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news
Cyclist in London at night in winter clothing - copyright Simon MacMichaelCyclist handed six-month conditional discharge and fined £26 for riding on pavement with no lights under 1835 Highway Act, as lawyer slams “strange” case
A cyclist stopped by police for riding his bike on a pavement without lights has been handed a six-month conditional discharge and fined £26, after being charged under the 1835 Highway Act, as his “incredulous” solicitor argued that he should have simply been told to dismount and stop cycling – and that the officers had in fact helped him back on his bike after initially stopping him.
36-year-old Jack Robson was riding his bike on Sunderland’s Vilette Road between 2am and 2.30am on Tuesday 30 April, when police officers, who were dealing with another incident at the time, observed him cycling on the pavement on three occasions.
“He was observed not to have his lights on despite the hours of darkness. That’s the set of circumstances in a nutshell,” Prosecutor Paul Coulson told South Tyneside Magistrates’ Court this week.
“I think you’re looking at a nominal fine at best,” Coulson added, the Sunderland Echo reports.
> “Why pick on a lone female cyclist?” Cyclist slapped with £100 fine – for riding on a cycle path
Robson was stopped by the officers and charged, under the Highway Act 1835, with “causing common danger” by cycling with no illumination in the “hours of darkness”, which applies to the period between one hour after sunset and one hour before sunrise, and with “committing nuisances by riding on footpaths”.
The 36-year-old was also charged with using a pedal cycle without front and rear lights on a road at night, this time under the comparatively modern 1988 Road Traffic Offenders Act.
Robson, who has 18 previous convictions from 34 offences, the last taking place in 2010, pleaded guilty to all three charges.
> Police stop cyclist at night during long-distance ride… to give him hi-vis vest and bag (and motorists aren’t happy)
However, defending the cyclist, Ben Hurst told the court that Robson should have simply been told to “get off his bike” and sent on his way without punishment by the police.
An “incredulous” Hurst also claimed that the officers had even helped Robson back onto his bike after initially stopping him.
“This is somewhat unique, potentially, and strange the way he appears before the court. He has pleaded guilty,” the lawyer said.
“He was on a bike at night and without lights on. It was dark but there were lights on in the street.
“Unfortunately for Mr Robson, officers were there, and they took his name. Officers didn’t take any action for 18 days. If the police had told him to get off his bike that night, he would have.”
Robson was sentenced to a six-month conditional discharge, with a £26 victim surcharge, with magistrates telling him that he had committed an “unusual offence”, which “we don’t usually get at this court”.
Of course, this isn’t the first time the often archaic laws governing cycling in the UK have attracted attention.
In July, a cyclist was found not guilty of the offence – dating from 1861 – of causing bodily harm by “wanton or furious driving”, in relation to an incident which saw him collide with a pensioner as he cycled on a towpath, the 81-year-old woman falling to the ground and dying in hospital 12 days later.
As with the recent coroner’s inquest into the death of an elderly pedestrian in a collision with a cyclist in London’s Regent’s Park, the criminal trial at Oxford Crown Court was subject to national media attention, and once again prompted some to suggest the need for new, updated ‘dangerous cycling’ laws, that were postponed due to the general election, but which Labour has said it would introduce once it formed a government.
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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65 comments
As per my comment above, that didn't necessarily happen, the police could have seen him twice in different locations as they drove around then when they stopped to deal with something else he rode past them again.
Some time ago I got lost on a brevet in the middle of the night (I had a problem with the bike and got separated from the group I was riding with). I literally rode around one village four or five times at around 2 am, trying to reconcile what I could see with what the route description said. Good thing there was no plod around.
Cycling on pavement, inadequate lights... deserves massive penalty. Now I'm walking with folk of limited mobility and hearing, this behaviour is very scary... so some don't go out. I've said before, I'm becoming ashamed to be known as cyclist. Highway Code clear about priorities and about riding on pavements a unless a clear and obvious perception of risk
Are those folk out walking at 02h ?
Are you ashamed to be a driver (road crime isn't real crime, KSI stats etc) or an Internet user (grooming gangs.) or a member of society?
Based on this nonsense comment I'm ashamed to be a road.cc commenter. /s
Group identity is such a pile of BS.
It's a pity this shame has not resulted in a very long or infinite period of purdah.
So if a 100kg person+bike is on the pavement and 'deserves [a] massive penalty' then assume £1,000ish.
It would makes sense for this to be proportional to the potential harm that could be caused? For a 2,000kg eSUV that is at least 20 times more lethal, the driver should be fined £20,000.
Next, UK policy and policing will ban for life drivers who cause KSI from reckless or dangerous driving, whilst requiring farmers to obtain a licence for any airborne pigs they own.
There's a road safety review coming, and I think there'll be something harsh for drunk drivers, and possibly a review of DUI level. These are obvious things and England has been out of line with pretty much EVERYONE for 2 or 3 decades.
I'm looking for a DD limit of either Scottish level (1/3 less) or Scandinavian / Polish level (2/3 less), bans until age 25 for people caught DUI whilst young so they get how serious it is, and minimum 3-5 year or then indeterminate bans requiring medical demonstration of a mindset suitable for driving for repeat offenders. For a start.
And to borrow the Irish principle that suspended sentences can be for a decade or more, so there is porential for an incentive for long-term civilised behaviour, rather than our silly 3 year suspended sentences.
Nobody was killed because a fibre had 3 pints on the way home from work 20 years ago. Reducing the dd limit is only virtue signaling. And the only people who get killed because they'd no lights on their bike are cyclists.
No idea what that first sentence is supposed to mean. As for the second, trying to prevent the 300 deaths and 6000 injuries caused each year by drunk drivers is not "virtue signalling", that's ridiculous. Is it "woke" as well? Even one drink adversely affects concentration, vision, reaction times, judgement and coordination; the drink drive limit should be zero.
Years ago when I passed my driving test I thought it would be nice to take the family to a country pub a few miles away. I had one pint and couldn't believe how badly my driving was impaired on the way back home. I just didn't feel safe driving and haven't driven after drinking since then. Alcohol affects different people in different ways.
This is true (as lots of testing has shown) - it's just that part of the effect of drinking is to help you breezily dismiss the effects of drinking...
Mind you, maybe you should have made it beer, not beaujolais?
You'll go batshit when you find all the shit that both pedestrians and drivers get up to.
You aren't really a cyclist. A cyclist would have empathy for your friends who have mobility issues and with the fact that cycling in britain is challenging due to a lack of safe routes.
Because all cyclists think and feel the same way, thanks to their shared consciousness.
I sense a small circle developing here
When you're in the road give cars the right of way. When you're on the footpath give pedestrians the right of way. When you're on a cycle lane , look out for both. Simple.
I don't know if you meant it that way, but that is the sad truth. Drivers expect you to give them the right of way in general (often in defiance of the highway code - which as a "licenced driver" they'd obviously be all over...). And as a cyclist in the UK's "world-beating dedicated cycling infra" it is entirely normal to find pedestrians lingering or strolling, dogs having a poo, people driving past "obstructions", buses boarding passengers, vans parked...
Meanwhile in the Netherlands (count the number of stops, or even interactions needing slowing. Includes road works!) Well - there is this guy making a hash of it everyone has to wait for, but they do so very slowly and everyone is safe and say "thanks" after - sound like a foreigner. Also an instance of red-light jumping! You may have fallen asleep by then though.
I guess you mean "priority" as "right of way" is to do with public rights to access private land. You should have a read of the Highway Code to bring yourself up to date with current laws and recommendations - drivers should generally give priority to smaller/lighter road users such as cyclists and pedestrians and cyclists should generally give priority to pedestrians (you got that bit right).
So, why would a driver be using a cycle lane? Isn't that just bad/dangerous driving if they're forcing cyclists to look out for them so that they don't get run over?
Paul Coulson and someone in Northumbria police need to be audited and investigated.
Whilst technically, to the letter of the law, Mr Robson was committing an offence, of which he does not contest the facts, there is absolutely no merit to his own safety or the safety of the public in bringing this offence to prosecution.
Which begs the question, why? Why did Northumbria Police and the CPS waste what must amount to £1000s in police time and court fees of public money to penalise a guy riding not-unsafely past another incident which was occupying the officers, for a sum of £26 and what amounts to a 6-month warning?
Either there are facts of this case regarding Mr Robson's conduct not being shared, or there are some public servants who need a stark reminder of their purpose.
Clearly not in the public interest to do anything but words of advice.
I think the penalty and fine is a message from the magistrate to the Police and CPS not to bring such ludicrous charges, although it would have been better to throw it out. Whether they "get the memo" or not is another thing though.
A conditional discharge is effectively throwing it out, if the defendant doesn't do anything else wrong for six months the charge will be expunged from the record. There is no fine, the £26 is the standard victim surcharge for a conditional discharge. The magistrates were definitely showing their contempt for the waste of police, CPS and court time and public money involved in bringing the charges.
Aye; they couldn't acquit him, because he pleaded guilty. So a discharge is essentially saying 'bugger off' to the prosecution.
What if he laughed at the words of advice? Just askin.
It's hard to have any sympathy for the complaints of the Police that court appearances are too slow / there's a backlog when they are wasting their time and that of the courts with nonsense like this. It suggests a complete lack of common sense at every level of the relevant police force / farce.
It is Tyneside police though. This part of the NE is highly toxic towards anything bicycle orientated. See the news about a FoI on Tyneside/Newcastle council lying about a LTN removal 'blaming' in PR that it was 'cyclists' fault'.
It was on Vilette Road in Sunderland, not Tyneside. Really not surprised the police were out and about around there at that time, bit of an interesting area iykwim
I'm so very confused. Why on earth did this go to court. Did he contest the charge?
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