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news
Nigel Havers and Laura Laker (via Jeremy Vine on Twitter)“No cars go through a red light – every cyclist does,” claims Nigel Havers
Actor Nigel Havers has claimed that “no cars go through a red light,” while “every cyclist does,” during a discussion with cycling writer Laura Laker hosted by Jeremy Vine on his BBC Radio 2 TV show.
The exchange took place during Vine’s afternoon programme on the station yesterday, with footage subsequently shared on his social media channels by the host.
Absolutely fascinating today @BBCRadio2 — @NigelHaversUK in the studio to complain about the behaviour of cyclists, along with @laura_laker who has written #PotholesAndPavements disagreeing that they offend more than any other road user.
Really worth hearing this exchange — pic.twitter.com/ebUPmDjxUT— Jeremy Vine (@theJeremyVine) May 10, 2024
“All road users break the law in equal amount,” Laker pointed out. “I’m not saying that that’s right.
“We know that roads policing got decimated a decade ago, we lost 20,000 police officers, and so all of road user behaviour has got worse, drivers have become more aggressive, perhaps cyclists have become more aggressive too.”
Interjecting, Havers said: “I don’t break the law, I don’t break the rules” before claiming that “motor cars aren’t going through red lights.”
Havers invited Laker, whose book on the National Cycle Network Potholes & Pavements was published just last week and who is a contributor to road.cc, to join him “at a crossroads where no cars go through a red light, every cyclist does.”
“That’s not true,” Laker countered. “Definitely people break the law in their cars, with mobile phone use, we know that’s illegal and it’s as bad as drink-driving, even driving hands-free.”
“I don’t know what planet you’re on,” said Havers, who is reported to have been fined £500 and banned for driving for 12 months after being convicted of drink-driving in 1991.
“Come and stand on the crossroads with me and you’ll see every single cyclist go through the red light.”
While it’s true that some cyclists do go through red lights, so too do many motorists, and Laker highlighted that it is the latter who are involved in, on average, five deaths a day on Britain’s roads as well as crashes that leave thousands more people seriously injured.
Undeterred, Havers, who in 2020 called for the removal of the temporary cycle lane briefly installed on Kensington High Street, insisted: “I have not seen a car go through a red light in London in years.”
“I know, but because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” replied Laker.
“So you think cars go through red lights just as much as cyclists?” asked Havers, incredulously.
“It’s not cars, it’s drivers,” clarified Laker, who in 2021 worked alongside Westminster University’s Active Travel Academy in developing guidelines for the language the media should use when reporting on road traffic collisions, which are still all too often deemed to be chance ‘accidents’ or in which vehicles crash without a driver seemingly being present.
“If car drivers are not breaking the law, how come vehicles are killing 1,700 people a year,” asked Vine, whose regularly posts videos of law-breaking drivers to his social media channels.
“Well, I mean …” responded Havers, before pausing, eventually breaking the silence by spluttering the word, “cyclists.”
The issue of cyclists and the law has been a high-profile one in the media this week after a coroner’s inquest into the death of a retired teacher who was struck by a cyclist riding in group in London’s Regent’s Park heard that the rider would face no charges in connection with the crash.
A Metropolitan Police officer told the inquest into the death of 81-year-old Hilda Griffiths that there was “insufficient evidence for a real prospect of conviction” of the cyclist concerned, Brian Fitzgerald, with the officer also confirming unlike motorists, cyclists are not required to adhere to posted speed limits.
Thankfully, road traffic collisions in which a pedestrian is killed following a crash with a cyclist are very rare, with Cycling UK citing official statistics that reveal there are on average around three such fatalities each year.
And it is the very fact that they happen so rarely that sees such incidents and, in their aftermath, wider cyclist behaviour, become the focus of intense media attention in a way that the vast majority of road traffic fatalities in which a motorist is involved do not.
Often, such media coverage takes the form of newspaper columns from celebrities – one example this weekend being found in the Express, with broadcaster Richard Madely calling for cyclists to be registered, and forced to carry insurance – something the government has rejected time and again.
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
- belugabob 1 hour 2 sec ago
James (not so) Cleverly - it's not 20mph "everywhere". There's the M4, for a start...
- wtjs 1 hour 9 min ago
It is the last point that is key with many Dashcam clips we receive where a cyclist is cycling along a road and a vehicle drives past too close....
- Rendel Harris 1 hour 24 min ago
Could you provide a link to that? I just tried searching for it on Hansard and found nothing. What I did find was that under Labour police numbers...
- David9694 1 hour 25 min ago
Advice stuck firmly in the 1970s. Today, all it does is enable more driver gaslighting of their responsibility for safety on to - literally -...
- don simon fbpe 2 hours 35 min ago
RIP sister.
- Mr Hoopdriver 2 hours 56 min ago
Many years ago, I was stopped by the police and they checked my registration by radio calling back to HQ - it took about ten minutes - his...
- Rendel Harris 3 hours 12 min ago
Fair to middling?
- Dodgyknee 6 hours 14 min ago
People need to stop calling it road tax , It's vehicle tax
- chrisonabike 8 hours 41 min ago
Most *people* aren't cycling *any* trips, true. I *think* the majority of cycling in the UK is "recreational" but I'm far from certain that "most...
- HoarseMann 9 hours 24 min ago
The biggest advantage of commuting by bike, is it's just much more fun (well, when a dodgy driver isn't trying to run you off the road)....
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116 comments
to be fair what we had a vote about joining was very different from what we ended up leaving.
In the same way we have a vote in 2016 about being like Norway, but it turned out we would be like Moldova.
Just because Remain lost that vote, doesn't mean that we have to change our opinion about the self defeating stupidity of Leave. Especially as time passes and the so-called Project Fear is proven correct again and again...
Doesn't stop it from being a sore spot for some. I've just lost my second job in five years over it, and now I'm starting from scratch because the industry I have all of my skills and experince in, is now basically gone from the UK post Brexit. It had a very similar result for other members of my family too.
It's hard to just "get over it" when it's essentially undone the last ten years of your life and put you back at square one.
We all lost. Unless of course you can explain how you won.
Unless of course you can explain how you won
I think there were lucrative trade agreements with Rockall, Tristan da Cunha, St Helena and the Pitcairn Islands
Didn't we also sign an export agreement with China or somewhere, which raised GDP by 0.00000000005%?
(edit) Just googled it and that was before Brexit so it doesn't count
I think you may have missed a few zeros. 23 to be precise.
It's always 23…
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/23-fascinating-facts-about-the-number-twentythree-6262624.html
Blue passports.
Snark aside - I think the argument goes "the point is we could win at any point (where something bad hits the EU / they bring in a rule we don't like). After all this is a massive change and it's too early to say yet".
Unfortunately this argument will not resolve anything as there is no agreement on the point where we judge the results. Of course it could also be judged a win on "freedom" even if it delivers relative economic woe.
It's clear is that lots of people in the UK never felt particularly European. This is the case in other countries in Europe of course, it varies - but I believe much smaller percentages.
What surprises me is that despite the wilder Brexiteers (and some not-very-cuddly folks in high office in government keen to "tear up the rule books") what has been delivered thus far is rather middle-of-the-road. No-one has blown up the Channel Tunnel or proscribed French, German or Spanish lessons. Albeit there has been much cost, mess and confusion.
I would say most of us lost, and the loss is still being felt by most of us today.
Regarding the 2016 referendum, it is telling that brexiters (assuming that is what you are and your comment wasn't just a send-up) have yet to find a better justification for the damage that has been done than the twisting of a consultative poll into something that produced "winners" and "losers", which lies at the heart of the perversion that is "brexit".
I didn't think it would be long before some idiot claims it's Brexits fault. Go back and crawl under your EU rock you emerged from.
He can't because we're not in the Schengen area any more.
Were we ever? The problem isn't so much the border controls as the fact that UK citizens no longer have the right to live and work in the EU that they used to.
Othering: I (and the group I belong to) am right, they (and the group they belong to) are wrong.
You can follow his train of thought, which is common to many reactionaries like him, on many topics:
With logic that circular, of course they don't believe any statistics that refute their beliefs, which must therefore be the product of "woke" organisations like the ONS, the OBR, the police, or the Department for Transport.
This!
4A or in a few instances where a silent majority member has been caught red-handed (NB the words in parenthesis in para 1) this is unfair and arbitrary and they should go and catch real criminals and there needs to be a review of whether the method used was fair
17 seconds in and he states he does not break the law:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Havers#cite_note-17:~:text=Havers%20...
Quality 👏👏👏👏👏👏 Nice bit of detective work there. I tip my hat to you Sir. Chappeu.
"Havers was arrested in February 1990 on suspicion of drunk driving, and taken to Harrow police station.[17] He was later banned from driving for one year, and fined £500, but told a woman's magazine "I don't regret it at all". He continued, "I thought the whole thing was pretty unfair. I was only 300 yards from home in a restaurant and had only used my car anyway because it was pouring with rain." He said "I got the same punishment as people who are three times over the limit. I felt victimised, especially as the police know who I am.""
It would appear that the word arsehole could have been minted specifically for him.
Really wish someone had pointed this out live on air.
Nigel Havers, poster boy for motornormativity. Never mind the facts, logic or sense, it's always the cyclist's fault.
I'd suggest that he has absolutely no self-awareness, or he'd be embarrassed to the point of self immolation, but drivers don't have self-awareness, empathy or compassion: only selfishness, self-justification and an endless supply of reasons to blame everyone else.
Is Havers being disingenuous, actually lying for the purpose of his argument, or does he genuinely believe the rubbish he's spouting? Mad
Genuinely believes it I reckon, and because of who he is, either in his professional life or amongst his social circle of friends, probably rarely if ever gets challenged on it in the way Laura did.
Well done Laura top work, the facts don't care a jot for the dotard's feelings.
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