No charges brought against Regent’s Park cyclist after high-speed crash in which pensioner was killed while crossing road

"Hauling petrified dogs from danger" - if you're letting your dog run free by a busy road they're in danger anyway, cyclists or no; if they're on a lead and they still get into the road perhaps your dogwalking skills could do with a refresher. Love "urging the bikes on", sounds as though we all carry whips and ginger up our steeds as we career around.

Rendel Harris wrote:

sounds as though we all carry whips and ginger up our steeds as we career around.

You don't? 

brooksby wrote:

Rendel Harris wrote:

sounds as though we all carry whips and ginger up our steeds as we career around.

You don't? 

Well you know, high days and holidays, obviously...

I call BS. There are "speed cyclists" - heck, any cyclists - waiting at a red light?

That clearly is a fake Mail article.

You beat me by 10 seconds !

Bungle_52 wrote:

I'll just put this up on here for reference. It's from the following web site and is the sentencing guidelines for the offence of causing injury by wanton or furious driving or racing. I've highlighted the bits that caught my attention.

https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/crown-court/item/causing-i...

Culpability

The court should determine culpability by reference only to the factors below. Where there are characteristics present that fall under different levels of culpability, the court should balance these characteristics to reach a fair assessment of the offender’s culpability.

References to driving below include driving or riding any kind of vehicle or carriage, including bicycles and scooters.
A

    Deliberate decision to ignore the rules of the road and/or disregard for the risk of danger to others
    Prolonged, persistent and deliberate course of driving likely to cause a danger to others
    Obviously highly dangerous manoeuvre
    Driving highly impaired by consumption of alcohol and/or drugs
    Offence committed in course of evading police
    Racing or competitive driving against another vehicle
    Persistent disregard of warnings of others
    Lack of attention to driving for a substantial period of time
    Speed significantly in excess of speed limit or highly inappropriate for the prevailing conditions
    Extreme example of a culpability B factor

A couple of thoughts on your highlighted bits:

The cyclist wasn't AFAIK racing or competing against anyone - sounds like they were simply training.

They weren't cycling significantly in excess of speed limit as there is no speed limit for cycles along there. You could argue that they were in excess of the motorised speed limit, but the reason for the low motorised speed limit is due to the danger posed by heavy vehicles which doesn't really apply to a cyclist. Also, as I mentioned earlier, the cyclist's speed was largely irrelevant to the incident as there would likely still have been a collision if they were cycling at 10mph.

It's also another useful opportunity to highlight the common double standard when it comes to bicycles and speed. A cyclist travelling at >20mph will almost always be vilified for "racing" or riding "recklessly", while a car travelling at the same speed and in the same circumstances will be perceived as driving sensibly. Remember that 85% of cars exceed the speed limit in 20mph zones, with 49% of cars exceeding 25mph (source: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/vehicle-speed-compliance-statis...)

Not sure I agree... the reason speed limits are not applied to cyclists is not because they don't pose a danger but more to do with enforceability, otherwise arguably supercars driven by a trained driver should have higher speed limits because they have better braking, skills and reaction times.  A 911 Turbo will stop quicker than a cyclist doing 30mph.

Had he been riding at 10mph he might well have avoided the crash, and had he crashed at 10mph Ms Griffiths might not have died of her injuries but we'll never know.  That is why we have speed limits (or travel at speeds appropriate for the conditions), because lower speeds make collisions less likely to occur, and less likely to cause serious injury when they do.

PRSboy wrote:

Not sure I agree... the reason speed limits are not applied to cyclists is not because they don't pose a danger but more to do with enforceability, otherwise arguably supercars driven by a trained driver should have higher speed limits because they have better braking, skills and reaction times.  A 911 Turbo will stop quicker than a cyclist doing 30mph. (e.g. Would you rather be involved in a collision with a 911 Turbo or a cyclist going at 30mph?)

Had he been riding at 10mph he might well have avoided the crash, and had he crashed at 10mph Ms Griffiths might not have died of her injuries but we'll never know.  That is why we have speed limits (or travel at speeds appropriate for the conditions), because lower speeds make collisions less likely to occur, and less likely to cause serious injury when they do.

Speed limits are generally set to reduce the danger posed to other road users (and pedestrians), so I would disagree that a 911 Turbo should be allowed a higher limit as it's still a lot of mass moving at speed. e.g. Would you rather be hit by a 911 Turbo (and driver) or a cyclist travelling at 30mph?

I don't think that 2m is enough space to stop or avoid a pedestrian stepping out in front of you even if you're travelling at 10mph - typical stopping distances quoted for cars would have a thinking distance of 3m when travelling at 10mph, so that's not even enough distance to start braking.

With elderly pedestrians, it's not typically the speed of the collision, but more often how they fall  - slower reactions can make all the difference between hitting and not hitting your head on concrete. However, I'm guessing as to the exact nature of the pedestrian's injuries, so it's possible that a slower cyclist speed could have made a difference, but I think it's unlikely.

I haven't read the Telegraph article, but is there any evidence that it was the speed of collision that directly caused the injuries or was it due to the way that she fell?

PRSboy wrote:

Not sure I agree... the reason speed limits are not applied to cyclists is not because they don't pose a danger but more to do with enforceability, otherwise arguably supercars driven by a trained driver should have higher speed limits because they have better braking, skills and reaction times.  A 911 Turbo will stop quicker than a cyclist doing 30mph.

Had he been riding at 10mph he might well have avoided the crash, and had he crashed at 10mph Ms Griffiths might not have died of her injuries but we'll never know.  That is why we have speed limits (or travel at speeds appropriate for the conditions), because lower speeds make collisions less likely to occur, and less likely to cause serious injury when they do.

Typically speed limits are set at the 85% percentile of the speed that people drive at on the road - very little to do with safety or casualty reduction. That is the core policy for I think the last 60 years at least.

(Obviously it is a bunch of total crap.)

That has to be dealt with by road design or more vigorous enforcement.

Which is why sticking some signs up and nothing else does not often work.

The capability of the car is a red herring, since the determinant is dangerous or dozy driver behaviour.

mattw wrote:

Typically speed limits are set at the 85% percentile of the speed that people drive at on the road [...] Which is why sticking some signs up and nothing else does not often work.

What's surprising is that it does sometimes work*!  Possibly for similar reasons why you don't often find people going much lower than the limit.  Although there are a couple of posters here who strongly disagree and cite examples where more people were slower than the limit apparently?

* "Work" as in "speeds come down" rather than "make almost everyone stick exactly to the limit" which would be remarkable given current compliance rates.  There are plenty who seem very happy for perfect to be the enemy of "better" here...

I'd guess it's probably psychological "anchoring".  And IIRC from a long time ago drivers are generally trained to drive "to the limit" unless there is some reason not to.  That's a subtle difference from "drive to the conditions - so only consider driving near the limit if you've first assessed those and it is appropriate to do so".

Anyway - speed limits tend to become targets (mitigated by what everyone else is doing).

Things like "but cars can stop quicker": given "mass motoring" (and indeed open-access cycling and walking) presumably there's good reason to have as few rules as necessary and for them to be very clear.  So that will probably mean "broad brush" rules.

There is a reasonable question of the mechanisms for periodically reviewing these and keeping pace with technology.  Of course laws are made via parliament - so for better or worse some things are going to be delayed or not done at all.  That may be "not important enough to make time" or deliberately sidelining matters.

Examples would be regulation - or not - of e-motorbikes / e-scooters and the review of road law.

As you say though for most things the human is the limiting factor!

So on the basis of what you have posted and the facts as they are known at present, the cyclist does not have a case to answer.

But as others have said, if a pedestrian had stepped out in front of a car like that then it probably wouldn't even make the news...

The point is that this collision, from the point of view of a cyclist, was unavoidable. The pedestrian stepped out in front when they were 2 metres away. 

My question is: how slow would you have to be cycling so that you could reliably avoid a pedestrian that stepped out in front of you, when you are 2 metres away? I'd have a hard time avoiding someone who stepped out 2 metres in front of me if I were slowly jogging. And without meaning to sound callous, any kind of collision with a 90 year od is going to end badly.

I'm very sympathetic to the family's loss, but I simply can't see a reason to put any blame at all on the cyclist in question, in this particular instance.

What you say is true of course.

We all have to learn those stopping distsnces in the highway code to pass the theory component of the driving test. At 30mph the typical stopping distance of a car is 23 metres. If you step out in front of a car within that distance you will very likely be hit.

Bicycles have stopping distances also, it's just that we don't know what they are and don't publicise the fact.

the little onion wrote:

I'm very sympathetic to the family's loss, but I simply can't see a reason to put any blame at all on the cyclist in question, in this particular instance.

There is an obvious reason to blame the cyclist when a driver would not be: they're a cyclist.

Cycloid wrote:

Wendy Joseph KC (the presiding judge on the Allston trial) made the case on the R4 Today program . (BBC Sounds at about 08:35 hrs)  The defence from the cycling brigade is basically "using a sledgehammer to crack a nut and it difficult to impliment" which loses a lot of weight when a 90yr old pedestrian has just been killed

 

But, like so many BBC articles about cycling, there was no defence, no-one from "The Cycling Lobby" was interviewed, it was completely one-sided, but hey, that's BBC impartiality for you.

Completely missing the point of course that there are 2 seperate lesser offences that he could be charged with  - Careless or Dangerous Cycling.  The fact that he wasnt means there was no case to answer.

Secret_squirrel wrote:

Completely missing the point of course that there are 2 seperate lesser offences that he could be charged with  - Careless or Dangerous Cycling.  The fact that he wasnt means there was no case to aanswer.

Partly, agree with the drift and that ought to be a reasonable "straight bat" to "but killer cyclists!".  Although it won't be to those who are most concerned of course; they've already made their minds up (if not, the media will do that for them).

For the rest of us, we know that "the police / judiciary weren't interested so nothing to see" might not always be a reasonable assumption...

antigee wrote:

The press coverage nearly always mentioned a pedestrian death caused by a cyclist running a red light on the same road about 10years earlier like its the sort of thing that happens everyday not once in a decade

Something Matt Briggs is fond of doing, and did so again in the BBC interview yesterday, saying that there had been half-a-dozen or so in the past five or six years.  The BBC interviewer did not, of course, compare that to the number of pedestrians killed by drivers, or how many were killed whilst walking on the footpath.