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Justice (Lonpicman, Wikimedia Commons)Inquiry should tackle police anti-cycling prejudice, say campaigners
Concerns over "lingering police prejudices against cyclists" and funding cuts will be among evidence submitted to a parliamentary inquiry into police handling of road crime in the UK.
Road justice campaigners have wholeheartedly welcomed an inquiry into road traffic law enforcement, conducted by the Transport Committee which will look at how government policies to improve road safety are being enforced, including careless and dangerous driving offences.
Campaigners and legal experts say partly thanks to funding cuts police capacity to investigate road crime is severely limited, which can lead to hastily-made conclusions and alter the quality of investigations based on some officers' prejudices.
- Government review of dangerous driving sentencing currently underway
CTC road safety campaigner Rhia Favero also questioned the effectiveness of awareness courses offered to drivers as an alternative to prosecution.
"For years CTC's Road Justice campaign has been calling for those in power to take notice of the meagre police response to road crime particularly when cyclists and pedestrians are the victims, so the inquiry is welcomed wholeheartedly," said Favero.
"I hope the inquiry will highlight the need for a reversal of the deep cuts to roads policing, which have severely limited police capacity to investigate road crime. I also hope recommendations emerge to tackle the lingering prejudice against cyclists among some police officers, which can lead to quickly formed conclusions about who is at fault in road collisions and has a knock on effect on the quality and depth of police investigations.
"I would also like the inquiry to question the police power to offer awareness courses to drivers as an alternative to prosecution when they have endangered other road users and whether these courses actually raise driving standards or just let drivers off the hook."
Since the lesser offence of careless driving was introduced in 2008, prosecutions for dangerous driving declined dramatically.
Paul Kitson, a solicitor who specialises in cycling injury, told road.cc he welcomed the enquiry, and called the annual UK road death toll of 1,700 per year 'unacceptable'.
He said: "Bad drivers are rarely prosecuted for careless or dangerous driving. This normally only happens if the bad driving results in serious injury and only then if there was strong supporting witness evidence. The police all too often do not put enough of their resources into investigating motoring offences."
Some argue the definitions of careless and dangerous driving are too ambiguous, the first being driving that falls below the minimum acceptable standard expected of a careful and competent driver and the second driving that falls far below that standard. Dangerous driving carries a maximum 14 years jail term, careless just five.
Submissions to the inquiry are requested before October 10 and can be made here.
Laura Laker is a freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience covering cycling, walking and wheeling (and other means of transport). Beginning her career with road.cc, Laura has also written for national and specialist titles of all stripes. One part of the popular Streets Ahead podcast, she sometimes appears as a talking head on TV and radio, and in real life at conferences and festivals. She is also the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network.
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25 comments
It isn't just a case of bias and prejudice among the police - although that is a very real thing (in Leeds, for example, the cops HATE bike riders with an intensity that is barely hidden).
There is also anti-bike prejudice at the CPS, anti-bike prejudice in Highways departments of councils, anti-bike prejudice in government, anti-bike prejudice in the judiciary...
What hurts is that many of these bodies, when asked, claim to be very much in favour of bikes, and protecting the vulnerable road user, etc. It's the lies that sting just as much as the prejudice.
Not in my local council and for the most part not in other authorities either.
Lucky you.
I do still maintain that pro-cycling councils are a tiny minority. Some councils have a smattering of lip-service pro-cycling PR, but do nothing to actually make the roads less hostile to anyone not in a box on at least 4 wheels.
I have no doubt the Police dont follow up on many Incidents that Cyclists report, I know the driver who failed to Give way to me and knocked me down was never prosecuted, but the major problem really appears to be at the door of the CPS/PF and the Courts too. Some absolute shocking, disgusting, and disgraceful decisions in the last few years.
The one that sticks in my mind is this one below. How the HGV driver can get away with killing the cyclist whilst she had lights and a Hi Viz jacket and doing absolutely nothing wrong, then drive off leaving her to die at the roadside and still be found Not Guilty is completely beyond my comprehension.
http://road.cc/content/news/140616-articulated-lorry-driver-cleared-care...
Jury of fellow motorists, that's how.
stumps - if we go a year (or hell, lets start with a month) without a police statement mentioning not wearing a helmet or high-vis as some sort of contributor to a daytime cycle-car interface then we can talk about manpower.
That said, the police should be at liberty to say if the CPS choose not to prosecute a case. Blame should fall squarely with where it lies.
The problem is the offence they are charged with.
Assault is assault and I don't see why using a car as the weapon makes it a lesser offence.
While it may not lead to jail time and the police may let offences go with a caution a caution stays on file, counts as a conviction and is much harder to harder to explain away on a CV than a "driving offence".
Assault is an act of will. Most driving offences are acts of carelessness, or negligence, so an assault charge is rarely relevant.
I take your point but assaults can be committed recklessly. I would wager a significant proportion of driving offences occur as a result of reckless behaviour.
stumps, we are absolutely not "playing the blame game".
If you read our Manifesto for London Mayoral candidates at:
http://tinyurl.com/oj7eovz you can see that we want more resources for enforcement - which is what you are rightly drawing attention to.
We do think that there is an issue about attitudes. The police in general and MPS here in London have spent a lot of time on this with regard to fundamental issues (gender etc.) , and should do with regard to commonly held attitudes about driving and cycling. That is not "playing the blame game".
As a couple of people have already said, this is not so much police prejudice as common assumptions across society.
brooksby - where i work there used to be 10 per shift, not a massive amount but enough for what we had to deal with and to deal with it properly. There are now on average only 4 of us, some days we are lucky and have 6.
There is only so much we can do and what we do is done properly but a massive amount of people assume that there is a never ending supply of Police officers.
Until the public accept that we cant be everywhere doing everything then there will always be people like ChairRDRF who play the blame game.
Please don't insult us. No one believes that there is an unlimited supply of police officers and resources. What many cyclists take issue with is when they have reported incidents of dangerous driving, been driven at, their safety put in mortal danger, perhaps they have even been injured or their property been damaged, they may have been abused or assaulted by nutters who have got out of vehicles and attacked them, etc - they are met by police indifference, prejudice, incompetence, indolence and arrogance and generally a cba attitude. For me I have given up reporting stuff to the police, not just cycling stuff, anything as their response is generally woeful, appalling. I don't waste my time and life anymore. I now take the view shit happens, just try and avoid it. So indirectly the crime figures go down. Also I remember a couple of years back it emerged cops were DELIBERATELY not recording offences as crimes to make their performance appear better and to give the impression crime was going down which was self defeating as this meant the government thought we don't need so many police officers so lets cut their numbers.
You mean you're not all grown in vats by the Kaminoans?
Seriously, I don't think anyone is blaming the police forces themselves for cuts in services.
It's more that you guys are one of the most visible faces of the State doing stuff for us (ie. the citizens), and seeing police get cut further and further back reminds us of Austerity.
We don't see the cuts in international aid, and most of us don't see cuts in housing benefit or stuff like that, but we do see the numbers of police diminishing further and further, and we do see NHS waiting lists getting longer and longer.
To be fair, in the context of a motorway the rules of the road are to protect motorists and aren't really intended for anyone else, as no one else should be there.
There was a story in the news recently about drivers bring prosecuted for driving the wrong way up an M60 slip road. This was the police statement (as reported by BBC):
PC Matt Picton said: "There is no good reason to drive the wrong way down a motorway, it is extremely dangerous and no excuse could ever justify these actions.
"The laws of the road are there for a reason, which is to protect motorists and people need to realise that they cannot do what they want, when they want."
The unconscious but deep-rooted bias in the notion of road laws only being there to "protect motorists" is very revealing about police attitudes.
That's a bit of a stretch as a revealing remark. It was motorists endangering other motorists on a motorway slip road, where there were no cyclists and pedestrians, he was talking about. No doubt if he's been dealing with cyclists having no lights at night he would have commented that the rules are there to protect cyclists.
It is to be expected that the police often have the prejudices that other members of society have. They have formally recognised this in areas as fundamental as discrimination on grounds of gender, race, sexuality and disability.
We think work needs to be done on the acceptance by police officers of commonly held views about law and rule breaking on the road, and this is a key point in our Manifesto for London Mayoral Candidates http://tinyurl.com/oj7eovz .
Remember - the Tories don't want you on a bike. They want nice fat unhealthy people for their private healthcare investments.
The problem is anti-cyclist prejudice and ignorance in the police but also the CPS, the courts and parliament. Add cost-cutting into the mix and the task of changing our motor supremacist culture is almost insurmountable. However cycle camera video evidence is now overwhelming as is the evidence of the benefits of increased cycling levels so eventually something will give. It's just a matter of time. Meanwhile cyclists are being endangered, injured and killed and all the problems of over-reliance on motorised traffic are getting worse.
i don't doubt some police have issues with cyclists, they are people and some people have issues with cyclists.
Is it a major problem? very different question.
Closest recent contact, gave statement against driver but the CPS declined to proceed because i told the driver to fuck off.
I'm not so convince that manpower is the issue. I don't doubt it's annoying in the job, but there has been a slight issue with the world economy and everyone's job's got more stretched. Most workplaces probably show a similar profile. I got laid off as the shit began to hit the fan in 2008.
2003 - 134,450
2009 - 144,274
2015 - 127,110
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0C...
Was 2009 a high point in prosecutions and cyclist safety?
Some good might come out of the inquiry if they actually look at it from all sides. May depend if there's a cyclist on the committee.
complete and utter shite.....another enquiry by clueless politicians to deflect from the utter mess they have left the Police to sort out.
Having to go cap in hand to the cps who only want to prosecute a "guilty plea" becuase of targets etc leaves the Police at the mercy of victim blaming. I'll be glad when i retire and not have to put up with this crap anymore.
The job i joined and thoroughly loved has been turned on its head and our hands have been tied so much we are no more than glorified bloody trafffic wardens.
Give us back the manpower we have lost and our power to authorise prosecutions and those figures will be blown out of the water.
I hear what you're saying, but this particular statement is rather ironic when many people's complaint (on this site, anyway) is that traffic policing seems to be one of the areas where funding has been most visibly cut and all their files quietly put away into the cabinet marked 'Beware of the Leopard'.
"lingering" prejudices...