyclists were killed in London in November, rather than going after the motor vehicle behaviour that kills cyclists. They were pilloried for it by cycling groups, and rightly so.
Presented with an unsympathetic defendant in a cocky, pierced teenager riding a hipster bike, the Met and the Crown Prosecution Service must have thought all their Christmases had come at once.
They therefore charged Alliston with offences that had to be heard in Crown Court, rather than any of the more appropriate lesser offences that would have been heard by magistrates, as Martin Porter QC has pointed out.
There’s a legal maxim that if you want to get off a charge, you go for a jury trial if you can. Juries are composed of people who can’t convince the court they’re too important to be excused jury duty. They tend to be sympathetic to mundane criminality, which is why there are so many breathtaking not guilty verdicts in cases of causing death by careless or dangerous driving.
Charlie Alliston, Daily Mail stereotype
Unfortunately for him, with his tattoos and piercings, Charlie Alliston was as close as it gets to the Daily Mail stereotype of an arrogant, reckless, young tearaway, scofflaw cyclist. There was no way he was going to get a sympathetic hearing from a jury of Londoners who are encouraged to hate cyclists by every story about cycling on the local news, in the London papers, in the national papers, on the BBC and on LBC.
And so it went. Anyone who rides bike knows Alliston’s account of the crash was entirely plausible. Between a parked lorry and moving cars he had nowhere to go. Kim Briggs stepped back into his path (presumably seeing the cars, but not registering Alliston) and he was unable to avoid her.
But by bringing the absurd charge of manslaughter, the CPS could be confident they’d get Alliston for something. I can imagine the jury room discussions. “All right, it’s not manslaughter, but the arrogant git’s guilty of something. What’s this wanton and furious thing? Up to two years bird? Yeah, that’ll do.”
Lynch mob
The resulting atmosphere is that of a lynch mob. I’ve seen posts hoping that Alliston gets anally raped if he goes to prison, and wanting to know his usual riding route so they can string wire in his path. Have you ever seen that for a killer driver?
I fear for the safety of the cyclist next time one of us is involved in a crash with a pedestrian who doesn’t immediately get up and walk away. By bringing this spurious prosecution, the CPS has failed in its duty to act in the public interest. It has made the roads more dangerous, not less.
Cyclists have long known that we will not get justice if we are victims of road violence. Now we can be sure we will not get justice if we are accused of being its perpetrators.
And that means our only recourse is to get away from a crash immediately.
Footnote: If you do choose to stay at the scene of a crash, and there’s even the slightest possibility you might be blamed (in other words, any crash at all in the current climate) say nothing to the police without a lawyer present. Don’t try and be helpful, don’t give a statement. Ask for a lawyer and shut up till he or she arrives.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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145 comments
Of course a manslaughter charge is justified - someone died as a result of an unplanned action by another person. The circumstances are unfortunate but that is why we have trial by your peers.
I would strongly advise to stop and help if you hit anyone. Time after a head injury is crucial. Someone can appear normal but have an internal bleed that might cause a totally avoidable death if medical help is not provided.
I'm not sure if this article is intended to be bad satire but it's in poor taste at the moment.
1. He was found not guilty of that charge, so were the CPS right to charge him, and perhaps the jury wrong in their return?
2. Are you of the opinion that there should be several drivers charged with manslaughter, daily?
That has nothing to do with what I said. Our opinion counts for nothing here. As already noted, CPS, judge & jury.
You seem to have an unreasonable amount of faith in the system.
Yes & no. It's one of the best in the world with the privy council is still the highest court of appeal for many countries. However, it's not perfect and that is recognised with the right to appeal a verdict.
The privy council is the highest court of appeal for many countries largely because Britain historically took over many countries - usually not in a particularly lawful manner. It's not really a recommendation of the purity and flawlessness of British justice that it's less corrupt than Zimbabwe, say.
And 'the right to appeal a verdict' doesn't actually make it perfect. The imperfections remain. It has loads of them, most of them reflecting the various imbalances of power in society.
Didn't the woman step out into the road without looking ? If he was in a car he'd have got away Scot free.
That's what the papers say. It's a public dock, I wasn't there. He wasn't in a car so that's irrelevant.
Somebody died as a result of their own intentional act of stepping into the road without first looking. The article is might be in poor taste, but I think it is important to remind cyclists that there is no requirement for them to remain at the scene of an accident and there is no requirement for them to give their details. However it misses one very important point - 'if you can'.
I may be wrong, but I suspect that in the majority of incidents where pedestrians and cyclists collide, it is the cyclist who comes off worse. The cyclist who suffers the greatest physical injury and the cyclist who suffers the greatest financial loss.
Yes you're wrong ... cyclists only come off worse when they (successfully) attempt to avoid a collision ... they come off much better if they let the pedestrian absorb the impact.
Got any data to prove that? It doesn't seem obviously the case.
Can the author update the piece to correct the victim's name: Kim Briggs not Blake?
I'm hoping that Alliston appeals so that the 'science' used in the trial is properly tested...maybe that was the defence's plan and why it wasn't challenged...
good spot - blake is dangerously close to brake!
Anniston was stitched up like a kipper, even the MET/CPS coming up with the trumped manslaughter charge was so that it would go to a higher court ensuring he was going to get a higher starting tariff and be judged by people they knew would be having no logic when applied to the case was a clear indication as to their real intentions. That wasn't justice, it was payback/agenda.
Add into which a piss poor defence lawyer, at least the jury saw some sense but it should have being a mis-trail as soon as the false evidence was put into the minds of the juriors regarding the stopping distance.
At worst he should have got done on the Con and Use regs in a magistrates, but frankly it should never have gone to court at all.
Section 35 OAP 1861 is indictable only.
"Section 170 of the Road Traffic Act makes it an offence for the driver of a motor vehicle to leave the scene of a crash, but it specifically only applies to drivers of “mechanically propelled vehicles” as it quaintly calls them. (That means an engine or motor; your bike’s chain and gears don’t count as the propulsion comes from your legs.)"
eBikes might reasonably be considered to fall into that category.
18mph on a very busy road with pedestrians all around is too fast. If you cannot stop on a sixpence you are cycling too fast. Whenever I'm in a built up area I slow down to a pace where I know I can stop immediately if an unexpected situation requires it.
My (very limited) experience of London cycling is that if you try to cycle slowly (ie what might otherwise be considered to be too fast around pedestrians) you get grief from both drivers and from other cyclists. You are pressurised into 'going with the flow'.
I don't really get this. Firstly, I'm almost always 'in a built up area', there's no other kind of area within 20 miles. Secondly if you slow down that much, how do you cope with cars doing a minimum of 40 mph around you? How do you cope with the horn-tooting aggression you will get for being too slow?
If 18mph is 'too fast', why on earth are motorised vehicles allowed to do 2 or 3 times that speed in such areas?
I feel very reluctant to defend Aliston, both because he comes across as a bit of a knob, and becuase I am always inclined to side with the pedestrian, who in this case paid a terrible price. One way or another he screwed up, even if the police's attitude seems kind of biased.
But I don't get all those insisting that 18mph is 'too fast', when its rare for drivers to go that _slow_ on most London roads. The police won't even enforce 20mph limits.
No, 18 mph is the recommended maximum cycling speed on a path shared by pedestrians and cyclists. Stepping out without looking on a 'very busy road' on the other hand...
Given a car has a longer stopping distance than a bike, what speed should they be going at?
"Ask for a lawyer and shut up till he or she arrives."
Best* advice ever.
*possibly tied with "Don't stick it in the crazy"
You're going to get a boatload of Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells responses, and I think I've already said everything I want to say on this case BTL on various articles, so I'll just say 'hear, hear'.
im from Tunbridge Wells originally, and I must say I'm disgusted.
Jeeze John.. There's a lot going on in your article, but do you really think telling the wider cycling community to act immorrally helps our cause brother?
Personally I think this article could sway any of the establishment/lobbyists/busybody's to 'help them' get road based cycling regulated. It wasn't that long ago that road races were banned in Britain in response to some proposed legislation, road racing was banned to 'protect cycling in Britain'.
The Alliston case 'legally is beyond me' however my opinion is that a pedestrian died and the heirachy of life in this country is pedestrian, human powered vehicle, motor powered vehicle - and I'm okay with that.
What I don't want is for jaywalking to be a crime.
I don't want to have 'riding outside of a bike lane where a bike lane is provided' to be a crime.
What I don't want is for London based cycling to represent me, I see far too many stupid, selfish cyclists (and pedestrians and other road users) in London.
I disagree with your summary of the situation, if he'd have braked he may not have hit her with the same force which may have led to injury not death, we will never know, BUT not having the facility to be able to stop within a reasonable distance and taking into account situation in a busy area is totally on him. The kid that killed that lady did kill her wantonly in my eyes, 1) by riding a bike unsuitable for the situation 2) by being unable to exert enough control over the human powered vehicle to change the outcome.
What I do want is for the right to drive of motorists to be redefined from a right to a privilege and for the law to represent that with lifetime bans and more strict sentances.
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