Death by dangerous cycling, potential offence

[IvanV]

When I was frequenting usergroups for cyclists about 15-20 years ago, there were reports of cyclists being given FPNs for exceeding the speed limits in Royal Parks. These were cyclists, on the roads, that were exceeding the general 20mph limit (rather than any specific limit for cyclists).
There is specific legislation for highways in Royal Parks, and (as far as I can tell), the FPNs were issued because in those acts, the definitions don't make the same distinction between motorised and mechanical vehicles that are explicit in the general road traffic acts (which exclude cyclists from general RTA speed limits legislation).

My personal suspicion is that the law was probably mis-applied (maybe mis-drafted), but I don't think anyone was ready to take it to appeal.
In the Hyde Park case, it's probably the case that the legislation did not give scope for specific limits on cycleways as opposed to highways, hence no legal force.

That matches my understanding.

[Trinucleus]

Intersting to hear how a number plate scheme for a few 000,000 cyclists fit with the 91,000 reduction in civil servant numbers

[IvanV]

Intersting to hear how a number plate scheme for a few 000,000 cyclists fit with the 91,000 reduction in civil servant numbers

Doubtless they'll outsource the registry to Crapita or one of their ilk to make a complete Kafkaesque bureaucratic balls-up of, to piss off the hated bicycle users as much as possible, just like they did with disability payments.

[monkey]

I have a bicycle number plate. It came off of a vintage bike I used to have. I know it came from Baton Rouge, because that's what it says on it. I do not know exactly how old it is, but you don't need one now.

Number plates are a silly idea that crops up every so often. Every time, just about everyone goes "that's a silly idea" and it's forgotten about till next time. I think North Korea is the only place that do it, but they also banned women from cycling.

[Sciolus]

Many residential areas these days have 20 mph speed limits. This is a Good Thing. It is entirely appropriate that these speed limits should apply to cyclists too. Not least because very few cyclists could do an emergency stop safely at anywhere near that speed.

However, mandating a quantitative speed limit rather implies mandating speedometers, something that few bikes have (unless you want riders gawping at the GPS on their phones). And presumably these would need recertifying every year. It all starts to get a bit onerous.

I'm not sure where and how you would mount a number place on a bicycle, given the huge diversity of designs. Maybe we will need type approval before a new model of cycle can be sold, to ensure it has a suitable mounting place? It will also need to be mounted safely; motorbikes don't need plates at the front any more, because when they were mandatory, they were usually mounted sideways, which tended to slice into people in the event of a collision.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that taking a regulatory system designed for motor vehicles and applying it to a very different form of transport is not very workable. Certainly some reform of regulation would be helpful, and we really need to rationalise the whole mess of rules for low-speed mechanical transport. But it makes much more sense to keep the rules largely qualitative and based on a reasonableness test. By all means have a law against using LSMT in a way that is likely to cause injury or death, and a law against using LSMT in a way that is likely to intimidate or alarm other people. But let's make them part of a hierarchy of responsibility, based on vulnerability and power. But doing all this properly will be technically difficult and politically extremely difficult.

[monkey]

Here's a picture of the bike with the plate on it. It's on the seat stays. This would not be possible on all bikes.

bike_plate.jpg (395.49 KiB) Viewed 2129 times

[lpm]

All this rather ignores the fact that Shapps himself said he didn't think bike registration plates were appropriate.

The Daily Mail & Co ignored that because they wanted a better headline. Believing something written by these tabloid liars, then writing a lengthy rebuttal, is a fundamental mistake.

And of course there'll probably be a new transport minister in 3 weeks.

[Millennie Al]

If you see a number in a red circle, that speed limit does apply equally to all vehicles including bicycles.

Really? Under what legislation? The Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 Section 84 says:

84. Speed limits on roads other than restricted roads.

[F1( 1 )An order made under this subsection as respects any road may prohibit—

(a)the driving of motor vehicles on that road at a speed exceeding that specified in the order,

(b)the driving of motor vehicles on that road at a speed exceeding that specified in the order during periods specified in the order, or

(c)the driving of motor vehicles on that road at a speed exceeding the speed for the time being indicated by traffic signs in accordance with the order.

which only covers motor vehicles - not cycles, pedestrians, horses, etc.

[IvanV]

If you see a number in a red circle, that speed limit does apply equally to all vehicles including bicycles.

Really? Under what legislation? The Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 Section 84 says:

84. Speed limits on roads other than restricted roads.

[F1( 1 )An order made under this subsection as respects any road may prohibit—

(a)the driving of motor vehicles on that road at a speed exceeding that specified in the order,

(b)the driving of motor vehicles on that road at a speed exceeding that specified in the order during periods specified in the order, or

(c)the driving of motor vehicles on that road at a speed exceeding the speed for the time being indicated by traffic signs in accordance with the order.

which only covers motor vehicles - not cycles, pedestrians, horses, etc.

You are right. I convinced myself some time ago that explicit speed limits in red circles applied, but I don't know how as it is quite clearly false. Maybe I mixed it up with the Royal Parks case, where they do apply.

[Sciolus]

All this rather ignores the fact that Shapps himself said he didn't think bike registration plates were appropriate.

The Daily Mail & Co ignored that because they wanted a better headline. Believing something written by these tabloid liars, then writing a lengthy rebuttal, is a fundamental mistake.

And of course there'll probably be a new transport minister in 3 weeks.

No, you've missed the point. Transport secretaries come and go, the Mail is forever. Laws are irrelevant*, it's public attitudes that matter.

*Except as a cycling suppression measure, motivated by anti-cycling public attitudes.

[philbo]

If you see a number in a red circle, that speed limit does apply equally to all vehicles including bicycles.

Really? Under what legislation? The Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 Section 84 says:

84. Speed limits on roads other than restricted roads.

[F1( 1 )An order made under this subsection as respects any road may prohibit—

(a)the driving of motor vehicles on that road at a speed exceeding that specified in the order,

(b)the driving of motor vehicles on that road at a speed exceeding that specified in the order during periods specified in the order, or

(c)the driving of motor vehicles on that road at a speed exceeding the speed for the time being indicated by traffic signs in accordance with the order.

which only covers motor vehicles - not cycles, pedestrians, horses, etc.

I wonder if the police officers who stopped me for speeding* while on a bicycle were aware of that.. to be fair, speeding on a bicycle is a lot easier in High Wycombe than most other places, but asking "so why didn't you stop any of the cars who overtook me?" seemed to take the wind out of their sails a bit.

I've long been of the opinion that they only stopped me so they had something to talk about in the pub later that evening


*36mph in a 30 zone.. tbf, I was taking it easy that evening.

[jimbob]

If you see a number in a red circle, that speed limit does apply equally to all vehicles including bicycles.

Really? Under what legislation? The Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 Section 84 says:

84. Speed limits on roads other than restricted roads.

[F1( 1 )An order made under this subsection as respects any road may prohibit—

(a)the driving of motor vehicles on that road at a speed exceeding that specified in the order,

(b)the driving of motor vehicles on that road at a speed exceeding that specified in the order during periods specified in the order, or

(c)the driving of motor vehicles on that road at a speed exceeding the speed for the time being indicated by traffic signs in accordance with the order.

which only covers motor vehicles - not cycles, pedestrians, horses, etc.

I wonder if the police officers who stopped me for speeding* while on a bicycle were aware of that.. to be fair, speeding on a bicycle is a lot easier in High Wycombe than most other places, but asking "so why didn't you stop any of the cars who overtook me?" seemed to take the wind out of their sails a bit.

I've long been of the opinion that they only stopped me so they had something to talk about in the pub later that evening


*36mph in a 30 zone.. tbf, I was taking it easy that evening.

There is "peddling furiously" which is nicely subjective.

But it's a nice example of a culture war story that will appeal to a lot of the Tory party members

[Opti]

See my first post on this thread. First response to the OP.

MOAR culture war.

[Gfamily]

Interesting that the police seem to acknowledge that Royal Parks legislation doesn't apply speed limits to cyclists, but will enforce them anyway.

https://road.cc/content/news/cyclists-r ... ing-295361

[IvanV]

There is "peddling furiously" which is nicely subjective.

One of those traditional misquotes. It's actually "wanton or furious driving", and occurs in S35 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. It is often misunderstood as a "speeding offence". But actually it is a "causing injury" offence.

35 Drivers of carriages injuring persons by furious driving.

Whosoever, having the charge of any carriage or vehicle, shall by wanton or furious driving or racing, or other wilful misconduct, or by wilful neglect, do or cause to be done any bodily harm to any person whatsoever, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and being convicted thereof shall be liable, at the discretion of the court, to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years

In a sense, it is more progressive than the modern motoring laws, for two reasons. First, because those have only "causing death..." and "causing serious injury..." offences - and when it says "serious" it generally means "life-changing", ie very serious. Whereas the "wanton or furious driving" offence applies when any kind of bodily harm is caused. Second, because it refers to "wilful misconduct" and "wilful neglect". In other words, negligence. Which is a more sensible test of whether the driver should be prosecuted than the vague notions of "dangerous driving" and "careless driving". And 2 years is a pretty sensible maximum sentence, given the limited harm to third parties that occurs in all but a handful of cases of negligent cycling.

We laugh at it. But actually it is more sensible piece of legislation than modern ones.

The actual "furious pedalling" offences, ie bad cycling without need for damage to have occurred, turn up in the Road Traffic Act 1988, though with boring modern wording. I show the version as amended by subsequent legislation.

28 Dangerous cycling.
(1)A person who rides a cycle on a road dangerously is guilty of an offence.
(2)For the purposes of subsection (1) above a person is to be regarded as riding dangerously if (and only if)—
(a)the way he rides falls far below what would be expected of a competent and careful cyclist, and
(b)it would be obvious to a competent and careful cyclist that riding in that way would be dangerous.
(3)In subsection (2) above “dangerous” refers to danger either of injury to any person or of serious damage to property; and in determining for the purposes of that subsection what would be obvious to a competent and careful cyclist in a particular case, regard shall be had not only to the circumstances of which he could be expected to be aware but also to any circumstances shown to have been within the knowledge of the accused.

29 Careless, and inconsiderate, cycling
If a person rides a cycle on a road without due care and attention, or without reasonable consideration for other persons using the road, he is guilty of an offence.

30 Cycling when under influence of drink or drugs
(1)A person who, when riding a cycle on a road or other public place, is unfit to ride through drink or drugs (that is to say, is under the influence of drink or a drug to such an extent as to be incapable of having proper control of the cycle) is guilty of an offence.
(2)In Scotland a constable may arrest without warrant a person committing an offence under this section.

What more do we need? All of dangerous, careless and inconsiderate cycling, and cycling under the influence of drink and drugs are already illegal. And to satisfy the culture warriors, they are made illegal with parallel wordings to the (stupid) wordings in motor vehicle legislation (that make that legislation so ineffective). Moreover they were not in the original 1988 Act and have been subsequently introduced. I'm referring in particular to S28(2), which was introduced later. (And the unfortunate wordings are things like "what would be expected" and "competent and careful", which juries frequently use to excuse negligent driving.)

[Sciolus]

Interesting that the police seem to acknowledge that Royal Parks legislation doesn't apply speed limits to cyclists, but will enforce them anyway.

https://road.cc/content/news/cyclists-r ... ing-295361

That's not exactly what the link says.

[IvanV]

Interesting that the police seem to acknowledge that Royal Parks legislation doesn't apply speed limits to cyclists, but will enforce them anyway.

https://road.cc/content/news/cyclists-r ... ing-295361

That's not exactly what the link says.

So in fact not even the speed limits in red circles in Royal Parks apply to cyclists either. I was wrong about that one as well. Though, according to that article, that has only just recently been admitted by the Royal Parks.

[IvanV]

Grant Shapps said a couple of days ago that he desires to introduce the "death by dangerous cycling" offence that the government previously proposed and had a consultation on now 4 years ago. The consultation page still says, 4 years later, "Visit this page again soon to download the outcome to this public feedback."

It was introduced when Jesse Norman was a junior transport minister, and I saw him talking on the telly about it, looking very embarrassed as he did so. That is because it was a typical piece of appeal-to-the-bigots that is the main kind of policy this government knows how to do, in this case bicycle bigots. And Norman is a cycling enthusiast, not a hater. So he must have really felt he was doing his duty to his master to introduce this one.

I always presumed we never heard any more of it, because the responses to the consultation would have been hugely anti, at least the cogent ones. I wrote a very lengthy response to the consultation myself, and Cycling UK shared their response with me. We independently came up with the same main points. No one would say that that the present 19th century laws which apply when bicycles are ridden dangerously are very clever. But simply taking laws designed for heavy motor vehicles, search and replace with bicycle, is not going to produce a sensible, appropriate, or well calibrated law to apply to dangerously ridden bicycles. And wouldn't it be sensible to have a common approach to all lightweight low-speed objects moving on our roads and footways, not just bicycles?

Generally speaking when a bicycle is in collision with something it might do damage to, be it a pedestrian, a roller skater, etc, it is generally the bicycle rider who comes of worst, as they usually have more continuing momentum in their own body to hit the ground harder than what they hit. It requires a lot of bad luck for that momentum to be mainly transferred to the other party, or an unlucky fall, for the other one to come off worst. That is completely different from the typical motor vehicle accident, where it has so much momentum you don't need to transfer very much of it to to the other party to cause a lot of damage.

Finally, in May 2024, almost 6 years after launching this consultation in November 2018, the government has responded to the consultation, based upon this report, which summarises the responses to the consultation while trying its hardest to avoid saying anything. There is a lot of focus on reporting %ages who said this or that. Most people were against it, but most people who responded were cyclists, with a "they would say that wouldn't they" implication. But were the non-cyclists who responded at all representative of the population, perhaps they were largely rabid bicycle-haters, who can say. The unsaid implication is that all of these %ages tell us nothing, though the %ages are most of what are repeated in the government response. There is no analysis in the governments of whether the thoughtful responses to it actually said anything sensible or insightful. The report does summarise the key points made in narrative responses, but only to list them, not think about whether any of those responses were cogent.

And so we had a consultation, and the government learns nothing, or chooses to learn nothing, from it. Perhaps it was a badly constructed consultation, so as to have it for the sake of having it. Perhaps it chooses a method of analysis so that it can ignore any well made cogent points.

And this comes out the day the government announces it will go ahead with a causing death by dangerous cycling offence, packed into a Criminal Justice bill. Apparently with support from labour, subject to some minor amendment.

The main serious comment - which Cycling UK today repeats seems to be that motoring law is badly flawed, and this adds a new flawed offence to a corpus of flawed law. The government promised an overall review of road law in 2021, but there has been no sign of that.

So we get, with cross-party support, essentially a populist piece of legislation pandering to the we-hate-cyclists mob, that will have very little effect, and so we fiddle while doing nothing about our deeply flawed road laws. And once again do nothing to promote cycling, which needs to be promoted, as even the government agrees while doing nothing effective about it.

[science_fox]

Almost all road laws could be reduced to:

1 "be situationally aware"
2 "be more kind" / "don't be a jerk"

Sadly this requires a degree of social responsibility that seems lacking overal.

[tenchboy]

Almost all road laws could be reduced to:

1 "be situationally aware"
2 "be more kind" / "don't be a jerk"

Sadly this requires a degree of social responsibility that seems lacking overal.

Anticipation
Consideration
Two words from my instructor ~40 years ago that I still hear today.

[noggins]

Many residential areas these days have 20 mph speed limits. This is a Good Thing. It is entirely appropriate that these speed limits should apply to cyclists too. Not least because very few cyclists could do an emergency stop safely at anywhere near that speed.

However, mandating a quantitative speed limit rather implies mandating speedometers, something that few bikes have (unless you want riders gawping at the GPS on their phones). And presumably these would need recertifying every year. It all starts to get a bit onerous.

OMG cyclists who want to approach speeds of 20 mph will have to spend £10 on a speedometer. My f.cking heart pumps piss for them.

[dyqik]

Many residential areas these days have 20 mph speed limits. This is a Good Thing. It is entirely appropriate that these speed limits should apply to cyclists too. Not least because very few cyclists could do an emergency stop safely at anywhere near that speed.

However, mandating a quantitative speed limit rather implies mandating speedometers, something that few bikes have (unless you want riders gawping at the GPS on their phones). And presumably these would need recertifying every year. It all starts to get a bit onerous.

OMG cyclists who want to approach speeds of 20 mph will have to spend £10 on a speedometer. My f.cking heart pumps piss for them.

You do understand that a £10 speedometer is not calibrated or accurate? To get an accurate speedometer on a bike you need to spend hundreds on a GPS system.

And 20 mph is easily achieved on a child's single speed BMX going down a moderate hill, let alone a bike with normal sized wheels and gears.

Why do you want to remove most bikes and cyclists from the roads, and replace them with much more dangerous cars?

[dyqik]

Oh, and it's not just speedometers. If you want to prosecute a numerical speed limit on bikes, you'll also need speed traps that work on bikes (most don't), and a legal requirement for bikes to be registered and clearly displaying a registration plate, or other means for the rider of a bike to be clearly identified.

[IvanV]

Many residential areas these days have 20 mph speed limits. This is a Good Thing. It is entirely appropriate that these speed limits should apply to cyclists too. Not least because very few cyclists could do an emergency stop safely at anywhere near that speed.

However, mandating a quantitative speed limit rather implies mandating speedometers, something that few bikes have (unless you want riders gawping at the GPS on their phones). And presumably these would need recertifying every year. It all starts to get a bit onerous.

OMG cyclists who want to approach speeds of 20 mph will have to spend £10 on a speedometer. My f.cking heart pumps piss for them.

Bicycles routinely exceed 20mph when going down hills, without even pedalling, whoever is riding them.

Putting a speedo on a bike is not very expensive, as you say. But the practical reality is that most bicycles are not going to have speedos, because they are fiddly and annoying. You have to calibrate them, which is not so straightforward, and I've had fun teasing people who don't understand that and think they are going very fast. They are battery powered and often not waterproof. You have to worry about them getting wet, the battery going flat, and them getting stolen. So that's why these days they are mainly the preserve of competition and other kinds of "serious" cyclists who need them. 20 years ago is about when I stopped replacing mine, as I was fed up with the annoyances. And I wouldn't put one on just to ride to the station anyway, and I go down a big hill on the way where I probably exceed 20mph without pedalling.

But I think "they don't have speedos" is an excuse, rather than the sensible reason for why speed limits devised for motor vehicles shouldn't apply to bicycles. Or at least the lower speed limits.

What is the argument for 20mph urban speed limits for cars? Because if hit by a car, you are much more likely to survive at 20mph than at 30mph. But bicycles have far less momentum than motorised vehicles at the same speed. So a pedestrian is already much more likely to survive a collision at 30mph with a bicycle for that reason. Bicycles also have a much greater incentive to avoid colliding with pedestrians at high speed, because the collision is as dangerous for the rider as the pedestrian.

And in any case, if a bicycle should be ridden unreasonably fast and cause injury, we have the "driving furiously" offence, which doesn't require us to know what the speed is. It's actually quite appropriate.

If there are locations where it would be appropriate to control the speed of bicycles for the amenity of others, then the proportionate and effective way to do that is, as routinely used in some other countries, with bicycle-specific speed bumps, specially shaped to limit the speed of bicycles without being dangerous for them - unlike car-specific speed bumps which are often very annoying on bicycles. You come across these everywhere you might come into conflict with pedestrians in places like the Netherlands.

[noggins]

waah waah waah i wanna go as fast as i can