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news
Hill Lane, Southampton (Google Maps)“Terrified” cyclists call for safer infrastructure after drug driver sentenced
Cyclists in Southampton have called on the local council to install safer active travel infrastructure in the city after a drug driver was sentenced to 21 months in prison for killing 33-year-old cyclist Joe Burton.
Last week, Kornel Marcinek pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving whilst over the specified limit of a controlled drug and causing death whilst uninsured. The 25-year-old was also disqualified from driving for two years and ten months.
Marcinek was travelling at around 37 to 40mph in the 30mph zone on Southampton’s Hill Lane when he ploughed into the back of Burton, who had been cycling home from a barbecue at the time of the incident. The motorist, who had just recently passed his test, had also smoked cannabis earlier that day and, just 21 seconds before hitting the cyclist, had used his phone while driving to text a friend.
Following Marcinek’s sentencing, cyclists across Southampton have called for the introduction of safe, segregated cycling infrastructure.
“Trying to cycle around Southampton with my kids is absolutely terrifying,” local cyclist and father-of-two Olly Killick told the Southern Daily Echo this week.
“Most drivers are good but some are plain dangerous. They can whip down the road. I have had some close passes and for me, as a confident biker I’m not too intimidated but for people that aren’t, I understand the hesitancy to cycle.
“I have to think about the route when I am with my kids, whereas when I am on my own I can just hop on my bike and go. But with my six and nine-year-old we have to go on and off the pavement because of the cars.
“The government and council need to do more to provide safe, protected infrastructure, and quickly.”
> A “slap in the face” – council promotes cycle commuting ... while ripping out bike lane
In August 2021, just over a week after Joe Burton was killed cycling in the city, the Conservative-controlled Southampton City Council voted to remove part of a protected bike lane which had been installed as part of a 15-month trial instigated by the previous Labour administration.
However, the Daily Echo reports that work is currently being carried out on the existing painted bike lane on Hill Lane, the scene of Burton’s tragic death last July, which the council hopes will encourage key workers at Southampton General Hospital, as well as school children, to take up active travel.
Last week, the council also announced that it is working on a “major project” to improve safety for vulnerable road users, by implementing a range of traffic calming measures, in the suburb of Swaythling.
Councillor Eamonn Keogh, the cabinet member for Transport and District Regeneration, said the scheme “will make the area safer for everyone” and give residents the “confidence” to cycle.
Responding to the criticism aimed at the council by local cyclists, Keogh said: “We are committed to cycle safety through our Local Transport plan by developing our cycling infrastructure and through our education programmes like the ‘My Journey’ cycling skills sessions to make sure that people cycling in our city can do so safely.”
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.
Latest Comments
- rogerwb 4 hours 53 sec ago
Generalisations are valid in this case; there are enough boomers with negative attitudes to young people to be able to block good things like this....
- mattw 8 hours 59 min ago
This risks turning me into a hanger and flogger....
- wtjs 12 hours 59 min ago
In SE London, psychopath riders are the majority of people on bicycles Oh dear! another festive stealth anti-cyclist ☃️
- wtjs 13 hours 4 min ago
Well, you know the BMW drivers' saying: knock that house (hospital, social housing, care home, hospital...) down, could save 30 seconds on the trip!
- Spangly Shiny 14 hours 39 min ago
I had the pleasure of owning two of the featured builders here, in my history. When I joined the Army in 1971, I took with me my curly Hetchins:...
- Username 15 hours 44 min ago
Could Siobhán paint it red and noone would notice it?
- Spangly Shiny 1 day 6 hours ago
To paraphrase Field of Dreams, "Build it right and they will come: and use it!"
- Rendel Harris 1 day 8 hours ago
And a Happy Christmas to you, road.cc staff!
- Rendel Harris 1 day 9 hours ago
The odds of not being able to find a single pedestrian - just one, note, "any pedestrian" - in an area containing more than about ten of them who...
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18 comments
Typical distracted driver incident; there needs to be rigorous measures against ANY use of mobile phones in motor vehicles; I was aghast that my employer removed safe to use two-way radio's from work vehicles, instead saving money by expecting drivers to use their mobile phones to communicate whilst out driving.
"The 25-year-old was also disqualified from driving for two years and ten months."
Banned from driving for life would be more appropriate. Also I wonder what the equivalent prison sentence for the proposed 'causing death by dangerous cycling' legislation will be - longer than 21 months I would anticipate. This is why there needs to be a complete overhall of all road traffic offences as advocated by Cycling UK and not just those relating to cyclists.
Removing the advisory painted cycle lane would make the road 25% safer.
Paint is not protection.
Those painted lines just encourages motorists to pass closer; I understand the idea was to give cyclists their own space but they just aren't safe to use, along with all the rubbish that ends up in them.
I don't mean to open a can of worms here sorry but merely being over the THC limit doesn't really say very much. The legal limit for THC in the bloodstream is only 2mg which could for example be the level about 12 hours after smoking a joint.
If we are to believe that he smoked earlier in the day (which is a stretch given his background) then I don't think having THC in his system affected the outcome. The law also doesn't require the police to prove impairment either.
To be honest, there are plenty of people in the UK who have valid medicinal cannabis prescriptions and the DVLA allow them to drive under the influence as long as they don't feel it impairs their driving.
I reckon you could hit 2mg in Bristol just walking around.
I reckon if you hit 2mg you'd probably be in the hospital.
Yes sorry I missed the c out, slight oversight lol.
I stand by my statement.
Edit: I just looked it up and 2mg wouldn't even touch the sides: https://www.med-can.com/articles/thc-dosing-in-medical-marijuana
UK maximum allowable dosage is 0.2 microgrammes per 100 millilitres of blood which seems a strange choice of units to use. By the power of maths, that works out as 2 microgrammes per litre of blood.
Given roughly 5 litres of blood in a person, 2 microgrammes per litre would work out at about 10 microgrammes. 2mg would be 200 times that.
It is strange, with the Brexit loonies in charge you think we'd be measuring it in ounces per gallon by now.
Grains per fluid drachm, if you please...
"2 mg" is meaningless. The limit is 0.2 μg per 100 mL blood, or 2 μg/L. For comparison, a typical edible sold legally in many US states is 5 mg (5000 μg) THC, and an adult might have 5 L of blood, giving a dose (if it all got into the blood at once) of 1000 μg/L. Based on my experience, I wouldn't want to drive within a few hours of eating one, but certainly would a few hours after the effects wore off.
Unless there's something odd going on with where THC goes in the body if not the blood, 2 μg/L does indeed sound really conservative.
Some US states have laws or proposed laws with a limit of 5 ng/mL, which (more fun unit conversions) works out to 5 μg/L, or 2.5x the UK limit.
Can't share links (for some reason work doesn't seem to like me reading about the subject...) but apparently typical absorption rate from ingested THC is only about 4-12%, and it's absorbed slowly, so wouldn't all be in the bloodstream at once.
Hill Lane has always been a busy road. If ever a road screamed out for segregated infrastructure, it's that one.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that I don't think that a disqualification from driving will make a great deal of difference to this bloke.
The only effect will be that when (note - not "if") he next commits a driving offence then if he is caught, this disqualification will make the Powers That Be come down harder on him...
And if Mr Shapps is reading, note that this speeding, drugged up, unlicensed killer driver got only three months more than the little tosser Charlie Alliston did. So go stuff your argument that killer drivers are treated worse than killer cyclists.
You'd like to think so
drunk driver totalled my parked car a fair few years ago
her second time doing the same exact thing, and STILL banned from driving
anither ban and a £500 fine.