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news
grant shapps - screenshot via twitter.PNGGrant Shapps calls for new ‘death by dangerous cycling’ law
The Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps announced in an interview yesterday that he intends to introduce harsher penalties for people on bikes who kill or injure others through “dangerous cycling” – three years after an independent report commissioned by the Department for Transport recommended the introduction of such an offence.
Cycling UK, however, has said that any attempt to introduce new cycling offences in isolation "would simply be a sticking plaster on a broken system”.
When questioned on the impending Highway Code revisions during an interview with Nick Ferrari on LBC, Shapps said: “The purpose of the changes is if you drive a lorry, you should give way to a van, which will give way to a car, which will give way to a cyclist, which will give way to a pedestrian.
“These are just common-sense changes to protect everybody.
“And there is another change I’m bringing in which you may not be aware of, which is to make sure that we’re able to prosecute cyclists who, for example, cause death by their own dangerous cycling.
“So this is quite a balanced package, and I think it’s worth noting that the injuries and deaths that take place because of cyclists are also unacceptable.”
> Cyclist who killed London pedestrian jailed for two years
At the moment, if a cyclist kills a pedestrian through riding dangerously, the Crown Prosecution Service can charge them with manslaughter and/or causing bodily harm through wanton and furious driving, a crime under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act which carries a maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment.
In 2017 cyclist Charlie Alliston was convicted of causing bodily harm through wanton and furious driving in connection with the death of pedestrian Kim Briggs. He was sentenced to 18 months’ detention in a young offenders institution, though the jury cleared him of the more serious charge of manslaughter.
In the wake of Alliston’s conviction, Briggs’ husband Matthew campaigned for the creation of new offences related to causing death or serious injury while cycling. He called for cyclists to be subject to similar laws to motorists, with causing death by careless driving and causing death by dangerous driving carrying maximum jail terms, respectively, of five and 14 years.
> Husband of pedestrian killed by cyclist claims ministers are scared of “cycling lobby”
“This case has clearly demonstrated that there is a gap in the law when it comes to dealing with causing death or serious injury by dangerous cycling,” he explained at the time.
“To have to rely on either manslaughter at one end, or a Victorian law that doesn’t even mention causing death at the other end tells us that there is a gap. The fact that what happened to Kim is rare is not a reason for there to be no remedy.”
Following a review of the existing legislation on dangerous and careless cycling, in 2018 the government launched a three-month consultation into reforming the law, though there has been little progress made in the three years since it was held.
A similar fate befell a private member’s bill introduced into the House of Lords in January 2020 with the aim of creating new offences for dangerous, careless or inconsiderate cycling. The bill failed to make it past its first reading.
> Pedestrian who died after RideLondon collision had been warned by marshal not to cross
Of the 346 pedestrians killed on Britain’s roads in 2020, only four were involved in a collision with a cyclist (regardless of who may have been at fault for the incident). Car drivers, meanwhile, were involved in three-quarters of all road fatalities that year, despite the reduction in motor traffic due to lockdown restrictions. Between 2015 and 2019, 99.3% of pedestrian fatalities involved motor vehicles, while only 0.7% involved bicycles.
Responding to Shapps’ announcement, Duncan Dollimore, Cycling UK’s head of campaigns, told road.cc: “Changes to the Highway Code are beneficial to all road users, and it is unhelpful of the Transport Secretary to try and explain or justify them on a quid pro quo basis by linking them to the potential introduction of new cycling offences. The two issues are entirely separate.
“As the Transport Secretary’s own minister Andrew Stephenson confirmed in December, the DfT is already working on the terms and remit of a call for evidence into road traffic offences. While that is long overdue, with a full review first promised over seven years ago after prolonged campaigning from Cycling UK, there’s little more than we can say on this issue, other than that we’ve never opposed cycling offences being be part of that review.
“Introducing new cycling offences in isolation however would simply be a sticking plaster on a broken system, because our current careless and dangerous driving offences aren’t fit for purpose – replicating them for cycling makes no sense at all.”
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.
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Ooooh, very good, I almoost missed that ...
And, of course the quoted five people "killed by cyclists" ignores the culpability for the collision. How many of those five deaths were caused by the cyclist involved?
If its applied as rigorously as the "death by dangerous driving" law is applied to killer drivers, cyclists have nothing much to fear.
The danger is that it won't be.
1. There is no lesser charge of careless cycling so the cps will not have the cop out they have when prosecuting drivers. More cyclists will therefore risk being charged with a serious charge.
2. The cases, as with drivers will be tried with juries that have perhaps 11 drivers and maybe 1 cyclist.
True. I've no problems with people riding bikes who kill others having this tested in court. Statistically this could at most come up a few times a year for the whole country. It's also possible that none of these would even go that far - certainly for driving they often don't. However if these ever do go to court we've the usual issues. First - if it's worded like dangerous / careless driving people will be asked an inherently subjective and wooly question. Second - in this case it may be about "careful / competent cycling" which they will mostly know nothing about. Compare:
Dangerous driving: drivers most likely to be in front of a judge / juries of mostly drivers or those are familiar with driving (see lots of it! Been in a car!). Their primary understanding of transport may be "use of a car". They're not likely to be any / many who have understanding of cycling on the road or maybe even empathy with "cyclists".
Dangerous cycling: cyclists most likely to be in front of a judge / juries of people who can understand walking / have all been a pedestrian. Again not likely to be many who have understanding of cycling.
Finally the current infra often puts cyclists and pedestrians into conflict - and this is deliberate ("shared space" AKA "sign makes footway cyclepath too")! This doesn't excuse reckless or careless riding - it's a separate issue. However given the "designs" we have are often inherently unsafe this will surely be a concern to the government which is at least as pressing. After all, better to prevent crashes than prosecute after the fact, right? (Hmm - I suspect many would be "no! because dangerous cyclists...").
I quite agree, especially with the skewed assessments of courts with little what counts as 'dangerous' cycling. But is it worse than the existing situations in which, aside from manslaughter (which applies as a possibility for all, absent careless/dangerous driving options), we have the option of being prosecuted in archaic terms for being a cad and a bounder and not the sort of cover we want around here, if you don't mind.
There is some value in updating it, but more so updating the definitions of what really is dangerous. I baulk at the idea that you can cause death by careless driving, and yet that's not dangerous... it was dangerous to the victim - look: he's dead!
Moreover, this is a waste of Parliamentary time. If Grant Shapps doesn't have something more important to be doing, I can find something.
In principle I'm in favour of prosecuting dangerous cyclists.
But I am confused? This isn't exactly low hanging fruit, surely there are far more effective ways of reducing the TENS OF THOUSANDS of deaths and serious injuries on the roads each year.
And why link it to the highway code? How is a new law that fixes a relatively tiny problem equivalent to and providing 'balance' to the changes to the HC that basically spell out dickheads what they need to do to not kill people and drive within the existing rules.
When I have a client with an appalling approach, I help them get past it. And if they don't, i ditch them.
Imagine being a politician and instead of telling Shithead Steve from Southsea to get over themselves and become a decent human being, you debase yourself before them and offer public funds to enable hate and vitriol.
Dear Mr Shapps, what is the point?
How many people are killed each year by 'dangerous' cycling? 1? 2?
How many people are killed by 'dangerous' driving? Many hundreds, and yet it is downgraded by CPS to driving without due care and attention as a conviction is easier.
Following his logic, they'd better hurry and introduce 'causing death by dangerous horsing' too...
I think some of their core voters might put a stop to that. Although popular with the fox community, I hear.
you're coming up with laws on the hoof now...
But will they whip the vote?
Except, it isn't, is it? It's about the duty of care, not about 'giving way'. You'd think maybe the Secretary of State for Transport ought to be able to get this right...
Imagine if it was actually true though...........
Like it is in woonerfs in Holland?
Thought that new-built ones should emphatically not be through routes for anyone so it'd be rare that either car or cyclist meet a pedestrian (although I understand they've retrofitted these too)?
You're right though that they've got this sorted there and we certainly haven't. There's a "home zone" signed next to me. I checked because I never saw one before. That sign means exactly nothing. For example the street still needs miles of double yellows everywhere to limit parking. Even though there are marked parking bays we have to explicitly say "no parking" everywhere else. This of course is entirely ignored and there are always vehicles on the footway too.
The Netherlands also have the concept of streets where certain modes of traffic are allowed - as long as numbers are low - but only "as a guest". See fietsstraat for example but that's not the only kind.
It's just politics. He's identified exactly the "but my rights!" g-spot of a particular target audience. He's said it in a way that both follows the "hierachy" but frames this in terms of rights, not responsibilities. Being charitable you could say he was speaking their language. A more realistic / helpful way would have been to challenge this and return the focus to vulnerability and for a bigger picture the cost / benefits of different transport modes. But that's not politics.
* I thought his strand of politics was "rights and responsibilities" - which I believe they copied from Star Wars? Pointless debating that though as I'd be sidetracked disagreeing with him on which trumps which for this or that point - or indeed the whole worldview.
Ew
Yes, this bit of the article worried me a lot more than the 'death by dangerous cycling bit'. That's just a pointless distraction; but the proper explanation of the hierarchy of responsibility actually matters.
New headline - 'Arsehole, tries to keep DM reading voters happy by proposing half baked gammon law'
.. now.. 'Carry on Government!'
"..half baked gammon...." Best watch out for the E Coli.
In my time in the meat industry as a QA manager we never managed to successfully grow E Coli in cured pork, cooked or not (or anything else really). Admittedly since then the FSA, charged with ensuring food safety, have put pressure on the industry to reduce salt levels, and the maximum level of nitrite has been reduced, thus making it more likely pathogens will survive. Why? because nitrites increase the risk of cancer by a negligible amount, and salt is bad apparently (data showed that cured meats were not a significant source of dietary sodium compared to bread and ready meals).
Meh, it's a waste of time sideshow; about the only thing this government are good at.
Yet more populist bollocks.
Well if that becomes a thing id have a star next to it with the amemndment
"They were not looking and stepped out in front"
Ive had tons of near misses thanks to people that are paying more attention to thier phone and just step out ontop a clearly marked cycle path or onto the road
It's alright. I'm awaiting schapps to announce an offence of death by dangerous walking.
Indeed. Having been knocked off three times by pedestrians who ran out into the road without looking, I consider myself lucky not to have been seriously injured in any of those cases. There have been instances where cyclists have been killed by a pedestrian knocking them off, so unless Shapps is anti-cyclist, he'll be bringing in just such a law.
Will that cover walking to the buffet table / across the dancefloor in times of plague? Good idea but just too late.
Just ride primary in areas with many pedestrians, gives a good reaction time, ride in the gutter, get no warning. Ride central and it takes them some time to cover the distance to the centre of the lane. Time to stop or deviate.
Important when deciding to pass behind a pedestrian, - do not make them aware of your presence, they will almost certainly jump back into the space they have already been through and which should now be safe fo you to use.
problem could come in areas with contra flow cycle lanes, often used in towns & cities around pedestrianised areas, and pedestrians will step out on you because they fixate on the vehicles coming one way, and never the cyclists coming the other way, inevitably so close to the kerb any collision and the pedestrian risks hitting their head causing serious injury.
the only positive about this is the chances of it happening is small enough its a law that will barely be exercised, which does raise the issue of what the hell is the point of it, though I doubt youll get a fair trial with it.
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