The government has confirmed the launch today of a consultation on introducing new offences of causing death or serious injury while cycling, as well as changes to existing laws regarding dangerous or careless cycling.
Cycling UK has said that the move is merely “tinkering around the edges” of the full road safety review that the government said it would conduct in 2014.
The consultation, which opens today, will run until 11.45pm on 5 November 2018 and as we reported yesterday follows a review of existing laws following the conviction last year of cyclist Charlie Alliston in connection with the death of pedestrian Kim Briggs.
> Government set to open consultation on new causing death by dangerous cycling offence
Alliston, who had been riding a fixed wheel bike with no front brake when he collided with Mrs Briggs in 2016, fatally injuring her, was acquitted of manslaughter but found guilty of causing bodily injury through wanton or furious driving under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.
The case led to calls for the law to be updated, rather than prosecutors having to rely on outdated legislation in such circumstances and last year the government announvced that it was conducting a review of the law.
Announcing the consultation today, transport minister Jesse Norman, who has responsibility for cycling and walking, said: “In recent weeks we have announced a range of measures designed to protect vulnerable road users such as cyclists and pedestrians.
“These include new measures to combat close passing, training for driving instructors, better collision investigation and £100 million in new investment through the Safer Roads Fund.
“Now we are taking further steps. These include a consultation on new cycling offences, further work on national guidance on cycling and walking infrastructure, and improvements to the Highway Code.
“All these measures are designed to support the continued growth of cycling and walking, with all the benefits they bring to our communities, economy, environment and society.”
In response to today’s announcement, Cycling UK has repeated its call for the government to deliver the full road safety review that it pledged to undertake in 2014.
The charity’s head of campaigns, Duncan Dollimore, said: “We need a full review – something promised by the government in 2014 – because the way the justice system deals with mistakes, carelessness, recklessness and deliberately dangerous behaviour by all road users hasn’t been fit for purpose for years.”
The charity pointed out that cases of pedestrians being killed in collisions involving cyclists was very low.
“In 2016, 448 pedestrians were killed on our roads, but only three of those cases involved bicycles,” it said. “And in the last 10 years 99.4 per cent of all pedestrian deaths involved a motor vehicle.”
Cycling UK also highlighted its belief that both cyclists and pedestrians are being failed by the legal system, citing the fact that only 27 per cent of drivers convicted of causing death by careless driving, which has a maximum prison sentence of five years, are sent to jail with an average term of 14 months.
Dollimore said: “Whether someone is prosecuted for careless or dangerous driving is often something of a lottery, as are the resulting sentences, leaving thousands of victims and their relatives feeling massively let down by the justice system’s failure to reflect the seriousness of bad driving.
“Adding one or two new offences specific to cyclists would be merely tinkering around the edges.
“If the government is serious about addressing behaviour that puts others at risk on our roads, they should grasp the opportunity to do the job properly, rather than attempt to patch up an area of legislation that’s simply not working.”
Today’s announcement from the Department for Transport also confirmed that the government is considering making changes to the Highway Code to address the issue of motorists making close passes on cyclists, and we shall cover that issue in a separate article.
49 thoughts on “Government opens dangerous and careless cycling law consultation”
This is exactly what everyone
This is exactly what everyone said would happen: address the vanishingly small number of dangerous cycling incidents but pretty much ignore the issues caused by the big metal boxes. Gosh, how I love feeling like I’m being properly represented and protected by my government
From what I understand twice
From what I understand twice as many cyclists are killed by at fault pedestrians walking into the road without looking etc than pads killed by at fault cyclists? Yet there is no law to address this, not even a Victorian one so why aren’t cycling UK and the cycling media pushing for this to strike a balance?? It’ll kill the current bs dead.
StoopidUserName wrote:
No, that’s not true, it’s that 50% more pedestrians are at fault for their death in person on a bike/pedestrian incidents than the person riding a bike. The report earlier this year did not say how many people on bikes had been killed by pedestrians though there was one recent incident were police said that the cyclist (who died) would have been charged with a traffic offence because they were the one negligent in the collision with the pedestrian.
But it seems all too easy to push the responsibility for collisions on people on bikes (see the bullshitcharge/sentence on Alliston) yet this method/way of thinking conflicts with how police review cyclist moving into the path of a motorist incidents.
We can’t win and this yet again pushes more onus on the one group to both pedestrians and with motors. It’s been this way for years and we get screwed over time and time and time again with the law being applied differently.
I had a look here and here
I had a look here and here
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/ras10-reported-road-accidents.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-annual-report-2011
To get pedestrians deaths caused by one or more vehicles
Year All Cyclists %
2010 403 4 0.99
2011 450 2 0.44
2012 424 2 0.47
2013 398 6 1.51
2014 443 6 1.35
2015 404 2 0.50
2016 438 3 0.68
2960 25 0.84
This doesn’t state who is responsible.
Quite why time and effort is wasted on dealing with cyclists… well we all know that.
Cycle going 15mph mass of 70 to 100 kg
Car going 30 mph mass of 1500kg
I wonder which will cause the most damage ?
Jaynesh Chudasama wiped out 3 teenagers at a bus stop earlier in the year, but no calls for changing driving laws.
hirsute wrote:
I copied your homework … this is the comment I left at the end of online cosultation:
This is a waste of time and effort – the number of KSIs resulting from a collision with a cyclist are low, and as shown in the Charlie Alliston case can be prosecuted under existing laws. Its worth noting he got a harsher penalty than many drivers who kill cyclists. The real problem on our roads are the big metal boxes.
Based on the Government’s own figures, the pedestrian deaths resulting from a collision involving one or more vehicles (doesn’t attribute who is at fault):
Year All Cyclists %
2010 403 4 0.99
2011 450 2 0.44
2012 424 2 0.47
2013 398 6 1.51
2014 443 6 1.35
2015 404 2 0.50
2016 438 3 0.68
Total 2960 25 Avg. 0.84
We were promised an evidence based review – the evidence is there – whilst any death on our roads is tragic, the number caused by cyclists is tiny, and our efforts should be focused on the far bigger problem of poor driving.
Make sure you all complete the consultation – the more people voice their opinion against it the better. It only took a few minutes, but hopefully its too long for the Daily Heil readers to actually bother to fill in.
merely knee-jerk legislation
merely knee-jerk legislation pandering to the readers of The Daily Mail…
doesn’t help that this tit (transport minister Jesse Norman) doesn’t believe that cycling is real transport…
Paul_C wrote:
You’d imagine even a politician could spot the contradiction between “we want to increase cycling” and ” we plan to demonize cyclists*.
Why do we keep going back to
Why do we keep going back to the Alliston case as a point of reference?
don simon wrote:
Because it was that incident that kicked it all off due to the amount of publicity and vitriol shown towards people on bikes thereafter. It was also a case were the person on a bike was judged by a different set of rules to those in motorvehicles when the same type of thing occured.
That was a watershed case, the MET police have absolutely stiched up everyone who rides a bike, they stitched up Alliston as did the CPS and the so called justice system. A trial by media in every sense of the phrase.
He was scapegoated and everything done to make sure he was done up like a kipper and from that justify the review into harsher laws for people riding bikes because apparently the old laws aren’t current despite the fact they are used all the time.
The government were gutted the system couldn’t/wouldn’t find Alliston guilty of the manslaughter charge despite it being inappropriate anyway (as indeed was the wanton/furious cycling) so they want to crack down even more than already occurs and take the focus away from the poor old motorists.
if you can’t see how important the Alliston case is with respect to what has happened since then I suggest you get someone to explain it to you in greater detail and you spend some time trying to understand the knock on effects from it because that one case is absolutely massive.
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
Mr Alliston must be out of prison by now: has he done any interviews or is he keeping his head down? I wonder if he still rides a bike… I wonder what his thoughts are on this (being a scapegoat and a poster boy at the same time).
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
You’re obviously smart enough to understand why I asked the question up until your last paragraph. Well done.
#ArroganceRocks
don simon wrote:
I think you’ll find that BTBS is a relative of Alliston. Totally and utterly blinkered to the realities of the case.
Curious isn’t it how the
Curious isn’t it how the rarity of a cyclist doing some damage gives it a shock value, whereas we somehow accept all the road deaths as an inevitability (which in a sense they are.) and don’t bat barely an eyelid when there’s yet another incident.
I’m not a member of any ethnic minority in the UK, but I do wonder if this is what it can be like: one of your number does something foolish, or breaks the law, and now you’re all the same, all at it.
What is it about politics today that we get steamed-up about trivia (see recent utterances by B Johnston). I’d rather our politicians were talking about things that actually affect ordinary people’s lives, like moped gangs, nuisance ‘phone callers and scams, jobs and housing in my hierarchy of needs, those and the motor car disappearing up its own tailpipe.
The only place I’ve seen the
The only place I’ve seen the figures for who was to fault in cyclist/pedestrian casualties split out is in a footnote in https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cycle-safety-review
aegisdesign wrote:
To save everyone wading through a 37 page legaleze document here’s the paragraph (15.5) and related footnote [30]:
15.5 STATS19 reported road casualty data between 2011-2016 confirms that during this period there were a total of 2,491 collisions between cyclists and pedestrians resulting in a pedestrian casualty (but not necessarily amounting to fault on the part of the cyclist): [30]
15.5.1 20 resulted in a pedestrian fatality
15.5.2 546 resulted in a pedestrian serious injury
15.5.3 1,931 resulted in a pedestrian slight injury (6 of these cases were the same collision where there was a pedestrian serious injury)
15.5.4 44 had two pedestrian casualties and 1 had three pedestrian casualties
[30] For completeness, not all of these fatalities were attributed to cyclist error:“15/20 fatalities were assigned at least one contributory factor, with 6/20 assigning a factor to the pedestrian only, 5/20 assigning a factor to both the pedestrian and the cyclist, and 4/20 assigning a factor to the cyclist only.”
CygnusX1 wrote:
I know it is not completely relevant here but does anybody know how many of these collisions resulted in a cyclist injury?
bobbypuk wrote:
Of course it’s relevant. The whole consultation is apparently based on the position that there should be parity between offences for both cyclists and motorists. However, despite also being vulnerable road users, pedestrians are not included in that need for parity.
Now obviously when they are careless, pedestrians put themselves at risk far more than they risk other road users. But the same thing pretty much applies to cyclists. The only time it might not apply involves collisions between cyclists and pedestrians, and it is this point that your question is highly relevant to.
Unfortunately, the report and consultation does not comment on cyclist injuries. So it’s impossible to say whether cyclists are fairing better, worse or the same as pedestrians when it comes to pedestrian/cyclist collisions (irrespective of fault).
That in itself shows a certain bias in the consultation.
CygnusX1 wrote:
Again why was it a footnote regarding pedestrians deemed to be at fault 50% more often for their deaths than the person on a bike and also why the person on a bike injuries were not mentioned nor indeed who was at fault as they seem to have the information to hand for the deaths.
FOUR deaths (including the Alliston case) where the law deemed the person riding a bike was at fault in SEVEN years. This is nowhere near the 25 given above and is not in the ball park of the 0.4/0.5% being incorrectly used by Boardman, Vine and others, it’s actually closer to 0.03%, that’s one in every 3000 road deaths that have been attributed to a person riding a bike being at fault for that death.
The Independent have some
The Independent have some coverage of this: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/cycling-law-conservatives-jesse-norman-bike-chris-boardman-dangerous-careless-jeremy-vine-a8488956.html
hawkinspeter wrote:
I was tempted to say well done Independent, then I went on to read the comments.
“Fredd 2 minutes ago
I’m a pensioner and after being hit twice by cyclists, one while crossing on a green light and once while walking on a pavement, I now carry a stout walking stick. Any cyclist who comes near me on a crossing or pavement gets it rammed into his front wheel. I choose the front wheel because this is more likely to bring him (and it’s always a him) off. Got one recently on a crossing and followed up by falling to the ground which had the bonus of bystanders nearly lynching the idiot. I suggest more people do this, it’s very satisfying and great sport. Time for pedestrains to fight back and reclaim their crossings and pavements.”
It is truly depressing that people not just think like that, but feel they should vocalise it.
Well Fredd, I am often bumped into while walking down the street by people who think that they have priority, I hope that one of them isn’t you becuse I’ll break your fucking face!
Where will it end?
So “Fredd the pensioner”
So “Fredd the pensioner” commenting in the Independent thinks cyclists are the problem on the pavement?
Has he really never been forced into the road by metal boxes blocking the pavement?
My five year old daughter and I were nearly hit by another school mum in an SUV bumping up onto the pavement next to us as we walked to school.
It’s also a regular occurence to find cars driving along pavements to avoid hold ups on the road.
The strange thing is most pedestrians just seem to accept it, to believe that the motor car must always be deferred to, but if a cyclist does the same thing, despite putting the pedestrians at far less less risk, there is tut-tutting and talk of lycra louts.
CaribbeanQueen wrote:
That grinds my gears does the pavement bump. The way some of them will look at you as you’re in the wrong for being on the pavement. Once they’ve dropped their kids off, they then proceed to speed through the 20 zone. Usual supsect is yummy mummy, expensive SUV, no job but can be heard at pickup time moaning about how hard they have it. Get real.
This campaign so obviously
This campaign so obviously ludicrously misses the point, that it’s worth considering why a political party would launch it.
The creation of narratives to distract from the central problem is an essential part of the new politics. First masterminded by the Russian political adviser Vladislav Surkov in the 1990s, the essence of the strategy is to create guff in the public attentional space that distracts from any meaningful action that would harm the financial interests of the oligarchs invested in the status quo.
A review of cycling laws is ideal: cyclists are a vocal minority who can be guaranteed to rise to the bait, generating a false debate that avoids the central issues. Meanwhile the 25% or so of the public who have difficulty distinguishing between the numbers 2 (pedestrians killed by cyclists) and 1700 (p̶e̶d̶e̶s̶t̶r̶i̶a̶n̶s̶ people killed by motorists) are left with the hazy impression in their wobbling jelly-brains that cycling is dangerous, cyclists are lawless killers (because why else would they be against this obviously sensible measure), and the party proposing action is protecting the public from a very real menace.
Genius!
Don’t feed the troll. Or if you can’t resist, make sure you attack their cynical media strategy as you do so.
Best comment I have read on
Best comment I have read on the government’s position on cycling in quite a while. You’ve very deftly explained how our sport/interest/mode of transport is politicised and the issues around it manipulated.
@Don – after posting the link
@Don – after posting the link I went back and made the mistake of reading some of the comments. It shows just how much cyclists are the hated outsiders of our time.
Edit: The Telegraph covered it yesterday: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/12/death-dangerous-cyling-plans-just-tinkering-around-edges-campaigners/
hawkinspeter wrote:
I got as far as the bolloxed headline in the Torygraph, I used to read that paper in an attempt to understand the other point of view. Now it’s just a hate fuelled piece of shit and you pretty much know what’s going to be spewed out.
I am, however, surprised at the levels of bile being vomitted by the readership of the Independent. I mistakenly thought that they were significantly more educated and worldly wise than the Daily Mail arsewipe readership. I guess not. The levels of stupidity, selfishness and total lack of awareness aof anything is incredible/
My bad.
And yes, I do blame Thatcher.
EDIT: The only explanation that I can think of is that people do know the real problem but are too scared to admit it, because it is them. And the only way to excuse one’s own poor behaviour is to attack someone else. They know that if they condemn poor driving, they are admitting that they themselves are poor drivers, and this goes right up to the judiciary.
We appear to be in a bit of a pickle.
Jesus that consultation
Jesus that consultation response was a crock of sh*t, feels like the survey was generated by the work experience kid!
Mostly answered ‘not sure’, binary yes/no answers are worthless. Explained this my final comments. Basically yeah, I agree people should be prosecuted if they cause death or injury through dangerous cycling, but I still think the government should focus more on enforcing the laws they already have to deal with death or injury through dangerous driving!
Probably sounds like too much work, or, shock horror, would require actually funding a public service, e.g. the police. Much easier to generate a bit of outrage, publish a meaningless consultation, give the gammons something to froth about and hopefully let the whole thing die a death.
People are happy to let
People are happy to let people – drivers, cyclists, pedestrians – die, because the alternative is that they spend more on policing and learn to drive better. No one can be arsed with that.
Hearing about this, my
Hearing about this, my ‘depression’ was further lowered whilst reading a (unrelated) Domnic Lawson article in Sunday’s Times on presumed consent for organ donation. A person, talked baout in the article, who was on the organ donor register was a keen cyclist. Dominic Lawson had inserted the comment, “organ donor” after the words ‘keen cyclist’ in his article; you can’t win! Mind you, Dominic Lawson is a bit of a Daily Mail cyclist hater anyway (I think?).
I went to the consultation
I went to the consultation page brimming with righteous indignation only find, what appears to me, to make liable the same penalties when cycling that I would face when driving. No plans for licencing, no plans for compulsory insurance.
I’m afraid I couldn’t maintain my indignation and couldn’t really find anything to object to. Saying that of course that’s mainly down to my trying not to kill or seriously injure anyone else, as I always hope they try tobdo the same for me.
spen wrote:
The problem is that the level of focus on this is totally disproportionate to the risk. Car deaths are like a hundred times more prevalent but don’t draw 100 times the ire.
vonhelmet wrote:
I think that many people think of deaths caused by motor vehicles as just one of those things, as if its a natural phenomenon like the weather; if they think about it more than that, it’s just “Will it delay my journey?”. And that’s how the media report it, too.
Compare and contrast with how an injury or death caused by a cyclist are reported (not if the cyclist is a victim, because that falls back under “just one of those things…”).
spen wrote:
The way I read it licensing was only not suggested due to the difficulties in administering a scheme rather than due to any lack of point.
On the whole I had no problem with the suggestions here. What i do have a problem with is the fact that this has been produced at all. This is absolute knee jerk reaction to a minor problem that is being exagerated to win votes. All this is doing is feeding the feeling that all cyclists are riding around causing chaos without a care in the world.
Because of this I had to spend an hour at lunch with friends yesterday trying to presuade somebody that just because I ride a bike does not mean I spend all of my time jumping red lights and weaving through OAPs in the precinct. In fact I’m just trying to get to work without getting killed.
bobbypuk wrote:
Amen.
Picture the scene. You intend to fix ‘something’ at work. You have evidence, loads of it, as to the problems. You have other environments that you can go and view that fixed similar stuff – some ages ago, some more recently.
Then, for whatever reason, you piss about with less than 1% of the problem and ‘fixes’ that are lacking evidence as to their ability to even resolve the less than 1%…
You’ll come and pick up your P45 and you’ll be fucking grateful.
Forget bikes. Forget peds. Forget cars. Forget it’s this issue. This is pissing about in the margins while people actually die of actual death.
This is either 1. wilful rabble-rousing and ignoring of evidence or 2. incompetent arsewittery of the highest order, and every minister that touched it should be recalled for being twats or cretins.
spen wrote:
The issue I have with that is that, even in the most egregious cases, the maximum penalties are almost never applied for dangerous or careless driving offenses (nor are dangerous driving offences pursued in many cases, as they are clearly too hard to prosecute).
So we could very well end up with the result that nominally the offences have parity, but cyclists are still prosecuted and punished more harshly than drivers for “similar”offenses, as juries may be more liable to convict (having less cycling than driving experience and sympathy) and judges more willing to hand out higher sentences.
rkemb wrote:
Like this?
http://www.chesterchronicle.co.uk/news/chester-cheshire-news/delivery-man-cleared-causing-neston-12781152
Just done the “consultation”
Just done the “consultation”
Biased, one-sided, confusing, limited scope for disagreeing with their intended course of action.
In summary: we’re fucked and I’m off to invest in Cycliq & Garmin, because we’re all going to need front-facing cameras.
Let’s face it, even if a ped is primarily at fault a cyclist is still going to get hung by a jury of car drivers, unless there’s evidence otherwise. In fact, even video evidence probably won’t help.
kil0ran wrote:
I don’t think it’s as bad as that. My approach was to answer No to the questions that asked if I supported the propsals, and in the text boxes explain that I think they shouldn’t be wasting parliamentary time on this when there’s an elephant in the room.
I also questioned why these crimes are vehicle-based at all – shouldn’t they really be looking at crimes such as GBH, involuntary manslaughter and so on? What has driving or cycling got to do with it? Why not ‘causing death by being a dangerous/careless dickhead’? Why bring the mode of transport into it?
Note that I used more parliamentary language in my response.
kil0ran wrote:
Police consider a cyclist who has come from the side into the path of a motor to be at fault, this is made absolutely clear in STATS19 reports. Their death is placed sqaurely on their shoulders, when a pedestrian does this within a few metres of a slow moving cyclist (10-14mph) who is swerving away in the first instance is brought up on manslaughter charges and police concoct a bullshit amassively flawed and incomparable test to ‘prove’ they could/should have pulled up in time.
Motorists ploughs straight through the back of a cyclist no case to answer, in fact cyclist blamed for their death by police due to all sorts of neferious reasons!
Cyclists minding their own business, motorist driving at excessive speed on icy roads and kills four of them, senior police officer Lyn Adams perverts the course of justice by making a public statement stating.
“The driver has lost control because of the ice on the road. There is no indication to suggest that this is down to something like excessive speed.[There is absolutely a massive indication the killer lost control due to excessive speed on an icy road]
“Our best estimate at the moment is that the car is driving at something like 50 miles per hour. And on a road like this, that isn’t excessive speed. [Except the inquest states that the speed was between 60 and 70mph, why did you GUESS at 50mph in the first instance]
“Every road traffic collision is treated as a crime scene and tests have already been carried out.
“However there is nothing to suggest the driver did anything but lose control and on the face of it this seems to be a terrible accident.” [LIAR!]
You can repeat this bullshit all the time, left turning HGV across a cycle lane, yup, fault of the cyclist, motorist on their phone who lies about them turning across their path from some tiny side path, motorist not guilty, driver on wrong side of the road on a blind bend, not guilty because the dead person wobbled and was incorrectly attributed as being inexperienced.
It’s fucking criminal the way people on bikes are being put on trial on the one hand yet not protected on the other with both ends of the scale havinga completely different set of rules applied to either prosecute (actually persecute) or absolve blame of those that kill and maim people on bikes. It makes you want to vomit and/or burst a blood vessel.
So please don’t forget to
So please don’t forget to reply to the consultation.
Bottom line?
Bottom line?
We’ve known for decades that a jury of people, most of whom have driving licences, don’t convict other drivers. They think “There but for the grace of God go I.” Ooooh, and how many of them are that special subset – the suckers for the “hard-pressed-motorist” meme. Result – persistent and grotesque injustice.
And a cyclist? On a charge of causing death by dangerous cycling? Being judged by the same set of 12 driving licence holders? What possible hope does s/he have of a fair trial, and a safe judgement by his/her peers? God help ’em.
Their own report states:
Their own report states:
[30] For completeness, not all of these fatalities were attributed to cyclist error:“…6/20 assigning a factor to the pedestrian only, ….4/20 assigning a factor to the cyclist only.”
Why aren’t they proposing a new dangerous walking offence?
Cycling has barely changed
Cycling has barely changed for over a hundred years, the law that was made back then is still just as suitable now. I don’t see any need for the consultation… except to distract from Brexit, the generation that can’t afford to buy a home, out-of-control gang crime and violence, immigration control, the total polarisation polarisation of society to keep us busy while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer…
ChrisB200SX wrote:
No, you’re completely missing the point, er, LOOK OVER THERE INSTEAD!!!
With the most hysterical
With the most hysterical level of irony, this is part of the Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy!
“Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy safety review: proposals for new cycling offences”
So they’re going to spend all the money that should be spent on making cycling better on consulting about a new cycling offence. Literally insane.
Finally got around to
Finally got around to responding, and mostly pointed out that I wasn’t against cyclists being held to account for their behaviour, but the same charges and penalties should apply to all road users, including pedestrians, otherwise it’s discrimination.
burtthebike wrote:
Unfortunately, it’d be discrimination if they apply the same charges and penalties to cyclists due to the ant-cyclist rhetoric that is common in the UK (see BBC and/or tabloid papers).
The only way that it would be close to fair would be to ensure that the juries are composed of at least 90% frequent cyclists.
Personally, I think the penalties should be related to the level of negligence and the kinetic energy of the vehicle. A driver of a lorry, coach or bus should be held to a higher standard than someone driving a small car.
What should happen:
What should happen:
Introduce presumed liability: the bigger vehicle is considered “at fault” in lieu of other evidence. This should encourage the bigger vehicles to install dashcams to protect themselves (and their insurance premiums).
Ensure that juries are composed (more or less) equally to the types of vehicles involved. That would mean that if a car and bike collide, then the jury should consist of 6 motorists and 6 cyclists.
Revoke licenses for any road incident that has a fatality. After investigation, licenses can be returned if no fault is found, otherwise a lifetime ban should automatically apply. No consideration to be given to people who “need” to drive for their employment – people’s safety is more important than getting a tiny bit more tax revenue.
Give Chris Boardman complete power (and a big budget) over the UK’s cycling strategy including veto powers to prevent councils putting in piss-poor infrastructure.
Fund cycling infrastructure with at LEAST £20 per head and recognise that increased cycling should lead to long-term savings for NHS expenditure.
Also, any cycling court case should be forced to accept the opinion of BTBS for consideration (that’d wake them up a bit).
hawkinspeter wrote: