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news
Pedestrian zone cyclist.JPGCyclist ordered to pay £50 compensation to pedestrian he crashed into in Stafford town centre
A cyclist in Stafford who collided with a pedestrian yesterday as he cycled through the town centre, where riding bikes is banned, has been ordered to pay the victim £50 in compensation.
The bike rider, an 18-year-old man, will also write a letter of apology to the person he crashed into after the issue was dealt with through a restorative justice process.
The collision took place in the town centre’s pedestrian zone where people are forbidden from riding bikes, reports the Stoke Sentinel.
A spokesman for Staffordshire Police said: "Following an incident in Stafford town centre today, an 18 year old male has been dealt with using restorative justice.
"The male was cycling recklessly through the town centre when he has collided with a pedestrian. He was given a community resolution for assault and cycling in the town centre pedestrian zone. This involved paying £50 compensation, and a letter of apology.
"This incident could have been a lot worse. If a child or an elderly person had been hit, the injury would have been more serious.
"This is exactly why cycling is not permitted in the town centre."
In a page on its website setting out how restorative justice works, Staffordshire Police says that the process “can involve face to face meetings between the victim and offender or contact between victim and offender through a third party.
“The process allows you, the victim, to ask questions about why the offender committed the crime and has been shown to help victims to address any ongoing fears they may have. The process allows you to tell the offender directly how the crime has impacted on you and to identify ways to prevent the crime from happening again.
“For offenders, [restorative justice] processes offer a unique opportunity to face up to what they have done, take responsibility and make up for the harm their offending has caused.”
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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22 comments
I’d be interested to know if it happened the other way round; pedestrian stepped into the path of a cyclist on a marked cycle path and knocked them off , would the pedestrian get a fine?
No: I'm pretty sure that it would still be the cyclist who'd get a fine. Because, y'know, "cyclist!".
A pedestrian usually has priority even on a marked cycle path so it would probably depend on whether it was deliberate or not.
Which does illustrate how stupid those "white line down the middle" cycle path/pedestrian paths are. If you're going to paint a white dividing line, then give each group priority on "their" side of the line. Otherwise, what's the f-ing point??
Absolutely
guidelines.jpeg
Guidelines do help a bit though. Particularly when many don't realise that they don't mean much in law (so they obey them as if they _do_ give priority to the other group). When such a line was removed from a path I have used in both capacities, it made it more difficult for everyone. I now dislike cycling that route even more than I did before and people I know who walk it now constantly moan about having to worry about 'bloody cyclists' coming up at speed behind them.
When there was a dividing line at least everyone who wanted to be considerate had some idea what they were supposed to do to be 'polite'. Now nobody knows where they should be.
Thinking about it, it's the difference between 'useless paint-based infrastructure' and 'useless shared-space wishful thinking'. Both are fairly useless compared to actually providing proper dedicated routes, but the latter is more annoying to me becuase of the dimwit form of idealism it expresses.
(I'ts that idea that if you take away all information or enforcement, everyone will instinctively co-operate and 'play nice'. Bollocks, do they. Bloody anarchists - you just end up with the road-based version of a 'failed state').
It can be okay in some contexts where there's not much traffic and so it's easy for everyone to avoid each other. It can be intimidating in areas of high traffic though, especially for deaf and/or blind pedestrians. I recall that the "shared space" by Bristol Temple Meads station (which mixes cars, pedestrians and cyclists) has been soundly criticised by some groups for not considering how blind people are supposed to navigate it safely.
Yesterday I was experiencing the pedestrian view of the tow path between Kingston and Richmond. It was VERY busy and it doesn't have lines dividing the sides, yet I didn't see any conflict at all. There were four of us, so we tended to block the narrow bits when walking side by side, yet we kept an ear open for cyclists behind us and it was easy to create space for everyone. (Lots of "thank yous" from the cyclists).
Even with plods bias viewpoint toward people on bikes and the supposed unlawlessness of same, the record shows (as stated in the review on cycling laws last March by the Presdent of the Hauliage association) that only four cyclists could be found at fault for a death of a pedestrian over a 6-7 year period, at the same time the figure for at fault peds for their death was six - 24 deaths in total but apparently majority of cases could not ascertain blame either way. We should have knocked the Alliston one off that and added it onto the other column frankly but it's very clear that those on bikes are actually very safe indeed, such that those extremely rare collisions with pedestrians that end in death would not be so high if it weren't for the fault of the pedestrians themselves!
Seems like a reasonable outcome to me. No major injuries and the cyclist maybe learns to take a bit more care around people.
To put this into perspective, most people cycle up and down the pedestrianised zone (the main part of which is a restricted access one way road outside business hours anyway) with no issue. You do get small groups of teens congregating on bikes outside McDonalds which aren't normally a problem though they don't always have the best situational awareness. The local police have never cared about anyone cycling in the area if they are doing it slowly and courteously. The only real problems I've seen are when a group suddenly takes off at speed while all pulling wheelies so if I had to guess a kid has done just that, lost control and clipped someone.
If the ped felt fear of harm even if there wasn't any physical harm then that is still 'unlawful violence'. violence in the mind can be such a subjective matter for each person.
A small child on the road would feel violence in their mind almost all the time, those of us who have been around will shrug most off and even really close passes are met with anger and then forgotten about.
Today I had three absolute piss takes, one in a3.5ton van, one a woman in an Astra who deliberately close passed me because I held up up for 1.5 seconds going around a blind bend with cars parked on it so I was just right of the centre line. It was a 30 zone on the estate where live and doing 20 myself but missy thought she would punish me for my sins.
Those events do often have a far greater effect in violence terms to one were a cyclist bumps into you, however police are not interested in fairness and balance, just what are easy catches and what gets a tick in the box of sorting out the plague that are cyclists.
I've no problem with sorting this kind of thing out the way it's been done but police need to also focus on the massively greater harm motorists are doing and sort that out and not ignore the harm that they do to vulnerable road users far too often!
One is rare as rocking horse shit, rarer than peds harming themselves, one (motorists) is a million times a day occurence but rarely ever gets pulled up.
Well, first of all - yes, there is no requirement for physical contact for the offence of 'common assault' to be complete. I thought I stated that.
Second, 'violence' is not just physical contact between two people, so no, there would not still be 'unlawful violence'. There has to be intention to inflict violence, or negligence as to whether it would be inflicted. As I may have mentioned, recklessness is a possibility, but it would have to be more than just cycling along and running into someone.
And if I'm wrong, well like I say - Parliament Square should be ablaze.
This approach is far better than PSPO ticketing extortion rackets run by Kingdom Services and their like. I believe that this route of restorative justice needs to be taken in far more instances of antisocial and criminal activity. For example, paying the full cost for repairing vandalism.
This story also demonstrates why having licence plates, additional specific cycling offences and similar nonsense is completely uneccessary. The existing rules and regulations just require proper policing within the context of resource deployment priorities.
Um,
Regardless of the politics, swift justice that saves money is better for everyone surely?
I for one would rather my tax go to pay for cycle infrastructure than an inefficient justice system....
What makes you think you get one instead of the other?!
Anyway, to quote:
"This is exactly why cycling is not permitted in the town centre."
“...The process allows you ... and to identify ways to prevent the crime from happening again."
Well, clearly not permitting cycling in the town centre isn't stopping it from happening. So why exactly is cycling not permitted in the town centre?
That's not whole world away from asking 'speed limits don't allow speeding above a certain speed but they're clearly not stopping that from happening, so why exactly are faster speeds not permitted'
That's not whole world away from asking 'speed limits don't allow speeding above a certain speed but they're clearly not stopping that from happening, so why exactly are faster speeds not permitted'
'"For offenders, [restorative justice] processes offer a unique opportunity to face up to what they have done, take responsibility and make up for the harm their offending has caused…"'
And it lets the police and the CPS avoid the expense of a trial. Because it's money.
When the racist, greedy, subhuman vermin that are Tories are in power, it's always about money.
'…a community resolution for assault…'
Eh?
Assault?
Either this is sloppy wording on the part of the copper, or we're not getting the full story.
One does not get nicked for 'assault' for accidentally riding (or even driving) into someone.
Apparently minor assault is a Community resolution charge, however I agree that the wording does seem off. Assualt to me is he deliberately set out to hurt someone. Shouldn't every car driver who knocks off a cyclist be automatically charged with assault and attempted assault for close passes?
And then there is also mention of an injury without any description but whatever it was would have been a lot worse if it hit an elderly person and / or a child. But nothing £50 quid wouldn't sort which sounds like compensating for ripped clothing maybe?
I am interested if the cyclist was cycling too fast for the conditions (ie lots of Peds,) and/or a deliveroo type cyclist as they do give us more of a bad name when I have seen them mixing with pedestrians. However those details never get mentioned in these stories unfortunately. And we will never be told if the pedestrian was distracted on a phone either.
I am unaware of any definition in law of 'minor assault'. There is the common law offence of common assault (additionally a statutory offence under s. 39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988), and then there are the increasingly serious charges of 'assault occasioning actual bodily harm', 'wounding or inflicting grevious bodily harm' and wounding or inflicting grevious bodily harm with intent', contrary to ss. 47, 20 and 18 respectively of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.
All of these offences require both actus reus and mens rea (guilty act and guilty mind), i.e. they need to have been carried out, and either intentionally or - crucially - recklessly carried out.
Since I'm guessing that the charge here would have been one of common assault, there is still the requirement of 'unlawful violence' (Fagan v. Metropolitan Police Commissioner [1969] 1 QB 439). I cannot see how riding a bike into someone even whilst being a twat could be classed as 'unlawful violence'.
If I'm wrong, and the law was used to club this cyclist into submission and make an example of him, then we should all be writing to the CPS to demand that the same rules be applied to drivers who hit cyclists and pedestrians. If the state refuses, then there should be 10 million people marching on Westminster to tear down Parliament with their bare hands.
Seems like a reasonable outcome. It seems implied that the collision caused little harm to the pedestrian in this case so to me justice would seem to be served.
We'll wait for national media/Robert Winston to blow it up out of all proportion as "cyclist is let off effectively scott free after mowing down helpless pedestrian!"