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OPINION
Involved in a crash? Here's a modest proposal
Tue, Aug 29, 2017 16:53
145
Crash (CC 2.0 BY-NC Edmund white|Flickr).jpgIn the aftermath of the Alliston case, what should you do if you are a cyclist involved in a crash with a pedestrian?
I have one word of advice for you: Leave.
That’s right. Leave the scene. Get out of Dodge. Get away from the situation as fast as you can. Say nothing to anyone. Give nobody your details. Don’t hang around long enough for anyone to get their phone out. Split. Bugger off. Go home the long way — down as many alleys and across as many parks as possible to avoid CCTV.
Say nothing about the crash to anyone. Don’t discuss it in forums. Don’t tweet or post on Facebook about it. Don’t search on Google for news of the crash or its aftermath. Don’t get your bike repaired. Carry on with your life as if nothing happened.
“But, John,” I can hear you say, “that’s awful advice. Ethically you should stop and help, and isn’t leaving the scene an offence?”
Road Traffic Act: leaving the scene
Last point first: no, it isn’t. Section 170 of the Road Traffic Act makes it an offence for the driver of a motor vehicle to leave the scene of a crash, but it specifically only applies to drivers of “mechanically propelled vehicles” as it quaintly calls them. (That means an engine or motor; your bike’s chain and gears don’t count as the propulsion comes from your legs.)
Section 168 makes it an offence to refuse to give your name and address to “any person having reasonable ground” to require it. But they have to ask for it first. Leave before anyone can ask your name, and you’re in the clear. Martin Porter QC, who drew my attention to this part of the Road Traffic Act, added: “I have never yet been supplied with name and address by [a] motorist I have reasonably suspected of careless driving. Asked a few times.”
Ethically, yes, all of this is dreadful. But the Alliston case has put cyclists in the position where we cannot be sure of being dealt with justly. In fact, we can be sure that we will not be treated justly.
There is no way that Charlie Alliston was guilty of manslaughter, and he was rightly acquitted.
But there is also no way he was riding furiously and wantonly. He was riding at 18mph. Traffic and parked vehicles around him left him with nowhere to go and when he yelled to warn Kim Briggs she stepped back into his path. If that’s furious and wanton riding, I’m a banana.
The brakeless fixie issue
You could argue that Alliston would not have ended up in court in the first place if he hadn’t been riding a bike that wasn’t street legal. Would the Met and the CPS have gone after him if he’d been riding a fixie with a front brake? I believe they would.
The tide is turning against cycling in London. The nonsensical claims that a few short stretches of protected cycleway have caused huge increases in congestion and pollution have stuck. Mayor Sadiq Khan has cancelled or postponed shovel-ready cycling schemes and TfL has mysteriously forgotten how to design new ones if its hopeless, inept Nine Elms and Fiveways schemes are anything to go by. I expect that before the end of Khan’s first term, TfL will announce that Cycle Superhighway 3, the world-class protected cycle lane along the Embankment is to be ripped up.
Meanwhile cycling and walking commissioner Will Norman doesn’t realise that his job is to enable active travel, not to run spin for Sadiq Khan’s preference for roads and buses. Khan is running a PR mayoralty, all talk and no delivery, and calling on others to fix problems like air pollution that are well within his power. But to do so would put him into conflict with the influential bus, taxi and haulage lobbies.
With public opinion increasingly hostile to cycling, the Met and the CPS would have gone after Alliston anyway. After all, a mother of two was, tragically, dead. Something Had To Be Done, and prosecuting Alliston was Something. Alliston had dug a huge hole for himself by his forum and Evening Standard postings. He really was a dream defendant — if you’re a prosecutor.
Given the general ignorance about cycling, a fixie with a front brake could still be easily represented as the equivalent to a Formula One car, and equally inappropriate for the streets. Alliston’s lawyer failed to challenge the Met’s nonsensical braking distance tests in either premise or execution; it’s vanishingly unlikely he’d have been able to mount a defence against the charge of furious and wanton cycling even if Alliston had been riding a bike with brakes.
And I don’t believe the bike made any substantial difference. The instinctive reaction when a pedestrian steps into your path is to try and avoid hitting them. Yes, you’ll slow down too and Alliston did, but Kim Briggs stepped back into his path, they butted heads and she fell to the ground. Had he been going slower (as he would not have had time to stop, despite the Met’s staged video), she might still have fallen, she might still have hit her head on the ground. We just don’t know, and we cannot therefore know that Alliston’s inability to stop faster was the primary cause of Kim Briggs’s death.
The not guilty verdict shows that the jury did not think it was. If Alliston was guilty of an illegal act in not having a front brake, and that illegal act led to Kim Briggs’s death, then he was guilty of manslaughter. If he was not guilty, then his illegal act did not cause Kim Briggs’s death.
That also makes the conviction for wanton and furious driving unsafe too, unless the jury took the view that the injuries that Kim Briggs sustained as a result of Alliston riding into her did not cause her death. That would be a somewhat bizarre conclusion, but that’s juries for you. However, I’m not a lawyer and there may be some twist to the legal reasoning here that I’ve missed. Happy to be corrected in the comments or via Twitter.
The justice system is stacked against cyclists
More broadly, the Alliston case is only the latest example of the justice system failing a cyclist, but it’s unusual in that the rider was accused of perpetrating a fatal crash, instead of being its victim.
London’s police have largely been on the back foot when it comes to cycling since the debacle of Operation Safeway, in which the police targeted minor cycling infringements after several cyclists were killed in London in November, rather than going after the motor vehicle behaviour that kills cyclists. They were pilloried for it by cycling groups, and rightly so.
Presented with an unsympathetic defendant in a cocky, pierced teenager riding a hipster bike, the Met and the Crown Prosecution Service must have thought all their Christmases had come at once.
They therefore charged Alliston with offences that had to be heard in Crown Court, rather than any of the more appropriate lesser offences that would have been heard by magistrates, as Martin Porter QC has pointed out.
There’s a legal maxim that if you want to get off a charge, you go for a jury trial if you can. Juries are composed of people who can’t convince the court they’re too important to be excused jury duty. They tend to be sympathetic to mundane criminality, which is why there are so many breathtaking not guilty verdicts in cases of causing death by careless or dangerous driving.
Charlie Alliston, Daily Mail stereotype
Unfortunately for him, with his tattoos and piercings, Charlie Alliston was as close as it gets to the Daily Mail stereotype of an arrogant, reckless, young tearaway, scofflaw cyclist. There was no way he was going to get a sympathetic hearing from a jury of Londoners who are encouraged to hate cyclists by every story about cycling on the local news, in the London papers, in the national papers, on the BBC and on LBC.
And so it went. Anyone who rides bike knows Alliston’s account of the crash was entirely plausible. Between a parked lorry and moving cars he had nowhere to go. Kim Briggs stepped back into his path (presumably seeing the cars, but not registering Alliston) and he was unable to avoid her.
But by bringing the absurd charge of manslaughter, the CPS could be confident they’d get Alliston for something. I can imagine the jury room discussions. “All right, it’s not manslaughter, but the arrogant git’s guilty of something. What’s this wanton and furious thing? Up to two years bird? Yeah, that’ll do.”
Lynch mob
The resulting atmosphere is that of a lynch mob. I’ve seen posts hoping that Alliston gets anally raped if he goes to prison, and wanting to know his usual riding route so they can string wire in his path. Have you ever seen that for a killer driver?
I fear for the safety of the cyclist next time one of us is involved in a crash with a pedestrian who doesn’t immediately get up and walk away. By bringing this spurious prosecution, the CPS has failed in its duty to act in the public interest. It has made the roads more dangerous, not less.
Cyclists have long known that we will not get justice if we are victims of road violence. Now we can be sure we will not get justice if we are accused of being its perpetrators.
And that means our only recourse is to get away from a crash immediately.
Footnote: If you do choose to stay at the scene of a crash, and there’s even the slightest possibility you might be blamed (in other words, any crash at all in the current climate) say nothing to the police without a lawyer present. Don’t try and be helpful, don’t give a statement. Ask for a lawyer and shut up till he or she arrives.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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145 comments
As said though, every little doesn't help. Paint a cycle lane that's dangerous to cyclists and watch how the motorists behave if you use the road. What has helped, is every little cyclist that died and every motorist that walked away Scott free helped them feel invincible!
'one of us, one of us....'
Strict liability. Or summat.
So Boardman agrees with the majority here - the roads are dangerous largely due to big metal killing machines and piss poor infrastructure supported by terrible laws and sentencing, and Charlie A or a.n other riding a fixie with no brake is a bit of a dick?
What's your point again?
I suspect that this isn't the last we'll hear of this case and that at some point it will be used by politicians as a deflection from a much more serious matter:
Interviewer: "Following Brexit, how will the UK make up the shortfall in EU Road Safety Grants?"
Chris Grayling (or whover): "I think what you're really asking here is whether, as the Alliston case highlighted, the law relating to helmets, speed regulations and personal insurance for cyclists should be revisited"
You said he was going to revolutionise - your word, not there's.
So what you're saying is more paint is on order so long as Starbucks still get their marshmallows and only the odd cyclist gets crushed to death. Seems to fit with your agenda nicely!
So when you said Burnham appointed him to revolutionise, Burnham had never actually said those words?
And to take it further, he's hoping to close a street more than a mile long, with some of Manchester's biggest department stores to ALL traffic when he couldn't stop any lorries in ANY part of London when he was policy adviser despite 6 cyclist deaths in 2 weeks.
Given we know you like shopping you could be "disgusted from Tunbridge Wells"
Your optimism is baffling!
My point is that progress in infrastructure improvements might be painfully slow, but it is happening and will gather momentum as those not on bikes see what is happening in places like Manchester. The bit you left out.
Not my words actually...
He seems to be looking at it long term, rather than expecting overnight change. In the meantime we need to keep shouting.
It baffles me ... I'm not prone to being optimistic ... for instance, I don't see you becoming optimistic any time soon.
Please enlighten me, what is happening in Manchester?
https://goo.gl/images/8f3C1k
Which is exactly my point - I (and others) were arguing this and you were arguing against it roughly a page ago. Keep shouting. Keep banging the drum. Every now and then create an article that some people just don't understand.
Burnham and Boardman can't really do much wrong in my eyes... But the idea that whatever battles they 'win' for cycling in Manchester are just going to spread throughout the country is a tad naive, no?
(Chis Boardman) ... has been appointed by the mayor, Andy Burnham, to revolutionise greater Manchester’s streets.
I'll just answer both of you in one post...
Firstly, I am not suggesting we should wait for a natural forces to improve cycling infrastructure ... what I am saying is that shouting won't be what gets us there. We'll get ignored as we've already been shouting and it hasn't done much good. The change will happen when the greater masses that don't cycle see a benefit to themselves such that they will support the cost of making a change. That benefit might be cleaner air due to fewer motor vehicles on the road, safer town centres free from congestion that are more pleasant places areas to be, and even ecomonomic or technology reasons. They aren't going to change simply because a relatively small proportion of the population that cycles are shouting for change.
There's only so much money to go around and if you ask any motorist whether that money should be spent on cycling infrastructure or road improvements they will say road improvements. So you need some way to convince the non-cycling masses to support improvements to cycling infrastructure. For example, if congestion/air pollution are a problem, then the non-cycling masses will see a benefit to themselves by reducing congestion/air pollution, and one way to reduce congestion/air pollution is by resticting access to town/city centres by motor vehicles and putting in cycling infrastructure. They won't be convinced by cyclists shouting louder. But keep shouting regardless, I'm not saying to stop.
Secondly, any improvements to cycling infrastracture that happens in Manchester will be looked at by town planners throughout the country. If they see things happening in London, Cambridge, Manchester, and elsewhere, they will feel it necessary to join in. They don't work in complete isolation. Successes in one area do slowly migrate to other areas and momentum builds, until it becomes the norm. Yes, its slow, but it will happen. If you want change to happen faster, then something significant will need to happen such that the non-cycling masses are also pushing for change.
Now you're just making stuff up - revolutionise you say?
Last time he tried that...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/recreational-cycling/10464893/Chris-Boardman-ban-HGVs-from-our-rush-hour-roads.html
You really are delusional aren't you?!
I'm optimistic ... improving infrastructure is different to banning HGV's as that affects business.
The more you post the less I believe you go out on a bike. London appears to be the only place where there's even half decent infrastructure and that's because the transport system in the city is largely fucked. Yet they still manage to kill dozens and just write it off as it doesn't really matter.
Employers and out of town shopping centres are aware that car is king and do nothing except extend car parks and open up megastores on new areas of green land further away from transport links. Yeah they'll paint and odd line on a pavement but it really is going nowhere and seems merely to tick a box or give the motons more angst.
Within a few hundred meters of where I live there's a cycle path thats on a cars turn into a doctors surgery, I used it twice daily around 250 days a year. I've seen one car stop. There's a cycle path that puts you onto the road facing traffic on the hump of a bridge, there's one that ends with metal railings so you can't get on the road and there's one by the side of a dual carriage way that simply disappears for bus stops (do we float).
People could be choking on their own exhaust fumes to drive 800 metres to the doctors and still wouldn't consider giving up their cars. The only cause of a shift will be a significant change in attitude, maybe you could be first...
I was out on my bike today and for 4 hours no less ... went to take a look at the new Queensferry bridge ... I don't do that everyday of course.
I can understand why you are so pissed given your description of what its like where you are. If you only cycle and don't have a car then all the out-of-town shopping will be a real pain and it has become the norm almost everywhere. Employers like out-of-town industrial estates as it saves them money and moves the cost and inconvenience onto the employee (that's just one of the reasons I needed a car). Most people are lazy and won't give up their cars ... those people will have shorter lives and more health problems. Even that doesn't seem to motivate them. Maybe we need celebs on bikes to convince them? It won't. On a brighter note, a shift in attitude anywhere in the country will trickle down to where you happen to live. At least they are making some attempt, which is a whole lot better than not even bothering.
No they aren't and it isn't as I JUST said.
They are doing what the have to do when they build a new road - putting in a shared use path alongside a new road that joins busy roads that few use. Net result additional cost nobody using them, poor state of repair, cyclist using road and people taking vengeance on cyclists.
Or do you think the lanes I previously mentioned are better than nothing? Are you suggesting rather than my kids being taught to ride safely on the road they should be forced onto infrastructure not fit for purpose. Or again, should drivers be allowed to intimidate because they aren't using such thing.
I imagine those who you claim are making these decisions have barely seen a bike...
So you lookef at the new bridge. Now imagine how much value our government could have given cyclists and public transport with the money they've hosed away on that and dualing the A9. They talk about cycling and walking a lot, but come the finish all Sturgeon Cates about is hrt bloody vanity project bridge.
"Things Can Only Get Better" was a song by Northern Irish musical group D:Ream.
The Labour Party notably used it as a theme during the party's campaign in 1997.
20 years later and we're still holding our breaths!
Things will coninue to improve for cycling, but at a slow pace. The reason is not enough people on bikes to warrant spending more. As more people take to bikes, then more money will be spent on cycling infrastructure. It will be slow as it gathers momentum, but things will continue to improve. In the meantime all the technology that is making motoring safer (e.g. collision avoidance systems, driverless cars, etc.) will improve road safety for all of us. Below are the numbers of people cycling in the UK (2015) ... how much money will be invested in cycling infrastructure given these figures? How can we get these numbers up? ... More bike shares maybe?
http://www.cyclinguk.org/resources/cycling-uk-cycling-statistics
2015-att_cycling-frequency-570x168.jpg
And dwarfing those figures are the numbers that want to sit on their arses and do nothing. Same numbers-ish of people do not even do 10 minutes brisk walking per month (6 million) as those who even use a bike at all.
That's a lot of people who could be won round to cycling. But they're not being. Their numbers are growing more rapidly than cyclists' - for each person that might get on a bike occasionally, several more are becoming even more sedate. 'We' - those regular cyclists who give a shit - are vastly outnumbered by the chronically lazy.
How are you optimistic about increasing numbers of cyclists?
Lots of reasons...
There is an overall concern with public health and cycling is one way to promote a healthy lifestyle. This will cut down the cost of funding the NHS.
Global warming is a real concern (ignoring Trump) and electric cars don't help in that regard, they only reduce pollution ... electricity still needs to be generated. Bicycles are a clean mode of transport.
Cars are expensive to run, bicycles are not. People have less money now than before the last financial crisis, so any way to save money and get healthier at the same time is appealing. It will become even more appealing as family budgets are squeezed.
Driverless cars and Uber will result in more people choosing not to own a car, but hire one on demand. If the cost is low enough this will make a lot of sense and will free up our roads and streets. Car shares may become popular ... borrow one when you need it and pay a rental and membership fee. Fewer cars on the road and safer driving technology will result on more people feeling safe enough to cycle.
Public transport is expensive and not as convenient as we'd like. Being able to hop on a bike and go where you want, whenever you want is very liberating.
Most people find cycling requires too much effort, particularly on hills, and you arrive at your destination all sweaty and in need of a shower. E-bikes solve that problem, but they need to get cheaper and longer range.
Theres lots more cycling sports being covered on TV now than in previous years, and its very popular even amoungst those that don't cycle ... some will be motivated to take up cycling.
Cycling is already popular in other countries like Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Japan, Switzerland, Belgium, China, etc. and it will get more popular here. It just takes time.
I don't think its promoting cycling that will get us there, its natural forces (such as mentioned above) that will. People will take to it when they are ready. We're just not quite there yet.
Trying to be polite, I think your post is at best ridiculously optimistic. First, self driving cars will not help us, in fact they ate likely to lead to more demands to clear the streets of cyclists to make it easier. Second, the countries you name don't just happen to have cyclists. They have serious infrastructure. At least in the Netherlands resulting from strong public protests.
Your "wait and all will be well if only we are nice to motorised maniacs" will go exactly nowhere.
Maybe you're right. I looked into Netherlands on Wikipedia...
So basically, there was a strong reason for change consisting of several factors and not simply protests, but protests against high numbers of child deaths. Oil crisis etc. That's the point I was making ... natural forces ... whatever shape that might take (economic, technology, etc.). Given that the majorty don't cycle, protesting by 'we want' isn't going to convince those people to spend more on cycling infrastructure. They are going to have to see a benefit for them so that they will be motivated to support more investment.
In the UK we are already seeing better cycling infrastructure and cycle friendly policies such as restricting motor vehicles in towns and cities. Granted the pace isn't as quick as we'd like but it is definitely happening. Do you have any ideas on this?
Maybe you're right. I looked into Netherlands on Wikipedia...
In the UK we are already seeing better cycling infrastructure and cycle friendly policies such as restricting motor vehicles in towns and cities. Granted the pace isn't as quick as we'd like but it is definitely happening. Do you have any ideas on this?
[/quotas
Maybe it's better where you live. In rural Scotland it becomes worse. Less enforcement, a government going around crowing about the amount of money pissed away on new roads while offering up fantasy nonsense about 10% cycling share, apparently by miracle, Sustrans sticking their name on paths that are not fit for purpose, indeed barely fit to be described as paths in some cases.
I don't know. Vote only for Greens, hope something motivates similar protests to those that occurred in the Netherlands. Give up and stick to off road cycling?
Change is not happening at all, not in a positive way. Explain why KSI for road users is going up, explain why despite greater helmet use for instance and more segregated in London there are more seriously injured people who ride bikes?
the UK is going backwards not forwards, we can't wait for a natural situation, not that the oil crisis was natural anyway. The polce have lost control of the roads, they are now targetting and have done for a while the group that does by far the lesser harm, the government are failing to act, you only need look at how the CTC et al have had no joy whatsoever with the recent committee's and asking for changes. Even the mayor of London has stopped all cycling infra.
my local authority hasn't done anything for cycling since I moved here 21 years ago, in fact made it worse. Cut off one of the link roads to the next town/hospital with a bypass road and didn't install a crossing of any sort. We are still stuck with the same shitty ideas that were shit in the 1999 Urban Transport Plan for the area, none of which have being completed anyway, my local police force are not interested in close pass initiatives, not interested when a car collides with you, not interested in hit and run cases but happy to blame the victim for wearing a grey jacket, happy to pervert the course of justice and cover their own when caught out trying to intimidate a victim of crime so as to drop the case. Tthey are interested in threatening bicyclists with public order offences for reacting to dangerous driving.
I can guarantee this will be replicated up and down dale.
but crack on with the things will change theme, without action, direct action, nothing will change even in 20 years.
Because helmets have no significantly measurable role in diminishing serious head injuries. http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f3817
I know that but it was to illicit a response from nbrus who thinks that things are changing in a positive direction when the stats are showing they aren't, they also suggest that we should wait for a natural event to force that change. The promotion of helmets and the onus on safety pushed onto the vulnerable by government and other agencies and the blame culture by the police for not wearing such has gone totally in the wrong direction.
Waiting for that and other aspects of safe cycling, infra, justice etc to change naturally is ridiculous, hence my post.
These are all great conditions and I agree with them almost entirely. But it doesn't answer my question regarding why cycling is going to increase in popularity.
*Despite* this backdrop of a perfect storm for cycling going through the stratosphere, we have the reality on the ground in the justice system, the trollumnists, the letdown politicians.
My argument runs exactly counter to yours: look how unpopular and unsupported cycling is, *despite* it making perfect sense to back it to the hilt. And I don't think we have time: at least some of your conditions (eg. British sporting success) are at their zenith right now.
I wish I shared your optimism, but logic doesn't just prevail. It takes massive effort by people willing to stick their neck on the line, particularly when the rabble-rousers are paid by car advertisers and policy-makers are paid by motor lobbyists and scared of upsetting the motor industry.
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