Revealed, skull tattoo death smash cyclist hid from jury
DEATH crash cyclist Charlie Alliston hid a sinister skull tattoo from the jury at his Old Bailey trial over killing a mother-of-two.
The 20-year-old former courier’s hair concealed the tattoo as he was tried over Kim Briggs’s death in London.
But Alliston, who faces jail after being cleared of manslaughter but convicted of furious and wanton driving, had his hair cut short again as the case concluded.
The ghoulish design behind his left ear shows a skull weeping three blood-red tears. Alliston left Mrs Briggs, 44, with fatal head injuries after smashing into her at 18mph on a fixed-wheel track bike with no front brake fitted.
The cyclist went online after the tragedy in a shameless attempt to blame Mrs Briggs.
Mrs Briggs, who had been crossing the road during her lunch break, died in hospital six days later.
Alliston, of Bermondsey, south-east London, will be sentenced next month.
MATTHEW Briggs, the husband of a mother of two killed by the reckless cycling of Charlie Alliston, found guilty this week of “wanton or furious driving”, is quite right to call for a change in the law. That a piece of 19th-century legislation had to be revived to ensure that the cyclist be brought to justice reveals the fact that cycling in our cities has got faster and more dangerous.
We all applaud the Olympic victories of our GB cycling team but this success has encouraged an aggressive minority of cyclists to treat our roads as though they are pedalling for gold. Our streets are not a velodrome and yet Alliston chose to ride a fixed gear bike with no front brakes that is for use only in such a sporting environment. That he claimed that he didn’t know this was illegal for use on ordinary roads underlines the need for a stricter code of rules for cyclists.
Matthew Briggs has called for cycling to be included in the Road Traffic Act which would result in new offences such as causing death or serious injury by dangerous or careless cycling. This would be a fitting memorial to his wife Kim who has been robbed of the rest of her life seeing her two children grow up by the arrogance of an irresponsible cyclist.
As he has made very clear, being a cyclist himself, this is not a “witch-hunt against cyclists” but simply a recognition of how the nature of cycling has changed in recent years.
ACCORDING to some reports, the number of accidents involving cyclists and pedestrians has rocketed over the past decade by almost 50 per cent. Their statistics record a leap in accidents involving cyclists from 274 in 2009 to 408 in 2015, which included two deaths. That’s more than one recorded accident a day. In total some 3,476 people were injured, 696 of them seriously.
Punishment for causing fatal accidents is light. In 2007, 17-year-old Rhiannon Bennett was killed by a cyclist who shouted at her to “move because I’m not stopping”. He merely got a fine and avoided a prison sentence, while in 2015 a cyclist riding without brakes collided with an elderly woman who died nine days later and he received just a year in jail.
Cycling enthusiasts are encouraging the pursuit of speed on our streets. A recent edition of a cycling magazine gave its readers some “top tips to get your mean looking meaner”, referring to their average speed. It advocated cutting wind resistance with a sporting posture, listening to fast-beat music to increase effort, and braking less.
Of course, it stressed the need for safety too but the general thrust of this article is clear and more and more cyclists are treating our roads as though they are race tracks on which to improve their personal best.
The Government has used millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to encourage us all to cycle more over recent years and certainly there is a health and anti-pollution benefit to it. But with the increased number of cyclists in the UK there needs also to be a concurrent increase in safety measures.
Cyclists are not even included in the Highway Code on keeping within speed limits. To counter this some London councils are looking at ensuring that speeding cyclists are included alongside car drivers in 20mph zones.
The urban fashion for “shared spaces” has increased the danger for pedestrians with groups representing the disabled concerned at the threat this poses to the partially sighted and less mobile members of our society.
It is already illegal to cycle on a footway, the official term for a pavement, but how many cyclists are fined for doing what is pretty routine in most cities? It is an offence to jump red lights but how many times have we seen cyclists weaving in front of pedestrians as they use road crossings?
IT IS often left to the discretion of the police to enforce these rules but the lack of officers on the beat means that this dangerous flouting of the law generally goes unchallenged and, in some cases, local police forces have even declared they have no interest in prosecuting such law breakers.
As more and more people take to riding bicycles, it is perhaps time to consider treating cyclists more like motorists. Why should they not be compelled to take out third party or public liability insurance to cover accidents?
More importantly, why not have licence plates on bicycles so that bad cyclists can be more easily identified and tracked down for prosecution? One of my cycling friends, who was involved in a collision with another cyclist who then sprinted away, would have welcomed that. It left him with an injury that has taken months to recover from and prevented him cycling to work.
The increase in cycling over the past few years is undoubtedly a success story from the point of view of greater fitness for the UK – and a penchant for winning international cycling competitions – but it must also be matched by a greater sense of responsibility among cyclists.
This latest needless fatality should be the catalyst for bringing our laws up to date and severely punishing those reckless cyclists who cause death and injury on our streets.
I hope Matthew Briggs gets the support he deserves to make this change in the law happen and his children will one day be able to look back and see how this heinous crime against their mother has helped make the roads of Britain safer for us all.
‘Treat people on bikes just like motorists’