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news
justice-2060093_1920Van driver who left a cyclist unable to move for two months is fined £550 for ‘driving without due care’
A driver who hit a cyclist with his van, leaving him unable to move unaided for two months, has received a £550 fine and six penalty points on their license.
The motorist, driving a van and trailer, knocked the rider off his bike just outside Wimborne in August, reports the Bournemouth Echo.
The cyclist sustained fractures to the shoulder, leg and pelvis in the incident, and was unable to walk for two months.
The van driver, who was adjudged by attending police to have driven without due care, pleaded guilty in court before Christmas. He was fined £550 and received six points.
“We are never pleased to see adversity inflicted on others no matter what they have done,” a spokesperson for Dorset Traffic Police said. “But we hope this outcome improves the driver involved and goes some way to repairing the damage done to the cyclist's life.”
In the same month that this incident took place, the Mail Online and Metro published articles criticising the installation of an 11ft-wide cycle lane in Wimborne – dubbed ‘Britain’s biggest bike lane’ – which (some) locals claimed was a “shambles”.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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CPS going for 100% prosecution odds
"“We are never pleased to see adversity inflicted on others no matter what they have done,” a spokesperson for Dorset Traffic Police said. “But we hope this outcome improves the driver involved and goes some way to repairing the damage done to the cyclist's life.”"
Say what now? How does the fact that the driver has had a £550 fine (which they will probably plead hardship for and pay over the next 25 years or something) go any way to repairing the damage done to the cyclists life? And 6 penalty points - yeah that will really improve the driver involved.
The extent of the injuries to the cyclist are such that it could easily have been a fatality as opposed to a serious injury. And the sentence looks like it was a Category 2 Careless Driving charge which includes a 5-6 point penalty and a Band B Fine of 75 - 125% of weekly income.
It beggars belief that someone can cause life altering injuries with a car and get nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
And you could guarantee that if that was a cyclist who collided with a pedestrian causing serious injury to the pedestrian the gutter press would be baying for the cyclist to be jailed.
Fixed it!
Another rather pathetic sentence for a serious crime and life changing injuries. I'm sure the recently revived seven-year-old promise to comprehensively review road law will make all the difference.
At least the conviction removes any doubt about responsibility, and his insurance company will be paying out large, even if the compensation payments in this country are relatively small.
“We are never pleased to see adversity inflicted on others no matter what they have done,” a spokesperson for Dorset Traffic Police said. “But we hope this outcome improves the driver involved and goes some way to repairing the damage done to the cyclist's life.”
What a complete and absolute joke!
These coppers are living on another planet!
Cyclist gets NOTHING, not even the satisfaction of a potential killer being locked up! How could that 'repair the damage to the cyclist's life'?
'“We are never pleased to see adversity inflicted on others no matter what they have done,” a spokesperson for Dorset Traffic Police said.'
Perhaps I'm being unusually dense this morning, and perhaps this extract is made more comprehensible in its broader context, but does anyone know what this sentence means? Option (i) seems to be that the spokesperson is sorry for the adversity (fine and points) visited on the van driver, even though they struck and seriously injured a cyclist. Option (ii) seems to imply that they are sorry the cyclist was injured, even though they (the cyclist) was in some way responsible for the collision. Any ideas folks?
One presumes it's your first option (possibly there was some hardship begging in the driver's guilty plea that isn't reported here or in the linked article ("Let me off lightly guv'nor, it's Christmas and I need to drive to see my kids and can't afford presents" etc)), in which case it's a quite extraordinary statement for a police force to issue, given that a substantial majority of their professional remit is to pursue others for what they have done and ensure that condign "adversity" is "inflicted" on them for it.
My thoughts exactly. Since my original post I've read the article and am none the wiser. Ho hum. I sincerely hope that the police are not now going to sympathise with the apparently small number of dangerous drivers they can actually be bothered to do anything about when it comes to cases of KSI cyclists.
That depends, are you a journalist or editor for the Bournemouth Echo? Or a spokesperson for Dorset Traffic Police? I suppose even if you were, that would only qualify you for 'dense' and not 'unusually dense' (except in the sense that they were no more unusually dense than they usually are).
It's LICENCE in UK English.
Road.cc seem to think it's license because the Bournemouth Echo say so.
But... Waitaminute - is road.cc singular or plural? Is Bournemouth Echo singular or plural?? OMG! - grammarians everywhere wish to know.
Echo is definitely plural
...plural
...plural
...plural
Explain.
I thought I had. Repeatedly.
That's not an explanation, just a comment bouncing around.
Well, what do you expect? We keep getting told we're all in an echo chamber.
Have you tried the famous echo in the reading room of the british library ?
How is it that I read that with a dalek accent ?
Covid?
"Daleks are not managers!"
Bournemouth is in the UK...
Yes - so they should get it right then.
PROGRAMME
No - we're pro-ounce again now.
It makes you ponder on the link between this incident and the gutter press articles. Words really matter, and have repercussions as shown here .
Agreed. You only have to look at the comments under the Bournemouth Echo article
In fairness the comments are largely sensible (with a couple of idiots thrown in for "balance")
The ones that haven't been deleted for breaking BE site rules anyway
Last night the good to bad ratio was swinging the wrong way and the ones that are now deleted were there. Those ones stayed with me, such as "buy that man a pint"
yuk, pretty fucking creepy
Let's hope the driver gets sued out of existence...this sentence will have done f**k all...
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