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Dangerous cyclists could get 14Years pokey.
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So, that makes it all right then ?You scullion! You rampallian! You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe (Henry IV part 2)0
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The cyclist was cycling down the road at 20mph, which is not fast for a road.So either he:"mounted the pavement" in an effort to avoid the group of underage drinkers, or he didn't.
The cyclist might have had more sympathy if he had shouted that he could not stop.. but his words were that he would not stop.
That's a tacit admission that he was acting recklessly and was intending to hit the pedestrians if they didn't immediately move from his path.
Manslaughter would have been a more appropriate charge.The prosecution were attempting to argue that mounting the pavement was a bad thing, however I'm not sure
The cyclist shouted that he was not going to stop.
As it happened, he was travelling so fast that he couldn't have stopped, even if he had intended to do so.- if pedestrians are in the road and you avoid them by going on the pavement, no harm done, much better than saying 'I'd better stay on the road', and ploughing into them.The defence lawyer said that the deceased "at the last minute, stepped back in front of him", perhaps they were playing chicken with him?
However, she wasn't sure whether he was going to pass to her left or to her right.
She sadly took the wrong evasive action by jumping at the very last second to her left. He still struck her and she paid with her life, six days later.
Travelling at 20mph when pedestrians are in your path is inexcusable. When approaching the pedestrians, the cyclist should have slowed to a walking pace of 4mph, or slower.In similar circumstances to this local to me, a group recently blocked the path for a cyclist and then beat and robbed him
I witnessed a teenaged cyclist target an elderly lady in an empty car park. The hooded cyclist rode up behind the lady and he snatched her handbag from her shoulder. The old lady struggled and in the tussle, the cyclist pushed her to the floor and she suffered nasty facial bruising from the assault.
I've also witnessed cyclists who have deliberately vandalised motor cars which they deem have been driven carelessly across their path.
Conclusion: There are some thoroughly nasty cyclists who should be punished, and from whom the law should protect us.The inquest returned a verdict of accidental death, plainly he did not intend to hit the girl.His only error was excess speed, but that in itself is unlikely to make you guilty of manslaughter - cyclists and motorists go past pedestrians with excessive speed all the timeIt is not really clear to me how this warrants a new law. You might as well legislate specifically against dangerous joggers
There are some fanatical cyclists who are a menace on the public roads. New laws are needed to punish their poor road behaviour and to protect the general public.
At the very least, all cyclists, including children, should be obliged by law to have third party liability insurance.0 -
anotherbaldrick wrote: »So, that makes it all right then ?
Yes, it's part of lifes natural order.0 -
DrinksStella all the way!!!!!!!LovedDrinkin, smokin and doin drugs!!!! and any1 else who did them!!!!! in combination with the news reports of the group having consumed alcohol
The cyclist, Jason Howard, 36, of Western Avenue, Buckingham, should have been charged with manslaughter.
Have we been told about the background of this cyclist? Has he got any previous criminal convictions? Does he hold a driving licence? Why was he cycling? What was the purpose and destination of his journey? Was he in employment at the time of the collision? Was he under the influence of drink or drugs? Does he have psychiatric problems? At the time of the offence, did he have any previous convictions for road traffic offences? Does he have a history of violence?0 -
I still don't understand why a specific 'death by cycling' law is required.
It merely adds complexity to legislation and generally results in lower sentencing.
Death by dangerous driving convictions already result in appallingly low sentences due to the supposed lower responsibility.
The cyclist people are referring to here was clearly aiming to maim or kill. It is akin to me throwing a sword at someone while simultaneously shouting "get out of the way". Should there be a "death by sword" law specifically?
Mounting the pavement is irrelevant. If a person is say, in the middle of the highway, signalling you to stop, and you decide not to, knowing there was enough distance to perform a controlled stop - that is manslaughter in my eyes.
What makes sense and what the law says are often two different things.
I do not believe cyclists should be obligated to have third party insurance as asbokid suggests above. That would have the effect of reducing the number of cyclists on our roads drastically - the exact opposite of what we should be going for, given congestion in cities and our energy problems.
The damage a cyclist can do is very much limited to medical injury. Car insurance, at least its intended purpose, is to provide for damage to property - cars, buildings, council lampposts, etcetera. I believe you would be hard pushed to find an example in which a cyclist damages property to any significant extent.Said Aristippus, “If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.”
Said Diogenes, “Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.”[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica][/FONT]0 -
Many of the existing road traffic laws could and should be modified to include cyclists.
Third party insurance for cyclists should be compulsory.
Deaths caused by cyclists are surely very rare but damage to cars and other property must be commonplace. I was guilty of that myself when, back in the day, I was a young cyclist.
I was about ten years old and my parents had just given me a new racing bicycle with fancy dropped handlebars. It was the biz. I took it out for its first spin and was soon mastering the use of its derailleur gears.
Pedalling furiously along a quiet residential street, while looking backwards at the rear wheel, I was admiring the way the chain jumped effortlessly from gear to gear.
Suddenly there was a tremendous metallic gouging noise. I turned to face the direction of travel and realised that I had collided and scraped along the side of a brand new parked car.
The bicycle was fitted with those horrible metal pedals with sharp jagged edges that could only add to the damage.
I didn't linger for long enough to find out the reaction of the car owner, and pedalled rapidly away!
The bill today for the damage I caused would probably run to several thousand pounds.
Cyclists should be insured.
Someone was telling me how a young cyclist collided with his car. The cyclist was completely at fault. Without warning the young boy rode his bicycle from behind parked cars and into a busy road. The cyclist hit the front of the car and was thrown up onto the bonnet, smashing the bumper, the headlight and light cluster, scratching the bonnet and cracking the windscreen.
Thankfully the boy escaped with just a broken leg, but the collision caused damage of £1000 to the (old) car. The cyclist obviously wasn't insured and the motorist was forced to pay the repair bill for his car. How is that fair?
The police were instinctively sympathetic towards the young cyclist. It's human nature when you see a young kid squealing in pain in the road. The driver was told that he was lucky not to have killed him, which really isn't the correct attitude when the police fully accepted that the cyclist was entirely to blame for the accident.
With more people taking to cycling, and more public money being spent on cycle paths and other cycling amenities, the cyclist should be accepting some financial responsibility.
Compulsory 3rd party insurance for cyclists would be a good start.
The family of the young woman who was tragically killed by a reckless cyclist would at least have had some financial compensation for their sad loss, had the cyclist been insured.0 -
Third party insurance for cyclists should be compulsory.
A child on a microscooter can just as easily scratch up a parked car. Similarly I could cross the road with a bag full of tools and knacker the front end of a Fiesta.
You've also got the issue of children somehow having insurance. Putting a risk premium on say an 11-year-old? I'm not sure it's possible.
We need to be getting more people on bicycles and away from heavy gas guzzling cars and motorbikes, not less. I think a few scratched up cars is a decent enough price to pay.
Your example on the family having a decent payout is just as silly. If she were to have been killed with a baseball bat or a knife, there would be no such payout. The fact it was done with a vehicle makes no difference if there is clear intent.Said Aristippus, “If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.”
Said Diogenes, “Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.”[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica][/FONT]0 -
Shame a bit of common sense and reasonable education doesn't prevent such things. Suppose there will always be idiots like the one quoted in the article though.
Does seem a little pointless, given everything else that's wrong with modern society IMO.
So....because there are different issues in life, we should ignore this one?The greater danger, for most of us, lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark0 -
Posts like this are worth their weight in comedy gold.
Those who think that such legislation if passed could be enforced are as daft as some of the laws currently on statute.
Thousands upon thousands of current laws are currently unenforced yet attract no attention from anyone on here.
Why aren't the loons on the internet calling for this classic to be enforced outside of B&Q at a weekend ?
'Every person who rolls or carries any cask, tub, hoop, or wheel, or any ladder, plank, pole, timber, or log of wood, upon any footway, except for the purpose of loading or unloading any cart or carriage, or of crossing the footway'
Or go after children flying kites or playing in the snow ?
'Every person who flies any kite, or who makes or uses any slide upon ice or snow'
Has the OP ever cleaned their car on the road and shaken dirt off the car mats ? If so then they are a criminal..
'Every person who beats or shakes any carpet, rug, or mat (except door mats, beaten or shaken before the hour of eight in the morning)'
The internet is full of ten bob legals and I'm afraid that this post has once again brought them out.
Let the comedy commence.
You don't think that cycling on the pavement is a serious issue, or that if a pedestrian dies, if they are hit by a cyclist, the cyclist should be punished for it?The greater danger, for most of us, lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark0 -
20mph is very fast for a bicycle.
You obviously don't ride bikes much then, my bicycle is big and designed to carry heavy loads but I go over 20mph pretty much every time I get on it. A light road bike can go faster still.
Besides which it's asinine to say it's 'fast for a bicycle'. You might as well say '40mph is very slow for a Ferrari, so it's ok to drive at that speed in a built-up area in one'. Bikes are more maneuverable than cars, and much lighter and less dangerous than them. If it's ok to do 20mph in a car, it's DEFINITELY ok to do 20mph on a bike.Particularly when it is ridden in a reckless manner in an urban area where there are pedestrians in the road.
It is generally speaking safe to ride your bicycle down the street at 20mph. If someone jumps out in front of you however, the results are unlikely to be pretty (for the cyclist). Equally, you can drive down a NSL road at 60mph and someone can jump out of a hedge in front of your car, likewise there is not much you can do.That's of secondary importance. The Court was told that the cyclist shouted at the pedestrians that he wasn't going to stop.
The cyclist might have had more sympathy if he had shouted that he could not stop.. but his words were that he would not stop.
That's a tacit admission that he was acting recklessly and was intending to hit the pedestrians if they didn't immediately move from his path.
Such lurid claims make for great headlines. According to the defence solicitor this claim was made in the prosecution's opening statement but was not confirmed by the witness statements. The prosecution can say whatever it likes, the media report it gleefully because it makes good copy.Manslaughter would have been a more appropriate charge.
Hmm, do you have access to the case files, or are you just going from a line in a media report?What are you, some sort of Cycling Nazi? It's a puerile argument as well.
The cyclist shouted that he was not going to stop.
As it happened, he was travelling so fast that he couldn't have stopped, even if he had intended to do so.
20mph is a low speed, which motoring groups campaign against, saying that 30mph is just fine. We do not even know that he was going that speed, that's just what the media have reported, as if a 100kg bike doing 20mph is a real terror, whereas the 40mph 3 tonne SUVs that whizz past me on 30mph roads on a constant basis are of no concern at all.No, if you have to mount a pavement to avoid a pedestrian, whether you are travelling in a car or on a bicycle, it means that you were travelling much too fast for the conditions.
Utter rubbish. Try cycling through London for a while, pedestrians step into the road mobile to their ear, right into your path, and yes 20mph is a fairly normal speed, if you did much less the cars will try and run you off the road. If someone veers across your path, whether you are a car driver, a cyclist, or anything else, you will take whatever evasive action you can and feel is appropriate.
If I'm driving along at 40mph and a crazed motorist coming the other way is overtaking a cyclist at 60mph on a blind bend (very common IME), I will take whatever evasive action I can, but I certainly wouldn't be travelling 'too fast for the conditions' if such a lunatic were to plough into me.More likely, the poor girl was trying her best to avoid the aggressive cyclist.
However, she wasn't sure whether he was going to pass to her left or to her right.
She sadly took the wrong evasive action by jumping at the very last second to her left. He still struck her and she paid with her life, six days later.
Travelling at 20mph when pedestrians are in your path is inexcusable. When approaching the pedestrians, the cyclist should have slowed to a walking pace of 4mph, or slower.
You can speculate all you like about what the cyclist and the pedestrian did - all we know is that there was a cyclist who was riding his bike and he hit a pedestrian, and despite the existence of a law for which prison was a possible penalty, the prosecution chose to charge him with a lesser crime.That's a pointless anecdote. To counter, here's an equally irrelevant one...
It's hardly pointless to note that cyclists are vulnerable to groups.
[irrelevancies snipped]Conclusion: There are some thoroughly nasty cyclists who should be punished, and from whom the law should protect us.
Yes there are nasty cyclists, nasty motorists, nasty people around generally, and we have a wide range of laws to deal with them.From what I can see, the verdict is a poor reflection of the cyclist's guilt. He plainly had a good defence team, however.
The cyclist was found guilty and got nearly the maximum penalty for the crime, he was fined 2200 pounds against a statutory maximum of 2500. Killer motorists regularly get off with much less. He did not have a 'defence team', the case was heard in the Magistrates Court, he was defended by a single solicitor. The CPS could have chosen to charge a more serious offence but they obviously felt it was inappropriate.No. He was reckless in refusing to slow down when it was obvious to a reasonable person that a collision with the girl at such an excess speed could cause serious injury or even her death.
The cyclist's excess speed is only one aspect of his wrongdoing. There is also the malicious intent of the cyclist. His willful refusal to slow down to avoid a collision with the pedestrian indicates culpability in her death to the extent that a manslaughter charge would have suited.
Ah, a barroom lawyer, how wonderful. Please pass me the case files when you're done with them.There are some fanatical cyclists who are a menace on the public roads. New laws are needed to punish their poor road behaviour and to protect the general public.
Eh, just a minute ago you were telling me that he should have been charged with manslaughter. I'm sure we have an adequate range of laws, it's the enforcement that you're more concerned about.At the very least, all cyclists, including children, should be obliged by law to have third party liability insurance.
They have such a scheme in Switzerland, the cost is 6 swiss francs (4 quid), because the reality is despite all your bluster, cyclists are low risk - compare that with the cost of car insurance, and consider that that 6 francs is a commercial rate that covers administration, marketing and producing the little disc annually for the insured bicycle. If you take a walk around your local area you'll likely spot damaged road signs, traffic lights, railings, garden walls, and many more - random motor violence that goes mostly unreported, but is there as a subconscious reminder for those people that devote their energies to campagining against bicycles when motor vehicles are the leading cause of death for children.0
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