Tragedy that proves we MUST have a new law to put the brakes on reckless cyclists
MaTTheW BriGGS’S life fell apart on February 12, 2016. That was the day his wife of 18 years, the mother of his two young children, left for work and never came home.
During her lunch break, 44-year-old Kim Briggs was mown down by a cyclist — riding an illegal bike with no front brakes — as she crossed the road. She sustained such severe brain injuries that she died a week later.
The cyclist, Charlie alliston, then 18, was told by the judge this week after an eightday trial that he faced a custodial sentence. he had, the judge said in a scathing summing up, shown not a ‘breath of remorse’.
yesterday, Mr Briggs was interviewed on radio 4’s Today programme. it was intensely moving. yes, there was sorrow in his voice, but no anger or bitterness.
his language was almost miraculously restrained. The last thing he wanted, he said, was ‘a witch-hunt against cyclists’.
But he does want the law changed — to target reckless and irresponsible cyclists and to make causing ‘a death by dangerous cycling’ an offence on the statute book.
he said: ‘if this were to happen again — which i inevitably think it will — the police and the Crown Prosecution Service [should] have a more coherent framework to reach for, so that for the next family having to go through this, it’s more straightforward.’
Mr Briggs is right, and i have no doubt that his campaign will attract widespread support. it certainly deserves to.
The truth is that Britain’s roads are plagued by too many idiots who shoot through the traffic as if they were competing in the Tour de France, their brows furrowed in their self-righteous determination to outwit filthy, polluting motorists at every turn.
Some are caught up in their own Bradley Wiggins fantasy. Others seem consumed with fury that they don’t have total sovereignty over our highways and byways — even though the unstoppable spread of cycle lanes is increasingly reducing motorised traffic to a crawl.
Of course, there are sensible cyclists who respect other road users and their own safety, but there are others who are a blatant danger to themselves and the rest of us: they simply don’t possess the skills to hurtle around busy junctions as if they are racing in a velodrome. Charlie
alliSTON fell into that category. On that day in east london, he was riding his ‘ Olympic- style’ track bike at 14 mph. he’d bought it a few days before, assuring the seller he’d only be riding it on tracks, not on the road.
it has been illegal to ride a bike without a front brake since the Pedal Cycle (Construction and Use) regulations came into force.
That was in 1983, long before tens of thousands of commuters swapped cars, buses and trains for bikes — encouraged by workplace schemes with the worthy intention of reducing traffic pollution and promoting health and fitness among employees.
But whoever drafted the regulations can hardly have imagined that a minority of cyclists would progress to ever more specialised racing-style bikes in an attempt to mimic their sporting heroes.
Fundamentalists say such brakeless bikes — called ‘fixies’ because they have one fixed gear — gives them an exhilarating ‘feeling of direct connection to the bike’. it also allows them to display their skills by stopping the bike without a brake — by throwing their weight on to the pedals or back-pedalling.
That wasn’t enough to save Mrs Briggs. alliston could swerve, but he could not stop his bike.
in a legal first — due to the grave circumstances — prosecutors brought a manslaughter charge against alliston. The Old Bailey jury cleared him of that, but found him guilty of causing bodily harm by ‘wanton or furious driving’.
‘Wanton or furious’ isn’t a bad description of the exhibitionist style of cycling that infests our roads — but it’s an odd verdict for a 21st-century court.
if alliston were a motorist, he could have been found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving under the road Traffic act 1991.
But, as Matthew Briggs pointed out, there is no such crime as causing death by dangerous cycling — even though the number of accidents involving cyclists and pedestrians rose by 47 per cent between 2009 and 2015.
During this period 3,467 people were injured. in 2015, there were 525 casualties and two deaths.
So the jury was forced to fall back on a piece of antiquated Victorian legislation, from a law passed in 1861, before cars were even invented, and when the idea of ‘traffic’ barely existed. The ‘driving’ refers to horses.
The fact is that the success of British cyclists both in the Olympics and the Tour de France in the past few years has sparked a cycling revolution.
in many ways, that has been a good thing, reducing pollution and boosting the health of the nation. But the law has not kept up with the astonishing number of bicycles now in use, which have dramatically changed our roads, and the dangers they present.
it’s also true that many people spend small fortunes not only on their bikes, but also on kit and equipment which make them feel they have the right to ride as though they own the road. (Some councils such as Camden in North london have even decided that cyclists won’t be punished for riding on the pavement.)
Ayear before the accident, alliston tweeted about removing his front brakes from a fixed-wheel track bike; he said the experience was like a lucas Brunelle movie.
Brunelle, an american, takes part in what is known as ‘alleycat racing’, where groups of cyclists weave in and out of traffic.
This is hardly a recipe for road safety — and it is all the more alarming given that bicycles do not have registration plates, and their owners don’t have to be insured against accidents.
Clearly, the law must be changed, and urgently. Parliament has, unforgivably, already missed one opportunity to do so.
in 2007, 17-year- old rhiannon Bennett died from head injuries after she was hit by a cyclist in Buckingham.
her parents campaigned for a change in the law, and in 2012 their case was taken up by andrea leadsom, then a backbench Tory MP and now leader of the house of Commons.
her Dangerous and reckless Cycling (Offences) Bill would have punished cyclists convicted of causing death with jail terms of up to 14 years.
But it failed to receive a second reading in the house of Commons, though the Coalition Government said it would ‘consider its merits’.
if it had, and cyclists had taken note, Kim Briggs might conceivably be alive today.
Certainly, alliston — who shocked the jury with his callous comments online blaming Mrs Briggs for the collision and his persistent refusal to accept responsibility — would be facing more than the maximum two years in prison which is all the 1861 act allows.
as Mr Briggs also made clear in that radio interview, we cannot solve the problem of rogue cyclists simply by passing new legislation. There will be those who persist in riding specialised bikes on public roads.
asked yesterday what he would say to cyclists who use ‘fixies’ just for the delicious thrill of it, Mr Briggs said he’d tell them that, thanks to a fashion that verges on ‘fetishism’, ‘the most wonderful, fun-loving woman went out to work and didn’t come back’.
That said, most of the lycra-clad menaces who drive motorists mad with their selfish showing-off aren’t using fixed-gear bikes. They’re riding conventional racing bikes.
Somehow, society has to convey a message to them — and it isn’t that cycling is a bad thing. it’s that a relentlessly aggressive culture of ‘ us’ ( cyclists) against ‘ them’ (motorists) must change.
Transforming the ethos won’t be easy, however. if you doubt that, read some of the online comments by cyclists who think alliston is a martyr who would have been treated far more leniently if he were a motorist.
That is all the more reason to start the wheels turning by making dangerous cycling a more serious crime without delay.