New legislation would target cyclists who kill or injure pedestrians

The response to this is uncomfortable reading. Is it really relevant to the fact that someone was run down and died that motorists wipe out many cyclists every year, or is this a just defensive posture from cyclists who want the rest to "Get out my way!"?

No; we should not need an extra law for this, but the action taken by this MP shows despair that a person minding her owon business can just be killed. People like to walk in safety - should they not be able to? What difference should there be in law between hitting a girl with a metal tube held in your hand, and killing her, and riding on metal tubes and killing her?

MP's (apart from all the bad things politicians are) are mandated to represent their constituents. Logically, you could moan at the dead girl's family and friends over this proposal - or would that lack decorum?

I see near misses every day; prams and walking sticks are no defence, and the cyclists are often in the full protective gear. Is this how cycling wants itself to be seen - just one more vocal interest group willing to bully those seen as less strong?

How many of us are ONLY pedestrians or cyclists or motorists? How many of us think, if this is true of us, that things will always be this way? What is wrong with expecting the human "Soft Machine" to have certain rights above all other? We break and cannot be replaced.

I am no longer fit to push pedals round (Walking Wounded), and am tired of confronting people who ride within inches of me where this is illegal. My father had a way of expressing the Golden Rule; "How would you like it if someone did it to you?"

Answers, anyone?

charlie_lcc, if what you say is right (and it seems to concur with what I read) then this cyclist shouldn't have been riding at a speed that he couldn't pull up in time. I was feeling sympathetic towards him at the time however as you say he is lucky not to have been charged with manslaughter (which was always an option).

I have had to stop before when people have stepped out in front of me when driving and cycling. One time someone stepped off the pavement right in front of me without looking on Oxford Street and I knocked him to the ground. The idiot then tried to start a fight, so I just rode off.

Like the other posters say, this is just a publicity stunt.

mmm food for thought , what would happen if a cyclist badly injured or killed a pedestrian on a shared cycle path? They seem to be increasing around the area I live, some are totally shared, others are simply segregated by a white line.

The press went wild with mis-infomation about the killing of Rhiannon Bennett. The cyclist was not on the pavement, that was clear from the CCTV coverage before the crash, the video is no longer on line but there is a still here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/7496757.stm

The cyclist's fine was more twice that given at the time to car drivers prosecuted for killing pedestrians - many others are never prosecuted. In this case a group of drunken pedestrians stepped into the road in front of cyclist going down a fairly steep hill. He shouted, just as a car driver may have blasted his horn. He failed to avoid the teenagers - killing one of them.

Quite rightly he was prosecuted and sentenced. Since then then there are stronger laws for prosecuting motor vehicle drivers, cyclists can still be proscuted for manslaughter and recieve jail sentences, if the evidence justifies it.

A cyclist killing a pedestrian is quite rare, maybe that explains the hysterical reaction in some of the press who pass little or no comment on the dozens of pedestrians killed by cars each month. Quite rightly Rhiannon's parents are outraged, they deserve our deepest sympathy. Unfortunately the MP is using this tragedy in a way that will increase the prejudice against cyclists and perhaps put us more at risk.
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charlie

It is a silly approach to a serious issue, here we see a needy MP trying to make it look as if she is doing something for her constituents. It is a shame that she hasn't bothered to stop and really think things through, rather than simply feeding off the grief of one of her constituents. At the end of the day she knows perfectly well that this Bill has absolutely no chance of ever making it on to the statute book, and it purely about getting her a good headline in her local rag.

If she really wanted to do something about road safety, she could have tried to bring in a law of Strict Liability.

Perfectly good law crafted in 1835 and applies to ALL road users on wheels updated for cycles in 1882, and motor cars in 1903 IIRC.

Proportionately one might note that the far greater gain in road safety would be to target the 5% of vehicular traffic (HGV's) which is linked to deaths and serious injuries far out of proportion to its presence on the road, and (if only we had the equivalent of RAIB or the AAIB working on road deaths) the real cause of most HGV deaths - drivers not fit to drive combined with vehicles not legal for use are tackled with due rigour by the law.

Dear Andrea

Could I propose a risk-based approach?

First we sort out the real Killing Machine: the vehicle driver, killing hundreds each year, including children, cyclists and also including pedestrians on pavements. So. Let’s get proportionate: Strict Liability has been asked for by walking and cycling organisations for years. Legal decisions are currently too lenient and favour the driver too readily.

Once that is done, step two: you will then realise that sorting out minority cases, like you are proposing, yields little results i.e. is a silly proposal, really.

Below.

How many peds are killed annually by cyclists? 0.3, according to the article.

And how many by drivers?
- 646 in 2007
- 572 in 2008
- 500 more in 2009.
That's 1,718 in 3 years, so 5,726 over 10 years based on an average of the above.

We get misguided crap like the DfT's Be Bright, Be Seen shock tactics and heavy-handed policing.

Strikes me this is a case of ignoring the elephant in the room.

I remember Howard's case for several reasons. One being that the only witnesses were the friends of the girl, most being underage and under the influence of alcohol. There were no independent witnesses to his pavement riding iirc. Secondly I remember it for the newpapers stating that he had been riding in a time trial and had no reflectors or lights on his bike - he was not in a time trial, and was riding during day light iirc.

Thirdly I remember it for how the press made out that pedestrians were being killed left right and centre, when this has never been the case.

I personally feel Howard got a fair trial. Many drivers who kill do not, in such a way that they receive little or no sentance and victims and their families are severly let down.

There is already law in place we can use as already stated, if the collision is serious enough, just as with Darren Hall:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6793530.ece

MPs who try and put through Bills such as this are wasting public money and time when their efforts should be applied to making sure existing laws are being used properly.

Given that the fine in this case is already well above that handed out to many motorists who kill pedestrians or cyclists, a special law for cyclists seems like the majority (non-cycling motorists) are oppressing the minority.

This is ridiculous. He received a heavy fine, which he deserved. Yet motorists killing cyclists tend to receive lighter fines. Why is this anomaly allowed? As for pavement cycling, it seems that with all the action being taken against cyclists at present, no-one is for example bothering to consider why so many cyclists choose to ride on the pavement. In other words, the law seems to be trying to deal with the symptom rather than the cause, which is bad driving on the part of so many motorists.

From the way you describe the incident, it seems to me the isue is only that motorists are not punished severely enough, not that Howard was punished too severely - he richly deserved what he got, and I hope for his sake he had insurance, as he also deserves to be pursued for a civil claim.

I don't hwoever see that it justifies yet more rules when current ones are not properly enforced. Nationally over the decade to 2007, pedestrian deaths in collisions with cyclists accounted for one in every 263 of all pedestrian deaths in collisions with vehicles. It doesn't for example justify making cyclists' third party insurance compulsory either.

I wonder if Rhiannon would have survived if she had been wearing a helmet?

Why have a law limted to cyclists, why not have a general one for all road traffic?

Howard was found guilty of dangerous cycling and fined £2200, a figure which is well in excess of those handed down to many motorists convicted of killing cyclists through dangerous driving.

Sounds like MPs might want to take a look at enforcement of the existing laws first.

Of course if it is used in the same way causing death by dangerous driver is, it will have virtually no effect.

If I remember rightly these 10 min bills almost never get anywhere. They mostly generate some headlines for the MP in their local press (good to be seem 'doing something').