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news
London cyclists at traffic lights (copyright Britishcycling.org_.uk).jpgMr Loophole lawyer dismisses government plans for tougher laws on cyclists ... while calling for tougher laws on cyclists
The Times – the newspaper whose Cities Fit for Cycling campaign, launched in 2012, helped pave the way for a Parliamentary inquiry that led to the following year’s Get Britain Cycling report – has today given a platform to lawyer Nick Freeman to call for cyclists to be treated equally to motorists by the law, including having to wear identification numbers. But while calling for tougher laws against cyclists, he has dismissed the government's consultation on doing exactly that as a "headline grabbing move."
> The Times wins award for Cities Fit For Cycling Campaign
Freeman., nicknamed Mr Loophole due to his ability to get his clients – many of them celebrities, including Jeremy Clarkson and Wayne Rooney – off the hook when charged with motoring offences, often due to legal technicalities, has a bit of previous when it comes to calling for the authorities to clamp down on cyclists, whom he believes “can commit road traffic offences with impunity.”
Those were the words he used in his comment piece in The Times today, although he did go on to highlight that Charlie Alliston had been jailed for 18 months for wanton and furious driving following the 2016 collision on London’s Old Street in which pedestrian Kim Briggs lost her life.
Citing the case of a woman hospitalised last week in a crash involving a cyclist in nearby Dalston in which the rider ran off but later handed himself in to police – footage posted in The Sun suggested the pedestrian ran across the road while the lights were green for traffic – Freeman wrote: “What’s needed is a system where, like motorists, cyclists are subject to a points system and pay fines, or more, where appropriate.
> Dalston pedestrian involved in collision with e-bike rider tried to cross when lights were green
“This could be done by introducing mandatory identification for cyclists – for example through the compulsory wearing of numbered tabards registered to the cyclist (and not the bicycle),” he continued.
(It’s perhaps worth noting that he got Clarkson acquitted of a speeding offence because the prosecution was unable to prove that the motoring journalist and broadcaster was actually driving the car in question at the time).
The Times piece was published under the heading, ‘Treat bicycles as strictly as cars to make roads safe’, although curiously, Freeman dismisses the Department for Transport’s announcement last month of a consultation on the law relating to dangerous and careless cycling as “an empty, headline-grabbing move.”
> Government opens dangerous and careless cycling law consultation
Hmmmm.
Freeman himself says that “although every death is a tragedy, the number of cases involving a collision between a cyclist and a pedestrian is tiny” (to which it should be added that it cannot be assumed that in all of those cases the cyclist was at fault).
Nevertheless, he concludes: “Cyclists and motorists need to be able to share the road and should face similar punishments for breaking the law. It is the only way to make our roads safer.”
All of which may leave the reader of The Times article confused. As mentioned above, the government is consulting on reforming the law as it applies to cyclists, but it’s a consultation that Freeman dismisses in his article.
Back in 2006 in an interview with the Guardian, Freeman did however suggest another “way to make our roads safer,” as he put it today.
He earned his Mr Loophole nickname for his ability to successfully defend clients or have sentences overturned or made more lenient on appeal in large part because he was able to identify procedural errors on the part of the police or prosecution.
“If I repeatedly identify shortcomings in police procedures, then perhaps we will end up with better standards in policing and then we will all be safer on the roads because people will not take chances,” he said 12 years ago.
“Until then, it is my job to identify inadequate policing and procedures,” he added.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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21 comments
Once they have you all out of your cars then bikes will be the new pariahs for government to sink their teeth into. By that time they will be telling you all to walk and after that, to crawl.
Duplicate. How rude.
He makes roads safer by highlighting gaps in procedures so that those gaps are closed. Yes he does.
Even in his current case, where David Beckham was speeding (59 in a 40 - that much is admitted) and it's being contested on the grounds that the notice of intended prosecution arrived one day too late. That'll make the roads safer. Yes it will.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-45412101
Haven't there been cases described on here where the car was identified by its licence plate but they couldn't prove who was driving it? So drivers should also have to wear these tabards, or maybe have an ID number stamped on their forehead clearly visible through the windscreen? As a bonus, that would also identify them if they commited an offense while on foot.
Main thing of course is that a cyclist licencing rule would reduce the number of cyclists and so increase total morbidity through RTAs, pollution and inactivity. Why does Mr Loophole want more people to die?
Exactly. Licencing the cyclist rather than the bicycle means cyclists would not be treated the same as motorists, but more harshly (again). Yes, motorists have a driving licence, but that's not what identifies the driver in an incident/collision, its the registration plate on their vehicle.
‘Treat bicycles as strictly as cars to make roads safe’
You mean as cyclists we need to kill and maim more and get little attention or punishment? Brilliant!
What a two-faced cockwomble, and I'm being nice here!
What he probably meant to say was that drivers like clarkson should wear identifying tabards so there's less chance of him being allowed to get off scot free when he endangers lives by speeding
Great idea. Put numbers on all cyclists. Then we'd all think we were racing all the time
.
I think a lot of the problem with the safety debate is that the standard everyone is using as the base is that set in London where everybody (drivers, cyclists and pedestrians) seems to lack courtesy and patience. My experience whilst riding within the rest of the country says the vast majority of road users might get a bit wound up sometimes but normally give time and space.
...if the drivers have difficulty in seeing cyclists (SMIDSY), how are they going to see the numbers?
Nick Freeman is a headline-grabbing gesture. The gesture in question being the one seemingly preferred by angry drivers.
I'm not surprised the 'article' is confused: it seems like he's stumbled, probably unintentionally, on a couple of valid points, but then his conclusion - equal laws enforced via tabards, or whatever that particular insult was - being the only way to safe roads, is risible.
The safest roads in Europe for cyclists have laws that are balanced in favour of the more vulnerable user - they are safe in part, because of their inequality. But looking elsewhere for evidence and facts won't keep him in St Tropez or facelifts, so fuck it.
It isn't the confused ramblings from him that are offensive - he's as predictable as he is stupid. It's the Times giving him space... Just one more step on its descent into the clickbaity gammonpit the S*n, Torygraph and Heil are shitting in.
Fucktard obvioulsy doesn't know the law that well as cyclists ARE penalised for infractions, probably at a higher rate than motorists who run red lights at circa 14million a month and speeding in excess of the prescribed limit is done by 100% of all motorists at some point or another including myself, the penalities handed out for these infractions are infinitesimal comparatively.
Perhaps someone should point out to Mr loopy that a driver, being licenced, users the road under sufferage and has no right to use his vehicle on the road, hence the suspension of a driving licence prohibiting driving a vehicle on a public road. A cyclist requires no licence and there fore uses the highway as of right. There is no mechanism for banning anyone from using a bicycle.
You'd think a highflying lawyer would appreciate the difference.
I thought shit came out of a different hole. He should change his nickname.
nevertheless, the review is a headline-grabbing gesture
'Freeman wrote: “What’s needed is a system where, like motorists, cyclists are subject to a points system and pay fines, or more, where appropriate."'
Excepting of course those who can afford to pay up, and keep him in the lifestyle to which he has grown accustomed?
Oh silly me - such a cynical and underhand interpretation of a man who has spent untold years campaigning selflessly and indefatigably for improved policing standards on the roads, to make them safer for ALL. Ahem.
I've scraped nicer things than Mr Freeman off my shoe. If what he said was true, and registering and licencing road users prevented deaths and injuries, why doesn't it stop drivers, who cause something like 99.6% of them?
Unless of course, he's expecting a lot of business from representing cyclists?
Hole in one, my man!
Deaths caused by cyclists are not a problem, and there are already laws in place
Mr Freeman never said licencing road users would reduce deaths, but decrease people taking chances, which may result in fewer accidents, not deaths or injuries
You can still make positive changes without reducing the number of deaths on the road
So... You're anticipating a reduction in 'accidents', but not necessarily in injuries and deaths? Que?
We just have nastier accidents which create more KSIs, or maybe a quota of cyclists and peds perform ritual suicides in order to plug the inconvenient gap created by the accident reduction?
I think he means that with cyclists having nice big glowing license plates, the motorists would be purposefully crashing into them. Less 'accidents', but the same number of KSIs.
Fewer accidents, with bigger consequences. Yes, that's more equal.
Presumably Mr Peephole just wants things to be more equal on the roads in the way that they are on the pavements, whereby motorised vehicles can be driven onto them with total impunity, even when they're killing kids who have been waved across the road by the driver.
Then all road users will be equal, but some road users will be more equal than others.