It's time for 'presumed liability'.

For me presumed liability will go some way to discredit the current, growing mindset that accidents with pedestrians and cyclists are an unavoidable aspect of road use. 

Presumed liability does exactly that... it reinforces that motorists are liable for the safety of more vulnerable road users.

This flies in the face of... pedestrians and cyclists are barriers and inconveniences to happy motoring, which is currently the mantra smashed out by the press. 

I had a mate wiped out on the weekend on a roundabout. The driver admitted that he had entered the roundabout without slowing or looking as he was talking to his wife at the time. Completely admitted lack of care and attention. However, everyone my mate spoke to, from the driver, to witnesses, to the police, to his friends all questioned whether he had taken enough effort in making himself visible. Not one, not a single person questioned whether it was right or wrong that a driver should, by their own admission not pay attention whilst travelling through a junction. 

That is, to be frank, complete bullshit. Presumed liability will, at a legal level at least, show this common bullshit situation for exactly what it is. 

My final piece, and I rant on about this all the time, is this. I have never hit a cyclist or pedestrian in a car. Neither has my missus, any of my mates, or my family. These people are average people. It is not hard to use the roads and not hit and maim people. 

By the way, all of the above can recite episodes of seeing cyclists do crazy shit... however even though they have been exposed to cyclists riding without lights, through red lights, riding down the wrong side of the road... they've not hit them. Incompetent cycling, whilst annoying, is rarely the cause of a crash. Inattention very commonly is. 

Mindsets need to be changed. 

I think you're reading too much into it and making a mountain out of a mole hill.  Lets take your example, a cyclist is hit by a car, first off being hit by a car shows the gravity of the possiblity of major injuries, or death, that is inflicted onto the cyclist and it shows the blame is being placed on the driver and not the rider; if it had said, a was hit by a motorist, some may think a car driver got out and physcially assaulted the cyclist; or by saying a bicycle was hit by a car takes out the human aspect of the person injured on the bike.

Look there are many ways to write a sentence like that, and none of the ways would appeal to all the readers, just leave it as it is and quit worring about small stuff.

If you think that's bad I once read a newspaper article, along with a picture of the scene, where an Elk was hit by a car and the elk's head went through the drivers windshield and the neck and head ended up in the drivers compartment, the news report headline stated this: Elk hit by car, elk survives, not a word in the story about the condition of the motorist or whether or not they had to be taken to a hospital, the concern of the story was the condition of the elk!

@Wellsprop - I like the idea of trackers being fitted to all motor vehicles, but I don't like the central control part of it as that's a bit of a privacy nightmare (e.g. crooks watching your video to get an idea of your daily schedule and home/work locations). I'd prefer it if they were made into black-box type affiars and the contents examined by police/insurers whenever there's a traffic incident.

I'm surprised that more insurance companies don't provide reduced premiums for people fitting dashcams as it must save the companies time and money with disputed claims (which most traffic collissions are). The cameras are cheap enough now that they'd pay for themselves after just one incident.

The idea of measuring driving quality would be interesting as that could probably be achieved without needing complete access to the video. A few accellerometers could measure the "smoothness" of a driver and some decent algorithms could reduce that to a simple score that could be uploaded to the insurance company. It would be easy enough to put that into a phone app as the phone wouldn't need to be anywhere special in the car and could be left in a pocket or bag whilst driving although that would rely on the driver remembering to turn it on and off for trips, so maybe a specialist device permanently fixed to the car would be better.

Data-driven safety improvements are the way forwards.

@Wellsprop - I also cycle around Bristol and there's a big variability in drivers' behaviour. My estimation is that 95% of drivers are well-meaning and semi-competent and 5% are useless/aggressive.

Presumably, similar percentages apply to cyclists/skateboarders/joggers etc. but it's the tonne of metal that makes all the difference. Now the idea of presumed liability is to assign liability in lieu of other evidence and statistics support assigning blame to the big, heavy dangerous thing moving at speed as opposed to the slower, less protected fleshy things.

Also, if you're in a motorised vehicle, it's quite easy and cheap to get a dash-cam and thus provide evidence if your involved in an incident and thus protect yourself against all the RLJers throwing themselves onto your car.

I don't really see a down-side with presumed liability apart from people's prejudice against non-motons.

I'm going to have to go against the grain here - despite this I wholly agree things need to change! I don't think presumed liability is the correct solution.

I find that most motorists are respectful and overtake carefully, giving plenty of room - I always give a courteous acknowledging wave to good drivers and usually receive a wave in return.

In Bristol, this is an entirely different story. Taxis, vans and buses tend to be very aggressive and have no second thoughts about cutting you off or trying to force you out the way etc - its quite disconcerting.

Yesterday, I was cycling across Bristol, I watched another cyclist sail through a red light over a junction; fortunately, he noticed the HGV (rightfully) crossing the junction and came to a skidding halt about a metre before being mown down - my hands were shaking just watching it! As I passed, I gave the idiot some choice words of advice.

Similarly, when I drive home from work I pass a large factory - as the workers pour out, they cycle on the wrong side of the road, ignore junctions, go the wrong way up one way roads, cycle whilst texting/drinking/smoking.

When winter comes round and the light disappears, without fail, every time I cycle/drive to work, I see plenty of cyclists without lights on the roads (I get to work at 7am, so in winter it really is dark!).

Presumably, one could prove they weren't at fault if they hit a cyclist who had no lights, however, I don't think guilty until proven innocent is the correct solution. I would suggest that the driving test is changed and more effort is put in to teaching ALL road users who to behave around each other to prevent incidents - not trying to lay the blame with either side when things go wrong.

Yes I agree too.

The situation currently seems to be that cyclist and pedestrian KSIs* are acceptable collateral in the shared roads puzzle. I don't accept that, but something drastic is needed to shape behaviour. I can't think of a better solution.

* I think 5 people dying daily - most in/on motor vehicles - is an unacceptable price to pay for road use anyway, but car occupant KSI rates are dropping and I don't ride a motorbike, so my dog in this fight is the dismal attitude shown by the government to cyclists and ped KSIs.

I agree. The problem is that cyclists are a minority group, so it's going to be difficult to get the majority (motons) to give up their advantage voluntarily even though the statistics clearly show that most road incidents are caused by moton's lack of attention.

I personally think that the ubiquity of cameras will help. If a few insurers realise the huge cost savings of getting customers to run dash-cams and with the increase in cyclists using cameras, there will be better evidence to decide liability.

I'm often conscious of the choice of words used in reporting of traffic incidents, but there is some logic in describing a vehicle hitting a cyclist as physically, that's what happens even though the driver may have been the cause. When they phrase it as "cyclist hitting vehicle" though, that's rarely accurate and definitely disingenuous.