Since Friday the video below of a driver not stopping to let a five-year-old cyclist pass has been watched 1.8 million times, at the time of writing, and has attracted close to 8,000 replies on Twitter…
How can we expect parents to let their kids ride to school if this is how their neighbours drive towards them? He’s five by the way and this is 100m from his home. @theJeremyVine @MikeyCycling @TheWarOnCars @London_Cycling @KingstonCycling @markandcharlie @cyclegaz pic.twitter.com/TPoqThXmiG
— AZB (@azb2019) November 4, 2022
Posted by the father, who this morning appeared on Jeremy Vine’s Channel 5 show to respond to the hoardes of internet critics pointing the finger at him — and some even at his son — for riding on the road and expecting a driver to not continue within touching distance through a narrowing caused by parked vehicles.
Much of the dialogue about the clip has ignored the advice of the recently added ‘Hierarchy of Road Users’ part of the Highway Code which tells road users with the potential to cause the most danger to others that they will be deemed to have greater responsibility to those who are more vulnerable than them.
Instead, also ignoring the basic “human compassion” journalist Mike Parry suggested was lacking from the driving, much of the ‘debate’ has centred on if the child should have been riding on the road in the first place, something Conservative peer Baroness Foster — appointed to the House of Lords by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson in December 2020 — argued online.
The former Conservative Transport Spokesperson in European Parliament, specialising in the aviation and aerospace sectors, replied to the viral video, arguing: “A child that small should not be cycling on a road! A completely irresponsible decision along with your comments that puts the entire onus on the car drivers if/when something goes horribly wrong!”
Responding to the backlash during a segment titled ‘Cycling row: Who’s in the wrong?’ the father who filmed the footage, Ashley, told Jeremy Vine on 5 “the facts are clear on this one — the driver was wrong and my son has every right to ride on the road”.
“The facts are clear on this one, the driver was wrong, and my son has every right to ride in the road.
“That’s clear cut.”
Ashley joins us after a cycling video of his five-year-old son being driven at by a car went viral.
Do you agree with him?@theJeremyVine | #JeremyVine pic.twitter.com/eY9iXY0Qkp
— Jeremy Vine On 5 (@JeremyVineOn5) November 8, 2022
He added that it would be “factually wrong” for anyone to claim the driver did not put the young cyclist at risk.
“You can see from the clip they should have stopped way sooner,” he said. “They had plenty of distance to make that decision, we had lights on, reflective clothing. The distance [to the pair cycling] just is not safe. People will argue ‘oh, plenty of room, you could drive a bus through there’… well, I’m sorry, that’s not factually correct.
“That’s less than a metre gap so legally that’s wrong and then morally that’s wrong. You can debate as much as you want about whether the law is wrong but you know for a fact, everyone knows, that was too close.”
Backing Ashley up, journalist and panel guest Mike Parry said the debate about whether the child should have been cycling on the road is “utterly irrelevant”.
“Surely human compassion, surely human nature says that if you’re driving a car at speed and there’s a little child coming the other way your instinct should be the protective nature of an adult in a car over a child,” he told Vine.
“There’s no argument there. Every time I see this I flinch, I get a shiver down my back […] I don’t know whether the child should have been there or not, that’s a separate scientific argument on roadcraft and all that… but when you see a child on a bike, a little five-year-old coming towards you, you pull in just to make absolutely sure no harm is going to come to the child. It’s natural instincts.”
Writing on Twitter, Vine suggested that anyone who cannot see that the driver “must go dead slow, or stop” should “cut up their driving licence and send the pieces back to the DVLA”.
81 thoughts on “Viral video of driver refusing to stop for five-year-old cyclist debated on Jeremy Vine’s Channel 5 show”
Read a few of the comments
Read a few of the comments underneath the fathers twitter post and am horrified by the amount of incompetence displayed by most of the people there who have no idea of the highway code, have not watched the video properly, know nothing about what responsible parenting really is and (on this day of absolutely momentous US midterm elections) make me really afraid of humanity.
I saw this earlier in the
I saw this earlier in the week, and there were lots of comments along the lines of ‘the child shouldn’t be on the road and it’s the father’s fault if anything happens’ 🙁 Also a lot of how the child should have given way (?).
Picked up as well by Mark
Picked up as well by Mark Hodson
https://mobile.twitter.com/markandcharlie/status/1589171860901883904
A number of interesting comments from him on the wider implications and possible responses.
I do like his quote (memed)
I do like his quote (memed)
“There isn’t a War on Drivers; there’s a War on Incompetent Drivers”.
Great – when is the campaign
Great – when is the campaign starting though? Haven’t seen much sign of the resistance thus far…
There wouldn’t have been any
There wouldn’t have been any problem if more than 50% of the width of the road wasn’t taken up with people storing their private property on the public highway.
We would be living in a very different society if just one choice had been made differently. In 1947, double-yellow lines were chosen to designate areas where parking was prohibited. Instead they should’ve brought in road markings that designated areas where parking was permitted, and prohibited parking everywhere else. And one of the rules on where to paint those markings should’ve been never to reduce the space for moving traffic to only one lane.
Good call. I think other
Good call. I think other countries have this – I believe that in (at least parts of) the Netherlands it’s “you can only park where marked” as opposed to “you can park anywhere except where marked”. (I know in the UK you can sign areas as no parking so you don’t have to paint absolutely everywhere but that’s less common).
So in the UK we end up with signs and paint and badly / illegally parked cars everywhere.
Robert Weetman has a good article on streets comparing UK / NL (covers other aspects also).
In the UK we also have broad
In the UK we also have broad exceptions for double yellows for eg Blue Badges which can be very problematic.
BOLAS mate. I was justing.
BOLAS on mate. I was justing. Gotta delivery pal.
It’s very common in Australia
It’s very common in Australia for side streets to have parking both sides that only allows for one vehicle to get through; local councils see it as one way of discouraging rat running; through traffic using side streets instead of main roads.
Aside from the horrific
Aside from the horrific driving at a child (waiting the the usual trolls to pitch up) there is another common factor here which drives me nuts.
There are obstacles on both sides of the road. Therefore a wider vehicle like a car has to travel on the wrong side of the road to get through. Which means priority is ceded if in conflict with a narrow vehicle like a bike which will still travel on the “right” side of the road. Am I right on this or making up rules. It’s certainly what I adhere to when I drive.
In this video, the child is past the obstruction on their side and on the right side of the road. The driver then goes past the obstruction on their side and is on the wrong side of the road, whilst presumably thinking “fuck you, you pint sized cunt. You are too small to badly damage my paintwork and you don’t pay road tax”.
You are making up rules;
You are making up rules; there is no centre line, so it’s a bit like a zipper merge where there are no lines; where there’s only room for one vehicle because of parked vehicles, it’s first there, first to go; where there’s room for both to pass, then both can go. The motorist in this video clearly slowed when passing; he didn’t ‘horrifically drive at a child’.
grOg wrote:
The kid went first dickwad.
The bit that confuses me with
The bit that confuses me with all the polemic this has caused, is the outrage because it’s a kid put in that position ? Or that it’s a cyclist ?
Because I can get passed like that everytime I ride a bike on the road, to the point I dont think the vast majority of drivers think its remotely a problem at all to pass cyclists like that, their view will always be they havent hit you however near they get, which ultimately means anyone riding a bike be that adults or kids will be subjected to those types of passes all the time. I’ve even had learner drivers being taught to drive through gaps like that if I’m approaching them.
So actually I’d probably in this instance have just timed my arrival so the car got through first, just because I know the car wont be stopping for me.
Awavey wrote:
As per previous comment* I’m outraged on behalf of anyone who based on my understanding has the priority. But also think that it takes a special kind of mentality to drive at a child.
I will happily give way where the motorist gives an indication of slowing down or acknowledges my presence. I unhappily give way when I think I am going to die. I have stood my ground when I’ve quite frankly had enough (mostly Hemdean Road, which I know a few on here know).
*not supposed to be “as per my last email” vibes
**Edit for the locals. I ALWAYS stand my ground on St Barnabas where the obstructions are on the other lane but the motorists think they can come at me because they are late for school drop off.
Sorry hadnt seen your comment
Sorry hadnt seen your comment, t’internet isnt working too great here.
I agree it takes a special kind of driver to drive at a kid like that, but swap the kid out and replace with an adult, is it still a problem ? would most adult cyclists even have posted it to go viral if it was them and not their child at risk ?
As for the question you posed in your earlier comment, my belief is that if the obstruction is your side, you cede priority, if both sides are blocked like this then its debatebly about who gets there first and has started their manoeuvre first takes priority but backed up with you mustn’t ever assume you have priority or that others will cede, but that’s why I said I’d engineer arriving later to the obstruction so as to allow the driver to do what I fully expect them to do anyway.
But that’s life experience a young kid probably hasnt got yet.
I had an encounter like this
I had an encounter like this (on a narrower road, just me – no small child).I was on the left hand side of the road, no parked vehicles on my side, with a car came towards me, on my side of the road, passing parked cars. I purposely slowed down opposite a gap to my right so she could pull in, but she didn’t. I stopped (I had nowhere else to go) and she stopped and looked confused. I pointed towards the empty space on her left and she slowly drove into it. Amazing the amount of drivers that genuinely believe they have priority, whatever, because you are on a bike and they are in a car.
a1white wrote:
I get that a lot.
I wonder if AZB has read all
I wonder if AZB has read all the replies yet.
He says somewhere that there
He says somewhere that there’s too much, and knowing that three quarters of them are drivel…
I had one very similar the
I had one very similar the other day.
6 year old on a scooter, so I’m giving him a push with my left hand and riding alongside him.
This is a very low traffic road leading to an industrial estate with a school within 100 yards.
Looks like he’s going to stop and let us through, then thinks better of it and misses me by a few inches.
So what are the alternatives,
So what are the alternatives, other than being driven to school?
The child rides on the pavement with the adult on the road? The child is not in full view of the adult all the time they are passing parked cars. You can’t see dangers the child may face (pedestrians, path surface etc). You’ve got cars getting irate as they can’t always work out you’re with the child. Does the adult ride on the path with the child? Safer from the point of view of keeping an eye on the child, but pedestrians may not like it and it’s illegal.
Mark Hodson
Mark Hodson
“Small child, pavements with hedges and walls and parked cars to hide the child and cognitively distracted drivers pulling on and off drives, especially during the school run, is a recipe that delivers several #KSIs a week, although people don’t realise it the quiet road is safer.”
Definitely a reason I would
Definitely a reason I would never cycle on the pavement, when I’m walking down a road where the houses predominantly have driveways I frequently observe high speed exit/entrance manoeuvres and think if I had been on a bike that would’ve got me.
On my commute today I noticed
On my commute today I noticed an adult on the road cycling towards me (This was my view). As I approached I realised his (about 8-10yo) child was cycling on the pavement in keeping pace. This meant the child was constantly looking at his dad and vice versa. The road does have parked cars both ways so is narrowed, the pavement is also narrow as well so one pedestrian causes a bottleneck and the child could still be doored by vehicles.
I can understand the fathers view on this being “safer” and the one in the main video thinking their option was “safer”.
Where I live I frequently see
Where I live I frequently see families carefully cycling along the pavement, they don’t bother anyone and vice versa.
I understand that the FPN will only be issued if it’s an aggravating factor to another offense, such as injuring someone.
This child should not be
This child should not be cycling on the road because my driving does not meet the standard required for him to be reasonably safe in my prescence, or that of drivers with a similar level of competence to my own. When I run him over it will be his father’s fault because he failed to grasp the level of my incompetence behind the wheel. At least he was wearing a helmet. I would like to point out that my beliefs about the rights of other road users are not supported by the law and I have made no effort to improve my driving skills or knowledge since passing the basic driving test.
3 key takeaways:
3 key takeaways:
1. Twitter is now a cesspit on the levels of Facebook where anti-cycling sentiment is concerned (no coincidence after Musk’s takeover)
2. The vast majority of the comments featured idiots demonstrating they don’t know the Highway Code (even some cyclists)
3. The sheer volume of people focusing their criticism towards the father, rather than the motorist has now been taken into account. Discussions now happening at a decision making level.
sensei wrote:
I hold no brief for Mr Musk but it’s been a cesspit of anticyclist hatred for a long, long time – in fact I can’t ever recall a time it wasn’t.
Rendel Harris wrote:
Yes it’s always had loons, trolls, etc which seem to love targeting cyclists. I’ve just noticed an upsurge over the last week or so (may be unconnected).
sensei wrote:
Possibly, at least for British loons and trolls, more to do with the Panorama programme last week.
Rendel Harris wrote:
Yes hadn’t factored that in and will no doubt have had some influence.
What’s really shocking is
What’s really shocking is that Mike Parry is normally quite anti cyclist…
Yes – that surprised me.
Yes – that surprised me.
This is the first Jeremy Vine on 5 I have seen, but normally on the radio he is afaics out to create some controversy. And on 5 he seems to have a couple of expected-to-disagree ranting heads in the studio.
Here he expressed surprise that Mike Parry took that position.
Thinking on this, and
Thinking on this, and observing that the street in the viral vid has plenty of room, not many cars, and a side with no driveways, is there a possibility of moving on where there is space to consider segregated cycling routes to schools.
The street in the vid is one possibility.
My shtick is that we need high quality segregated infrastucture (or suitable controls on vehicles eg modal filtering and 20mph limits) from everywhere to everwhere.
I quite like to ‘kids come from everywhere in the catchment to the local schools’ as a way of leveraging part of this.
Andy Cox
Andy Cox
At the core of this is ‘driving culture’ and the need to be more patient, more observant, more respectful, and to focus more on prioritising safety above journey time. That way everybody gets to enjoy and experience safe travel…
You can argue till the cows
You can argue till the cows come home the father is completely in the wrong. He is arrogant and stupid to allow a 5 year old without any road sense or experience of how other drivers will react onto a road let alone a road that is busy. If there isn’t a minimum age that a child can ride a bike on a road then there should be. If the child had been in an accident caused through his inexperience whose fault would it have been. We don’t let children of that age cross a road by themselves they are just not capable. It is in my opinion a disgrace and the father needs to be taken to task for putting his 5 year old son on a bicycle onto a busy road.
The child wasn’t by himself.
The child wasn’t by himself.
The road wasn’t busy.
Were you the driver?
Who was the child with? The
Who was the child with? The point is with a car approaching and passing a van he could have wobbled maybe lost control. Riding a bike on a road is dangerous enough for experienced adults and not a place for inexperienced 5 year olds. No I was not the driver however like others here I am passing an opinion based on the situation with a 5 year old cyclist. Whether the road is busy or not is irrelevant. It simply is not the place for a 5 year old whether you like it or not. In Amsterdam cyclists never need to ride on roads there are cycle tracks all over the country. They are purpose built and do not affect or reduce the size of the road. To do this in the UK is impossible.
“Whether the road is busy or
“Whether the road is busy or not is irrelevant.”
Nevertheless, it was part of your argument.
You write as though the child was by himself – perhaps you believe that.
There is one simple solution to the situtation – for the driver to stop and give way.
Ooh, infrastructure. The
Ooh, infrastructure. The following may interest you:
“Never need to ride on the roads” – well let’s just unpack that. There are lots of cycle paths separate from roads there. However the most common major infrastructure type is … a street! Logical because cyclists access the same destinations as e.g. cars and there are lots of streets – same as in the UK. It’s not so hard to adapt a street (full of destinations) for cycling rather than a road (primarily for getting traffic from A to B quickly). Just keep the speed very low and ensure there isn’t too much motor traffic e.g. by filtering. Oh, and that it’s not massive articulated trucks! (More detail here).
Where there are cycle paths (separate from road) cyclists are required to use them. A terrible loss? Hardly – these almost universally more convenient than using the road e.g. are more direct, often bypass traffic lights for motor vehicles etc.
A little bit of history is instructive on how this happened – The Netherlands started off down the same route as the UK, they just stopped and went a different direction.
“Impossible” – Cycling Fallacies has you covered (e.g. “we can’t afford it!“) but once you realise that the streets are not too narrow and that other places have also benefited from adding cycling provision ([1], [2], [3]) you might question that.
Bullshit Tonbar. I live in
Bullshit Tonbar. I live in the Netherlands. I see children of 5 years cycling with a parent on a murder strip every day. So take your sweeping incorrect generalisations and stick ’em where the sun don’t shine.
> In Amsterdam cyclists never
> In Amsterdam cyclists never need to ride on roads there are cycle tracks all over the country. They are purpose built and do not affect or reduce the size of the road.
No. This is a self-serving myth, which will shortly be going the way of the ‘cyclists don’t pay road tax’ garbage.
In the Netherlands there was a large scale rallocation of roadspace away from motor vehicles when they made a conscious switched to promoting cycling. Below is a piccie of the same street in Amsterdam 1978 vs 2005.
I never understand why this is allegedly “impossible” in the UK. it seems to me to be relatively straightforward to do physically, and the difficulties are wholly political, and with certain invested lobby groups. I have some sympathy for places such as the USA and Canada where they have an entire infrastructure set up to make active travel difficult-to-impossible nearly everywhere. In the USA it will require a sea-change at a federal level, or perhaps a Supreme Court decision.
https://www.cyclinguk.org
https://www.cyclinguk.org/article/cycling-guide/cycling-road-children
Motorists. Consider this.
Motorists. Consider this.
Had that same 5 year old child been walking that same spot in that road. Dressed the same. Behaving, just as responsibly.
Would you have slowed to a stop?
Yes!
Please think…
Deduct the bicycle from your future assessment.
Observation and experience
Observation and experience suggests that many drivers would do the same if the child had been walking. Or scooting or skipping or playing football but possibly not if playing cricket.
I don’t see what the issue is
I don’t see what the issue is here, other than the hysterical reaction of the father.
I’ve taken my kid out at the age of 4 when he became a competent cyclist and had similar happen, the cars pass nice and slowly and the child gets life experience.
If the father is worried that the child is going to wobble and fall into the path of the car then I’m afraid he isn’t ready to ride on the road. In this case I used to get my son to ride on the pavement at the age of 3 and I would jog at a leisurely pace alongside him until he got better control and confidence.
One issue is that the person
One issue is that the person in the car – I don’t like “motorist” any more than I like “cyclist” – was in breach of the law.
What law did the motorist
What law did the motorist breach? if you think not passing within 1.5 metres, that relates to vehicles passing in the same direction, ie, overtaking.
Clearly the close pass. Which
Clearly the close pass. Which aiui *does* apply on passes both ways.
Also I’d say careless driving; obviously that is below the standard expected of a careful and considerate driver in failure to respect priority, not stopping, failure to anticipate, failure to respect the road hierarchy and other aspects.
Incorrect as Inspector Kevin
Incorrect as Inspector Kevin will tell you – outcome 5 points and a fine.
https://road.cc/content/news/nmotd-752-let-be-your-warning-police-tell-drivers-292133
Even if you don’t
Even if you don’t particularly have any empathy for how a parent feels when their child is put in potential danger by the careless actions of another, you must surely appreciate that the car driver here has solved their cyclist problem by also passing the parked cars on their side of the road far too close and with undoubtedly a much reduced attention to what is going on. In a school zone especially it doesn’t take much imagination to predict an opening car door or small pedestrians “appearing from nowhere”.
Maybe the understandable annoyance of Daddy cyclist here is that a car driver has created a dangerous situation out of literally nothing.
Mungecrundle wrote:
In all his previous incarnations empathy has been a characteristic that is always lacking.
I had a similar incident, on
I had a similar incident, on my cycle commute, this morning.
The differences were that the obstruction (a supermarket delivery van) was on the oncoming car’s side of the road and the road was long and straight enough for the driver to be able to assess the situation. This didn’t stop them barreling straight through, though.
There were no 5 year olds involved but the situation was just as dangerous, and totally the fault of the driver (you can decide the car brand)
The number of people saying “it’s too dangerous for. 5 year-old to ride on the road”, shortly followed by “that was a safe pass – I see nothing wrong” is, frankly, bloody scary.
I despair for humanity.
belugabob wrote:
Probably an Aygo. A Yugo driver would have stopped.
In Australian states, it’s
In Australian states, it’s legal for children under 12 to cycle on footpaths, as well as people older if they are accompanying the young cyclist; some states allow anyone to cycle on footpaths. This is for good reason, as young children should not be sharing roads with motorised vehicles. As for the motorist in this video, the driver clearly slowed down before passing the child and allowed plenty of room for the child as well.
grOg wrote:
Can you expand on why you think this please?
The problem is that people
The problem is that people stick to the laws and ferociously try to support them when their interests align with them. It would be stupid under any country or law to let a kid or maybe even young teen to ride in a road with dense and fast traffic, it would be stupid not to let a kid ride in remote village with a car passing every half an hour and let it loose all the fun.
Try not to base your safety on laws, but on common sense and what you think is safe.
In this case with such a small kid, I may tried riding on the pavement, but I need to see the entire route.
Welcome back to your usual
Welcome back to your usual regular posting grOg, where have you been in the exactly seven weeks to the day since you posted racially offensive remarks about a police officer on here?
Not sure this falls into the
Not sure this falls into the malign driving camp, though the result of a collision is the same. More your basic driver incompetence when faced with a slightly challenging circumstance. They don’t really know what do and beyond steering through what little gap remains they simply freeze.
Might have been better if the adult had taken a more dominant position in closer formation behind and to the right of the child to create a wider profile, but the actual answer is better driver awareness that, in 30mph zones at least, they must always be prepared to stop and cede priority to pedestrians and cycle users.
the Dad should have been more
the Dad should have been more primary. When riding with children (especially) the adult should take a primary position to create a ‘bubble’ around the child and thus reduce the space to overtake / pass etc until there is sufficient space. Luckily the driver didn’t appear to be a malicious cretin – as many are when they see a cyclist in primary position.
While the changes to the road
While the changes to the road code are a positive step in theory, until the practices are fully bedded in, vulnerable road users are at greater risk. Vulnerable road users will believe that cars and truck will behave in a safer manner towards them but this won’t necessarily be the case. This I feel puts cyclists at greater risk than before the changes were introduced.
In New Zealand while it is illegal to ride on the footpath, so many cyclists do so that little to no enforcement is carried out. It is something of a rarity to see children of this age cycling on the road, and when they are they are chaperoned by adults.
As for the car driver in this clip he should be spoken to by the police and given a warning about a repeat offence.
Then we have the former minister, who presumably drew up the law changes, seemingly without knowing what they were doing, seems typical of the Tories over the past 12 years.
The question to ask is :
The question to ask is : would the driver have done the same thing if the child had been their own child/grandchild?
Of course not.
Of course not.
Bungle_52 wrote:
…and if a driver would drive differently around their own friends/family members, then why are they knowingly endangering others?
Mark Hodson
Mark Hodson
#Driverbehaviour is not only the #Greatestthreatofharm actually on the road but also to positive lifestyle choices that our communities and people so greatly need. We need to create an environment whereby all feel comfortable to be part of the solution
Another 5 year old dicing
Another 5 year old dicing with death
Why aren’t they on the pavement ?
https://mobile.twitter.com/SarahkateMurph3/status/1589621961487179776
hirsute wrote:
Shows how civilised and lucky we are not to live in the EU. Thanks for sharing.
LOL! Or is my geography much
LOL! Or is my geography much worse than my teachers thought?
Copehagen again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rycu9iESYCM
But aren’t you an EU citizen
But aren’t you an EU citizen by birth Rakia. You seemed to suggest you were in your first couple of posts. If it turns out you were English all along and using the “A child knows this” as believing that is what foriegners would say, that seems very racist to me.
Rakia wrote:
But before you lived in London and “the manners of people there is disgusting. They are all idiots.”
Your bullshit is unravelling at a rate of knots I’m afraid.
.
.
How anyone can argue that the
How anyone can argue that the driver was right to continue is beyond me. I’ve been driving for 40 years, and if I saw a small person on a bike in that place, I would have stopped, and waved them through.
No wonder we tolerate 67 ksis a day on our roads.
It seems to be “they shouldn
It seems to be “they shouldn’t be there, so all bets are off”.
Just a form of punishment for doing something they consider to be wrong.
Posted this earlier https://mobile.twitter.com/SarahkateMurph3/status/1589621961487179776
I would have just stopped until the peds were clear, after all, I have an engine.
That video is awful
That video is awful 🙁
Whether the child should have
Whether the child should have been on the road is wholly irrelevant, the point is that he was on the road and because he was the driver owed him a duty of care and should have given way. If you’re driving a tonne and a half of deadly weapon the onus is on you full stop, end of subject.
jaymack wrote:
Yes, it’s a bit like saying it’s ok to carry on shooting if a child walks into a firing range.
Steve K wrote:
Well, they certainly didn’t pay for the ammunition, so I don’t see why I should care if they get shot.
They’d be armed anyway, so
They’d be armed anyway, so far do’s.
Always put one in the head.
Just follow the logic – guns
Just follow the logic – guns are a good equaliser of lethal ability. Good kids outnumber bad kids (and adults). Ergo arm all children to make things safer for them.
Maybe we should put them all in cars too for school-run safety? Oh, wait..
I agree, it’s additionally
I agree, it’s additionally irrelevant that it’s a child. The cyclist got to the narrowing first, so to achieve a good separation the car driver should stop. Sadly we all know, that if was a car passing the vans and not a cyclist (of any age) the car driver would have stopped – probably before it got to the white car.