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news
Big Ben © Simon MacMichaelGovernment to crack down on “reckless” riders with causing death by dangerous cycling law
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has repeated a pledge to introduce a causing death by dangerous cycling law that would see bike riders found guilty of the offence face the same punishment as drivers convicted of causing death by dangerous driving, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
The Daily Mail reports that the new legislation would be included in the Transport Bill which will begin its passage through Parliament later this year.
Currently, cyclists involved in crashes in which a pedestrian is killed or injured can face prosecution under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 for causing bodily harm through wanton or furious driving, which has a maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment. They can also be charged with manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
In the past five years there have been roughly one prosecution per year of a cyclist under the 1861 Act, the most recently concluded case resulting in 29-year-old Stewart McGinn jailed for 12 months after he crashed into pedestrian Elizabeth Jayne Stone, aged 79, in Monmouth in June last year, fatally injuring her.
> Jail for pavement cyclist who rode off after fatally injuring pensioner
Shapps described the relevant section of the 1861 Act as an “archaic law,” telling the newspaper that it was “a legal relic of the horse-drawn era,” and that charging a cyclist with manslaughter was “a draconian option.”
He insisted that the law needed to be overhauled to crack down on reckless cyclists who harm others.
“We need the cycling equivalent of death by dangerous driving to close a gap in the law and impress on cyclists the real harm they can cause when speed is combined with lack of care,” he said.
“For example, traffic lights are there to regulate all traffic. But a selfish minority of cyclists appear to believe that they are somehow immune to red lights.
“We need to crack down on this disregard for road safety. Relatives of victims have waited too long for this straightforward measure.
“As we move into an era of sustained mass cycling, a thoroughly good thing, we must bring home to cyclists – too often themselves the victims of careless or reckless motoring – that the obligation to put safety first applies equally to every road user. There can be no exceptions,” he added.
Calls for an offence of causing death by dangerous cycling to be put on the statute books intensified in 2017 after cyclist Charlie Alliston was sentenced under the 1861 Act to 18 months in a young offenders’ institution following a crash in London’s Old Street that resulted in pedestrian Kim Briggs losing her life. Her widower, Matthew Briggs, has campaigned since then for the law to be reformed.
Alliston, who had been riding a fixed wheel bike with no front brake at the time of the fatal crash, was also charged with manslaughter, but was found not guilty of that offence by a jury at the Old Bailey.
Until recently, the maximum jail term for causing death by dangerous driving stood at 14 years but for offences committed on or after 28 June this year a life sentence can be imposed.
However, even in the most egregious cases, the sentences handed down to drivers convicted of the offence are far less.
By contrast, cyclist Emir Loka, who crashed into pedestrian Peter McCombie in east London in July 2020, causing fatal injuries, was jailed last year for the maximum two year term stipulated in the 1861 Act. Like Alliston, he was cleared of manslaughter.
> Cyclist who killed London pedestrian jailed for two years
Shapps’ latest comments on the subject follow confirmation he planned to bring in an offence of causing death by dangerous cycling when he appeared on Nick Ferrari’s show on LBC earlier this year.
At the time, Duncan Dollimore, head of campaigns at the charity Cycling UK, told road.cc: “Changes to the Highway Code are beneficial to all road users, and it is unhelpful of the Transport Secretary to try and explain or justify them on a quid pro quo basis by linking them to the potential introduction of new cycling offences. The two issues are entirely separate.
“As the Transport Secretary’s own minister Andrew Stephenson confirmed in December, the DfT is already working on the terms and remit of a call for evidence into road traffic offences. While that is long overdue, with a full review first promised over seven years ago after prolonged campaigning from Cycling UK, there’s little more than we can say on this issue, other than that we’ve never opposed cycling offences being be part of that review.
“Introducing new cycling offences in isolation however would simply be a sticking plaster on a broken system, because our current careless and dangerous driving offences aren’t fit for purpose – replicating them for cycling makes no sense at all,” he added.
In 2020, 346 pedestrians were killed in road traffic collisions in Great Britain, but cyclists were only involved in four of those fatal crashes.
It should also be underlined those figures, compiled by the Department for Transport from police reports, do not seek to apportion blame.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
- Boopop 27 min 49 sec ago
Great stuff. Maybe you could contact FlightFreeUK and take a lifetime pledge as a company. I'm pretty sure the founder cycles too
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Looks more like it is designed to keep the bike thieves in rather than out. That might in fact be a better solution.
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Italian tourist and pussycat in Portugal.
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Yep, it's official - reds under the, er, bonnet...
- Rendel Harris 3 hours 35 min ago
Indeed, I was drawing from personal experience – I don't use it that often but it's such a nice bit of infrastructure that I sometimes go out of my...
- paulgardener@gmail.com 3 hours 39 min ago
Except socialism doesn't work like that in real life. It's the capitals countries that try to look after those in need, and the average person's...
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-62493165
Ms Staunton said: "Collision investigators state that Dunnachie failed to look properly.
"He entered the roundabout when it was unsafe to do so directly into the path of the motorbike.
"The inattention of Dunnachie has resulted in the death of Mr Wyatt."
Brian Cooney, defending, told the sentencing that it was an "extremely tragic accident."
The lawyer added: "It has been extremely unfortunate to where the motorbike is struck as to what then happened.
I don't believe a cyclist would get off with:
banned from (driving) cycling for two years and three months.
He was also ordered to carry out 210 hours of unpaid work and will be tagged for six months, keeping him indoors overnight.
Grant Shapps, a man with almost as many pseudonyms as our recently departed troll. Apparently normal in business. Not fraudulent, in any way...
Have we as humans got that more powerful than in the days of the horse? Our bicycles have become better, lighter (though my newish ultimate commuter is double that lightweight hardtail on offroad.cc) and with more gears, but we haven't increased that much with power, incrementally maybe, not by orders of magnitude. Unlike motor vehicles. And an horse, let alone an horse and carriage are much heavier.
After doing a bit of looking up, after some confusion, because it's not unknown for an average cyclist to put out a third of an horsepower, 750W being one HP, and WvA being able to produce 2, it would seem that an horse can put out fifteen HP. Obviously not an SI unit...
A horse.
Unless you mean an 'orse.
The odd one when I looked at this a while back was A history and AN historic.
Good to the Tory government really getting on with the things that are massively effecting millions of people at the moment.
Anyone seen our Prime Minister or Chancellor doing anything useful lately?
I thought the Prime Minister resigning was pretty useful.
Not doing anything is far more useful than anything they've done.
I don't know whether I've missed this but does any one know how "dangerous cycling" will be defined?
Cycling on the public highway.
Bicycles being used by "cyclists".
Hopefully it will paraphrase the driving definition. As everyone is convinced that all cyclists are demented loons, far below the standard of that must be stunningly bad, such as mounting a dozen sharpened spears around your bike.
So we'd get away with only eleven? Asking for friend.
"Thanks to Brexit cutting ridiculous health and safety laws I'm going to buy a massive HGV and set myself up as a mobile dentist practice, solving two problems at once."
Every cloud has a sliver lining !
Shapps appears to have decided that the HC changes to improve safety were actually conditional upon cracking down on 'wanton and furious riding'. So, we will give you something nice with this hand, but quid pro quo something tough with the other hand.
Remind me - how do they tighten things up for motorists every year when they decide to continue to freeze fuel duty?
Ah but "cyclists" are a (tiny) minority. Remember - with rights come responsibilities!
Alternatively: active travel is nice to have but we have to consider the adult business of keeping the economy going first ([1] [2]). That's clearly about motor transport. That's what pays the bills after all ([3] [4] - oh, those bills? [5]).
My concern is not so much that we should be any more scared of killing pedestrians than now, after all your chances against you being involved in a fatal accident with a pedestrian in any one year are about 1million to 1. Probably a lot more if you are careful. The problem is that any cyclist who is will find the police under a lot of pressure from the worst sections of our media to bring the case to trial whether the case merits it or not and for the sentence to be way in excess of what a motorist would normally expect to receive for a similar accident.
Exactly!
I would bet a sizable bag of acorns that no-one who's ever read road.cc will be on the wrong side of this law and I feel sorry for the person that eventually does (and obviously the victim).
The problem isn't so much with this law, but the circumstances in which it was brought in. There's a lot of legislation and work that the government needs to do and this law was WAY down the list. It's just pandering to certain people's limited understanding of road danger whilst actual serious issues are being ignored.
Just think how much better it would have been if they'd brought in a law to increase the penalties for leaving the scene of a collision without attempting to render assistance (e.g. phone for an ambulance) - that could also apply to cyclists so would help placate the Murdoch news sites (and BBC).
Indeed.
But when a pedestrian kills a cyclist... nothing!
https://road.cc/content/news/228969-reading-cyclist-died-after-pedestria...
What about motorists? Since lockdown eased the standard of driving is abysmal and there are far more bad driver than cyclists.
Call me cycical, but..
Grant Schapps is one of Boris's vacuous posh boys.
While Truss and Sunak are fighting it out to be the next PM tory MPs are positioning themselves to get a good job in the next government.
Everything they say is directed at Tory Party Members. A typical member is a White, Male, marketing magager who lives in Tunbridge Wells.
His logic must be "They all drive SUVs in Tunbridge Wells. They must hate cyclists. What can I do to get them on side?"
Flattery will get you nowhere.
Not as posh as most of them... Watford Grammar School rather than Eton, and then Cassio College, where he studied digital watches and calculators that can play tunes.
I'll get my own coat, it's the one with a VL-Tone in the pocket.
Whilst SUVs (What Sport, What Utility?) are over-represented in Tunbridge Wells they are not the majority of vehicles I'm glad to attest.
Since I'm in Finland now, which has some gravel roads, snow, ice, -25°c in a normal winter, so good reason for a four wheel drive vehicle, it's noticeable that there are very few SUVs at all.
Mandatory winter tyres but 4WD seems un-popular.
I suppose that the Finnish people have a high bulls++t resistance as well as some grasp of climate emergency that is missing in Tunbridge Wells.
Regardless of any political affiliation, there are just too many motor vehicles as shown by the egregious pavement parking around council housing estates and driveways crammed in the affluent country mansions. Four cars per mansion not uncommon!
100 years of automotive industry propaganda will take some shifting...
Nobody anywhere likes change - unless it's getting them a ton of money or an increase in status. The UK is not alone in a "but that's not how it works now so we can't be any other way" mindset. It does seem to come up very frequently though.
Finland seems interesting. The climate seems to have wider variation than the UK and there are some pretty rural places. So "but the weather" and "but we can't build cycle infra everywhere" / "too far" excuses would seem to apply. Do you have hills as well? However at least in some places the weather is shown not to be a biggie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU
Yes, Finland has quite a climate range +25°c summer and -25°c winter so a 50°c swing.
What I find more remarkable is that 25 years ago they looked at their health data and decided to change planning law so that all new build roads must have an active travel lane so that Finns can ski, skate, sled, walk, run, cycle, scoot wherever they want to go. These are even landscaped for minimum gradient so everyone is included however strong or not.
Of course new build is not rebuild of existing roads but much has changed in those 25 years and it's understood that active travel is good generally.
Finland is relatively flat, though not NL flat. The Tunturi (hills) that support downhill skiing are Mid to North above the Arctic circle so that cross country skiing is more usual. You could enjoy a great bicycle tour on compact gearing with respect from motor vehicles where country roads have no separate lane. Few people and little traffic is usual up country though insects must be repelled with 'Off!' spay or roller..
In my book SUV stands for Socially Unacceptable Vehicle.
At this stage scrapping death by dangerous/careless driving and using the "wanton and furious" offence seems like the fairest thing to do. From seeing what happens when people are prosecuted for "wanton and furious" you seem to have a much better chance of conviction and an even better than that chance of getting a custodial sentence. This would also be "fairer". What do you think Mr Shapps?
Looking for a silver lining in this misdirected waste of legislative effort:
1. I am actually pretty shocked that 1 in 100 pedestrian deaths involves a cyclist. I guess that this may be down to a number of factors but mostly around infrastructure decisions that force people walking and people riding bicycles into the same space. Regardless, it cannot be a bad thing if there is a better understanding that cycling in proximity with pedestrians needs to be done with utmost care. What may be a simple bruise to a younger person can be a broken hip and fatality to someone more frail.
2. With the legislation in place, and once past the initial media frothing giving the impression that the UK road system is under attack from lycra clad barbarian hordes intent on flattening unwary pedestrians at every opportunity. It will be illuminating to see just how many times it is used and provide a truer representation of cyclist culpability in such incidents.
Interesting comment from Richard D about collisions at red lights. Does this research also cover zebra crossings?
That is surprising. Where does that stat come from - I couldn't see it in the article?
The more I hear about RLJers, the more convinced I'm becoming that traffic lights are a really poor choice for use on cycling infrastructure as they create a stop-start flow which is the opposite of what cyclists want. What cyclists need are things like roundabouts that can merge flows of traffic in a smoother flow (as long as there aren't cars left-hooking) or in the case of pedestrian crossings, the use of zebras instead of pelicans.
page 22 here: https://www.pacts.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/PACTS-What-kills-most-on-the...
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