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Cyclist and policeman (CC licensed image by stumayhew:Flickr)Cyclists fined over £1,000,000 in London police crackdown
The Metropolitan Police's Operation Safeway crackdown on cycling traffic offences saw riders fined a total of over £1,000,000 in 2013 and 2014.
The Evening Standard's Josh Pettitt reports that 15,786 fixed penalty notices were handed out to cyclists in 2013, more than twice the 6,286 of 2012.
Riders were fined for offences such as jumping red lights, ignoring traffic signs, failing to stop for officers, not having lights, or carrying passengers, and levied £50 fines totalling £789,300 .
Operation Safeway was launched last November in reaction to the deaths of six riders in a two-week period, a tragedy researchers are still at a loss to explain.
The Met deployed 2,500 officers at 170 junctions throughout London and handed out 14,000 fixed penalty notices or reports for summons to drivers and cyclists in six weeks.
In that period, 4,085 FPNs or reports for summons were handed to cyclists, over 90% for three offences: riding without lights, contravening traffic signals and riding on the pavement.
The most common driver offences were failing to wear a seatbelt, using a phone and contravening traffic signals.
Operation Safeway has continued into 2014, with 5,851 cyclists fined in the first seven months of this year, an additional £292,550 bringing the total to £1,081,850.
A Metropolitan police spokesman told road.cc that figures for the number of drivers fined in that period were not available because the Evening Standard had asked only about cyclists. They're getting back to us.
The Met concedes that because Operation Safeway is about cycling safety it may appear to unevenly target cyclists because driver offences can be picked up in other ways.
Superintendent Robert Revill, of the Met’s Roads and Transport Policing Command, told the Standard: “It is not about punishment or persecution, it’s about creating awareness. We enforce traffic legislation robustly. Officers will be out in force, watching and dealing accordingly with anyone breaking the law.”
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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45 comments
Any chance they put the money into bicycle lanes or truck driver training?
To be honest I don't care if your stupid enough to break the rules its your own fault you get fined, stop misbehaving and you wont get fined.
I'm all for punishment where due and when applied equally however...we've recently heard about the 900 or so hit and run offences in London involving motorists, which is horrific but not surprising.
Hate to ask the obvious but wouldn't met resources and our money be better spent dealing with that?
Jeremy would be a great person to involve about such issues given his very public profile and more difficult to ignore if he looks to expose political apathy on air.
Seems we have kind of established that your car is somehow a shelter of sorts from prosecution when any number of similarly dangerous acts in another environment might be met with severe consequence at the hands of the Health and Safety Inspectorate.
So, what else can we do that's illegal but then widely ignored within this zone of immunity?
We could fiddle tax books, run a pirate DVD copying business, heck Walter & Jessie could have filmed Breaking Bad over here without having to go out to the desert to 'cook'!
If you were questioned just point smugly at the car you sit within and ask them politely to go away...I guess as ever though that would be different.
Good. Break the law, get caught, get fined. Simples.
Unless you break the law in a car, in which case you get ignored. Unless you cause enough damage that you can't be. In which case fools of judges make ludicrous excuses for you, and you get let off anyway.
"Riders were fined for offences such as jumping red lights, ignoring traffic signs, failing to stop for officers, not having lights, or carrying passengers, and levied £50 fines totalling £789,300 ."
Yeah, i am ok with all of that.
Now can you go after the idiots that speed past us at 50mp/h with inches to spare with the same zealous attitude?
Somehow i dot think this will happen so bunk off. Having read Snowdens releases i am sure this will get me listed on some sick ass domestic extremist list for daring to challenge or question the, pathetic and one sided, powers that be.
The police crack down on law breaking cyclists is to be applauded. As a cyclist myself, I often feel at risk from the countless numbers of numbskull bike riders who take appalling risks in traffic.
But I would appreciate it if the police would also crack down on the millions of law-breaking dumb drivers using handheld mobile phones on the move.
"in reaction to the deaths of six riders in a two-week period, a tragedy researchers are still at a loss to explain."
Utter crap
At least 2 of those deaths caused by large vehicles rurning left from the opposite side of the road - in one case the SECOND such death at the same junction through the SAME CAUSE in 5 years, another was a death at Bow roundabout the THIRD death in TWO years through a left turning construction site truck, and the naieve concept that this hazard can be managed by getting all road users here to comply with traffic signals - something which videos show drivers are completely incapable of doing.
Well done for fining bad cyclists; The scourge of pavement terror is in the heart of most pedestrians..
Whether it be cars parking on pavements forcing walkers to move onto the road or jumping out of the way of inconsiderate cyclists, cycling at speed on the footways.
Whilst I know the vast number of cyclists (including me) use the highway correctly and do not cause mayhem on the pavement.
When walking I have often had to sidestep (almost jump) very quickly to avoid these unscrupulous, spandex-clad, helmet-wearing pavement pigs who seem to believe that it is their divine right to use the space reserved for pedestrians.. for their own freeway.. Yes they can be dressed in all the safety equipment that this society suggests ( and very commendable too) but it is NOT safe for the people who walk...
Yes, local and central government should make the roads safer for us cyclists but why on earth do some transfer our frustrations on to the footway making it as unsafe for pedestrians as the roads are for cyclists?
Let us also see cars towed off the pavement and heavy fines imposed.
After all when we get off our bicycles are we not all pedestrians?
I agree. However, I have to wonder if cyclists adopted the same level of lethality towards pedestrians 'in their way/slowing us down/you don't pay pavement tax crap' as motorists do to cyclists government could not possibly intervene.
Just think, we could kill five people per day on average and maim 70 more or so a day as well as inflict hundreds more minor injuries and scare people with close punishment passes rendering pavements as pretty much unusable by pedestrians.
If government did intervene it would be a bit rich given no intervention in the same scenario between motorists and cyclists/horse riders.
In this age of political correctness and equality how could any MP criticise one form of transport whilst turning the usual blind eye to the other?
Perhaps things have got to get that bad before government are forced to do something as all the polite requests and campaigning is getting us nowhere.
And the proble with this is ?
You break the law you suffer the consequences, just because we are on bikes we are not above the law.
Also in relation to an earlier comment there were 1.3 million Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) for motoring offences issued by the police in England & Wales in 2012 dont know individual forces.
The problem is that there are limited porky resources, and this isn't going to actually do much that's positive. If the police had a massive blitz on littering in Central London then I suggest you might think that they could better serve the public by doing something else.
Actually no. If there is a problem then whichever area / dept covers it gets tasked to try and sort it out, simple really. But then again a mentality that uses the word "porky" might struggle to grasp this concept.
Will the police see sense over cycling on pavements?
What did minister Robert Goodwill and former minister Paul Boateng say?
The police are ignoring what their bosses said, THAT is the problem.
Assume there are 10 million motorists in England and Wales, most of whom drive 5 days a week, 50% text or speed at least once a day. 1.3 million FPN pretty much is nothing.
So... Do cyclists get the opportunity to do Bikeability as a way off getting out of the fines? Like you can for speeding offences.
You don't get out of the fines, only the points.
The death-rate appears to be running at exactly the same level as it has for the last few years. I suspect the whole exercise is about being seen to do something (while actually doing nothing).
If there was a rapist around, would a) go after the criminal or b) just tell the potential victims to stay indoors? So why do the police not deal with the problem, drivers.
You could make a couple of grand an hour between 7 and 9 just sitting at the lights on Cable St and Cannon St and fining bikes, or indeed any of the lights on Commercial Road...
Fact is the laws are there to protect all road users, if "we" break them "we" should expect to be fined.
Is carrying a passenger really an offence?
I give my kids a backie home from school sometimes.
Ive never known it to be illegal.
Serious question.
I think it's an offence to carry a passenger unless your bike has been specially designed or modified to accommodate them. So carrying someone in a cargo bike, or a child on a child seat, for example, would be legal, but sitting them on a rack, or carrying someone sat on the saddle while you pedal standing up, wouldn't be.
I think it's a matter of carrying more people than the vehicle (in this case bike) is designed or modified to carry. You can sit more people in a car as long as you install extra seats & seatbelts and get appropriate insurance.
Fraud so Some Fella
Rule 68 in the HC. Covered by Law RTA 1988 sects 24, 26, 28, 29 & 30 as amended by RTA 1991
If you have a child seat or pillion seat I think you will have no bother. Gone are the days of your girlfriend being perched on the crossbar.
Edit -should be fraid not fraud. Stupid predictive.
For a discussion on Operation Safeway, law breaking on London's roads and what he met could do about it: http://rdrf.org.uk/2013/11/29/is-there-a-police-blitz-on-unsafe-driving-... AND
http://rdrf.org.uk/2014/06/04/how-about-some-real-traffic-law-enforcement/ AND
http://rdrf.org.uk/2013/11/29/what-traffic-policing-could-be-like/
Aaaah, the Met Police - making cycling safer by cracking down on the root cause of all cycling danger: cyclists!
I'm sure deep in the bowels Met Police Land there went a conversation something like this:-
'the boss wants us to do som'in about all these f**king cyclists being killed'.
'how we gonna do that?'
'I know, let's harass them off the roads and then they won't be our problem'.
'Aw right sarge, job's a good'un'.
just think what it will be like if the 25% budget cuts are realised. How will the police be funded?
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