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news
Statue of Justice, Old Bailey (licensed CC BY 2.0 on Flickr by Ronnie Macdonald).jpgSpeeding motorbiker jailed for killing London cyclist during lockdown
A motorcyclist who was riding at more than twice the speed limit when he hit a cyclist on London’s Euston Road during lockdown in April 2020, fatally injuring him, has been jailed for 20 months.
Police collision investigators estimated that 41-year-old Lewis McNeice was riding his Harley Davidson at a speed of between 62 and 67mph before crashing into cyclist Tom Whittaker from behind.
The legal speed limit on the section of Euston Road where the fatal crash happened on 7 April 2020 is 30mph, reports the London Evening Standard.
CCTV footage showed Mr Whittaker checking over his shoulder before changing lanes as he approached a set of traffic lights that were turning red when he was hit by McNeice.
The victim sustained brain injuries as a result of the crash and died in hospital.
Ben Lloyd, prosecuting, said that the motorcyclist “ought to have seen the lights turn to amber, and ought to have been slowing down to stop safely at the lights”.
“He didn’t do so. [He] did apply the brakes, however he did so far too late and collided with Mr Whittaker on his pedal cycle.”
Judge Ian Darling, sentencing McNeice who had pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving, told him: “There was little or no traffic and hence, regrettably, I suspect you were speeding.
“Mr Whittaker was entitled to protection from people driving on the roads with him. In driving as you did, and for whatever reason, you took away that protection and that ultimately cost him his life.”
The judge told McNeice, who had addiction problems with drugs and alcohol when he was younger but now helps people in a similar situation: “You have extremely strong personal mitigation, and the effect of a custodial sentence will potentially be disastrous to you, your daughter, your partner, your business itself and the people you employ.
“But I can’t ignore the fact your driving has caused the death of a person.”
During the initial lockdown which came into effect in March 2020, stay-at-home orders saw the streets of London and other cities almost empty – although police forces in the capital and elsewhere warned that some motorists were taking advantage of the absence of other vehicles to engage in what was described as “extreme speeding.”
> Met Police urges drivers to slow down after catching driver doing 110mph in a 30mph zone
Euston Road itself had pop-up cycle lanes installed on either side in July 2020 as part of Mayor Sadiq Khan’s StreetSpace for London scheme, with the westbound lane removed a few months later, and just this week Transport for London has announced that the eastbound lane will be removed too – something London Cycling Campaign has described as a “retrograde step for London.”
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.
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19 comments
Cycle campaigners get so many requests from motorcycle groups to join forces, since we are both subject to the whims of drivers; I always resisted that because our interests aren't really the same. Motorcyclists are just drivers on two wheels.
Nooo! Motorcyclists are Knights of the Road down to our armoured leather trousers.
Having been both since my teens I've always felt the opposite way. I feel equally invisible and vulnerable on a bicyle, e-bike or motorcycle and think if it (sadly) comes down to 'them vs us' it should be 2 wheels vs 4+ wheels.
I don't know what goes on organisation-to-organisation, but motorcycling advocates on Twitter (including representatives of London MAG) always seem to have a massive shoulder-chip about cyclists getting something they aren't, but are entirely unable to say what they actually want that'll reduce road danger and increase ridership the way segregated cycle lanes do for pedalling.
Motorcyclists' general grievance is understandable. Since the '70s just about every legislative change that affects motorcyclists has been intended to get them off the roads — for their own good, of course.
Including helmet legislation, which hasn't made motorcycling safer. Just like cycle helmets, the imposition of a helmet law on motorcyclists, despite the claims made for a massive reduction in their deaths, hasn't resulted in their death rate falling. It's another reason why motorcyclists hate cyclists; we weren't stupid enough to fall for the BS.
Indeed. In fact, if memory serves, the motorcyclist death rate was unchanged by helmet mandation while the death rate for all other road users decreased, so helmets actually made riding moto more dangerous.
I don't think that on the whole moto riders hate cyclists though. I used to commute from the City to Poplar along the A13 and had a splendid time trying to keep up with the moto riders who were all pretty cheerful about it. But their advocacy groups seem furious that cyclists have managed to get a tiny road space allocation in some places. Go figure.
I've lost my couple of handy charts of "who kills who" but I believe - at least in urban environments motorcyclists are proportionally a higher risk than cars to others as well as being more vulnerable themselves. As usual "it's complicated" because different numbers in different environments etc.
Not terribly surprising, given the whole point of riding moto in the city is that you can go faster than a car. Same's true of bikes of course, but we're doing 20mph instead of 60 and weigh 80 or 90kg all up instead of 250+kg.
I'm a cyclist and motorcyclist. I'm a BC member and ride my bikes most days of the week. I've also been riding motorbikes since I was 17 and I've had a lot of them and commute to the office on my sportsbike. Most of the guys I race BMX with are motorcyclists too. And many of my motorcyclist buddies are cyclists too.
I stay away from the MAG. They're not quite as bad as the Association of British Drivers, but they're not a group I or any of my motorcycling mates have anything to do with.
https://youtu.be/sI9fiWR_Gr0?t=15
The problem for cyclists is that pedestrians have a higher priority.
This is a clip, just 5 minutes or 300 seconds. 101 offences, 99 by cyclists. If fined at the max, £81,000. From just 5 minutes.
Remember, fines are the new tax source for the state
I don't think that Mr Lloyd gets out on the roads much... In my experience, there are very (VERY!) few motorists out there who would see the lights change to amber and start slowing down.
It's the one thing, and same thought I saw and had. Amber these days to most motorists appears to trigger an "accelerate mode" in their brains.
Amber these days to most motorists appears to trigger an "accelerate mode" in their brains
Amber?! It's red in Lancashire as a result of the police ultra-indolence policy of doing nothing about red-light passing anyway. This was the view on the A6 when these lights turned red, but Audi Q5 T90 JDT still passed them at 50+mph towing a large caravan
20 months is a complete joke - he'll be out in less than one year.
Am I in a minority in believing that causing a death in the manner described in the article should attract a minimum 5 year prison sentence for each life lost?
I know it's the law an' all but does anyone else not feel that the judge was rooting for the motorcyclist quite bit? (Maybe because the were someone who'd "made good"?)
Maybe they see too many people where they could say "A custodial sentence is almost irrelevant to you and those around you because neither you or they give a toss"?
I suppose we should look at the "result" though - they didn't say "you killed through self-evidently dangerous driving but regrettably you have a family / employees / parents / a poorly dog so we can't stop or ban you..."
Was the judge not appraised of this chap's speed?
Maybe they'd forgotten that bit by then.
I took it that the MC was speeding in the journey but no evidence of their speed at the collision. Hence I suspect you were speeding during the collision.
What kind of an idiot rides a motorbike in town at those speeds? I do ride a motorbike as well as being a cyclist BTW.
RIP to his victim and my condolences to the family.
The several kinds of idiots who are a real nuisance, where I live - which is a 30 zone all around
Speeding on the Euston Road has always been a problem at quiet times like Sunday mornings, which made the new segregated cycle lanes very welcome... and now they've removed them all because obviously cyclists don't really need to be separated from traffic.
RIP Tom and condolences to his friends and family.