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Cyclists and Anti-Cyclists

What are your views on this?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-64707898

Unfortunately no video, but it seems to be very likely you would flail if you saw a bike hurtling towards you from the corner of your eye.

Although she was 77 so possibly not hurtling.

Selected quotes:

He said jurors would hear from Mrs Ward's husband who said his wife was an "experienced and competent cyclist".

The prosecutor claimed the defendant was "angered by the presence of a cyclist on a footpath".

Mr Spence said Mrs Ward was not wearing a helmet

Q:

why would an experienced and competent cyclist be cycling on a footpath without a helmet rather than on the road wearing a helmet?

Answer to OP:

sounds like the cyclist was too scared/now lacked confidence to continue to cycle on the road and, in the way that more senior people do, thought no one would mind her bending the rules so she could continue to enjoy a pastime she had done for years.

unfortunately not everyone thinks like that and in this case it had tragic consequences.

awful for the family of the cyclist and the driver of the car too. Captain sicknote who went to Sainsbury's should be jailed just for her reaction to an awful situation.

Some old biddy was hurtling towards me on the pavement the other day. I stood my ground to make her swerve, tutted and stared. Bicycles belong on the road; they're a damned menace on pavements. 

Unless she was going just before closing for the yellow labels, seeing someone you've just shouted at fall under a car and get killed and not stopping should be

Ages ago, when crossing at a pedestrian crossing with a toddler holding my hand. a cyclist zoomed through at full pelt.  I gesticulated with my free hand, and used a (toddler-friendly) expletive.  Weird how that sort of innocuous thing could lead to a manslaughter charge.

I know Huntingdon quite well and in the town centre the pavements are very narrow. You'd be completely spooked by a person on a bike riding past you, even if it were an old lady. Based on that article (which I accept is clearly not nearly enough to form a comprehensive opinion) I hope this lady gets acquitted.

Well I guess that explains why she didn't see a cyclist coming towards on her on a pavement until the last moment.  Also no surprise that an old lady pottering along on a bike was also a bit startled by a sudden burst of expletives.  

Walking off to finish your shopping as someone lies dying under a car does seem rather selfish.

Purely based on what is in the BBC news report I agree with Geoff.

There is a story from 17 years ago about the defendant in this case so the statements re disability and sight issues seem very genuine: https://www.huntspost.co.uk/lifestyle/22964997.duchess-officially-opens…

I'm quite surprised that the CPS brought this as a manslaughter case. I suppose one could say that "gesturing in a hostile and aggressive way" might be an assault, but it really depends, doesn't it. Giving someone the finger is not an assault. Shaking one's fist at someone might be an assault, depending on whether it was reasonable for them to believe that it was implying violence. 

Walking away after the cyclist fell into the road and was hit by a car is not a crime and should not bear on whether the actions of the defendant prior to that were a crime.

The case reminded me of the Putney Bridge jogger case from five years ago: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-44639208  The perpetrator there, whoever he was, got away with it.  However, there the perpetrator clearly pushed the woman into the road.

 

“Creating a dangerous situation” is an exception to the rule that a failure to act cannot constitute an offence. If you’ve created a dangerous situation, you are under a duty to act.

I infer this is the explanation behind the charges. 

@Barry  But once the car hit the cyclist there was no longer a dangerous situation, so I don't see how that exception is relevant on the facts here. Also, I don't see how it can be a basis for manslaughter.

Rob, I would say the cyclist being hit by the car is exactly the dangerous situation that the swearing/gesticulating had (arguably) created. Hence the relevance of the exception.

this sounds like basically an accident, it is understandable somebody might yell and even gesticulate at a cyclist riding on a narrow pavement towards you and that this whole thing is a considerable waste of police and court time.   Walking off rather than waiting for an ambulance is khuntish but not criminal thing to do.

@Barry  The R v Miller "dangerous situation" exception is based on the defendant having created a dangerous situation, having an opportunity to act to deal with it, and not acting to deal with it.  I'm not sure what you're identifying as the dangerous situation in this case. 

If the dangerous situation is the cyclist potentially falling off the bicycle, the timing gap - seconds not minutes - and the absence of any ability for the defendant to do anything in that time, mean that the "dangerous situation" exception does not seem to apply.

If the dangerous situation is the cyclist already having fallen off the bicycle and having been hit by a car - that might be relevant - if some further injury (to the cyclist or someone else) had occurred as a result of the cyclist being in the road. However, according to the report, no such further injury occurred so the "dangerous situation" exception does not seem to apply.

@Actus  There's a difference between saying something is not a crime and saying something should not be a crime. Positive vs normative.

This should be an interesting case. 

Im willing to bet that there’s a good reason why the defendant didn’t stop to try to help the cyclist, which the prosecution has skirted around to make the defendant seem to have acted unconscionably. As someone says above, we have a very strong emotional reaction to a person ignoring somebody in need (not a crime) than we do to what might be a very minor assault (eg telling off somebody acting annoyingly, technically a crime). And it sounds like they are trying to get the jury to convict on the latter, which no jury would ever convict on independently, by appealing to the former.

I just don’t see any human ignoring someone who’s just been run over and going to Sainsburys. Even a serial killer would do something. Will be interesting to see the defendants case, and the video footage.

Just reread it and it says the defendant “left the scene before emergency services arrived.”

That is a bit different to what I first thought (and I think most of us did.) It sounds like the driver stopped, called emergency services, and then the defendant left the scene, which is understandable given a) presumably it was obvious the cyclist was dead and b) she didn’t even appreciate that she would be blamed for the accident and should report to the police. I think 95% of people still would wait, so that they could give a statement, but the 5% would include some people who are just a bit stupid / naive.

The very behaviour about which the defendant was complaining (reckless cycling) is what led to this accident. Hopefully the moral of the story is that cyclists should follow the Highway Code. 

Have I missed something? As far as I can tell, someone with cerebral palsy who feared for their own safety is being prosecuted for having the temerity to swear at a dangerous driver. It beggars belief. 

No idea where but some of that road seems to have bikes painted on the pavement. Also if I saw a 77 year old cycling or a 4 year old I would be reasonable and accept that rubbish infrastructure leaves them nowhere else to go. There is clearly more to this than the clickbait news story lets on - as there always is because there's dickheads on both sides. I'm surprised there are not clubs for these aggressive clowns where they can shout at pedestrians in the country for walking in the road, motorists for parking on the pavement to let an ambulance past etc. Looks like she waved her arm, the person on the bike thought she was going to be pushed, tried to go around and fell off. If someone feigned to push you in front of a Tube train and you fell into the track and died I'd expect them to be prosecuted. 

Walking down the middle of residential roads, where there is a perfectly serviceable pavement, is another infuriating habit that boomers have. I always speed up when I see them. 

"If someone feigned to push you in front of a Tube train and you fell into the track and died I'd expect them to be prosecuted. "

Even if they were on a bicycle at the time? Coz tbh bikes have as much place on pavements as they do on the Underground platform. 

If it was a young male cyclist who died, I’d wager there’d be no prosecution, because people have less sympathy with them cycling on the pavement. Because it was a doddery old lady, it gets all the right judgy juices flowing.

Don't know where you're all getting the idea that this was some poor defenceless person who waved their arms in alarm and accidentally caused a cyclist to crash and die. The allegation is she swore and was agressive and hostile. From that description she may well have been  aware of the cyclist's approach and purposely tried to scare her (seems more likely if the CPS thought it was worth pursuing). Whether the cyclist was in the wrong for being on the footpath has zero relevance unless the woman was trying to defend herself or had some kind of reflex reaction.   

@Rob having re-read the report I agree the "dangerous situation" isn't relevant since the emergency services were called anyway.

The charge is probably an "unlawful act" manslaughter. As you say, shaking a fist could be an assault. Of course, assault does not require physical harm, just an apprehension of it.

Not saying the defendant should be convicted or is guilty, but there is a case for it. 

Will be interesting to see how it plays out. The defence side surely are going to act utterly outraged that this was prosecuted.

It’s hard to see how it can succeed, unless the behaviour of the pedestrian is excessively aggressive. At the end of the day, the cyclist has seemingly just cycled into traffic. If you’re going to cycle (anywhere) you need to be a bit more robust than to just cycle into the path of vehicles when somebody shouts at you.

How does that article change anything? Prosecution (based on CCTV evidence) says that defendant swore and struck out aggressively and defendant says they were startled. Given the CPS would need to have a reasonable prospect of conviction you would assume they would have carefully considered the latter. Very possible that the footage shows the defendant demonstrating clear awareness of approaching bicycle, swearing at them and, when close enough, striking out at them.   

if you cycle down a narrow pavement and get hurt - tough.

what’s next - I recklessly wave around a machete for fun, an old lady swears at me and startles me, I fall into a road and get hit by a car - and then said old lady gets arrested?

It seems like a sound enough case to bring to trial when a person has died. She might not end up in jail but you can't just assume the pedestrian is blameless. 

It appears she was cycling down a shared path (i.e. for cyclists and pedestrians), so the cyclist had a right to be there. Even if it wasn't shared, the appropriate response would have been for the pedestrian to calmly say please watch out for me, rather than act so aggressively that a poor old lady has swerved into the road and been killed. 

I disagree hiphop, and I say this as a lifelong cyclist. There’s a world of difference between facing a pedestrian walking towards you pushing a bicycle than there is a cyclist cycling towards you at walking speed. You don’t know what the cyclist is going to do, whether they will speed up, whether they might clip you, what the impact of that might be on you. You’re more than justified in shouting abuse at a cyclist that is cycling straight towards you, even slowly. Why so many cyclists don’t get this I don’t understand, given they all know what it’s like to be a pedestrian.

Isnt this prosecution turning on what the defendant said in the police interview? Article 1 said that you can’t tell from the footage whether the pedestrian touches the cyclist. But in the police interview apparently she said that she might have done so when protecting herself. I reckon that’s the key piece of evidence that has made this - just about - prosecutable.

I doubt that's what the prosecution are relying on given the charge doesn't actually require contact. More likely the degree of awareness/pre-meditation on the part of the pedestrian combined with nature of the interaction. As mentioned previously, the CPS (unlike the people on this board) have actually reviewed the footage and seem to think there is enough to justify a serious charge.   

Surprise surprise. Looks more like a busybody making a point than someone "flailing" out of fear (also made zero attempt to move to the side). Out of curiosity I looked at streetview of the ringroad and sections have shared cycleway signs with no obvious end to the section and no segregation so cyclist was very likely completely within their rights. Clearly a poor bit of infrastructure but no excuse to take the law into your own hands.

Even if the footpath is shared use it is clearly too narrow for a cyclist going one way to safely pass a pedestrian going the other. The cyclist should have dismounted rather than trying to cycle past the pedestrian. Both for their own safety and the safety of the pedestrian. 

The police can't be clear if it is or isn't a shared pavement. 

(1)  How can this not be clear?  

(2)  If the police cannot be clear, surely the defendant should get the benefit of the doubt on the point?

Maybe the cyclist didn't think the pedestrian would purposefully block her way. She actually appeared to be going quite slowly (despite all the uneducated comments on this board) and likely was not sure what do do (stop, go right or risk going left and possibly hitting the pedestrian if they moved left (which is what they should have done)) 

I don't think it's a fair characterisation that the pedestrian blocked the cyclist's way.  By nature I'm  a fast walker (comparative studies show that the city I grew up in has one of the highest average walking speeds in the world) and people who walk in the middle of pavements, passageways, etc. irritate me enormously. However, here even if the pedestrian had kept to one side of the pavement, unless they squeezed over or stopped, there really is not the room to safely cycle past them. My children (like lots of children) cycled on the pavement when they were 6-8 years old and would have certainly dismounted in such circs. 

Christ, what an utterly absurd result.

Firstly, there is room on the defendants right for the cyclist to go. The cyclist has cycled straight into a pedestrian. Why should a pedestrian move for a cyclist? This cyclist just isn’t looking where they are going. Secondly, the cyclist is cycling right on the edge of the pavement with no wiggle room to get around somebody that way. Vehicles are driving at speed just a foot away from her, going the same direction. Thirdly, the cyclist is going at speed. It’s not a walking pace is it? It’s about 6-8mph. 
 

What RobCannon said. The absolute worst case scenario here should be that the cyclist should stop before she hits the pedestrian. 
 

I can’t see any contact between them. It looks like the cyclist has just cycled into moving traffic.

That CCTV footage shows a normal person expressing (perhaps slightly rudely) what 99% of people would have thought, and gesticulating towards the road.

What a complete fooking travesty. 

"After the verdict, Det Sgt Dollard said: "Everyone will have their own views on cyclists, pavements and cycleways."

It's not "a view". 

It's illegal. Under s.72 of the Highway Act 1835 and s.51 of the Road Tarffic Offenders Act 1998. 

"Everyone I've spoken with agrees with the verdict. "

That a woman with cerebal palsy who had reasonable belief that her safety was threatened should be convicted of manslaughter for telling a dangerous driver, who was indisputably breaking the law, to get back on the road?

Are you trolling? 

No, I don't approve of solicitors acting as magistrates. Nor should they be jurors imo, though given the calibre of the jurors who sat on this one, perhaps it's not such a bad idea after all. 

What a stupid thing to say re benefit of the doubt. There are shared signs further down the road. The pavement is at least 1.5m wide. This person has clearly hammed up their disabilities as they are walking fine on the CCTV. They could clock the person from at least 20m, and have decided to dick about with disastrous consequences. 

Also lol @ "hurtling" - the woman starts shouting and 5 seconds later still no bike in the frame. This isn't some lycra gimplord on the Embankment, but don't let that stop people saying she deserved to die because she used the same form of transport. 

Someone's dead because this entitled aunt wanted to prove a point. She will get a lenient sentence but deserves it. 

Everybody who thinks she is guilty is stupid, insane or trolling.

Also, as 3-ducks says, why did the prosecution say there was no chance of the driver stopping? A reasonably observant driver would have both swerved and emergency stopped. This one apparently did neither. She doesn’t hurtle into the road, she stumbles into it at almost zero pace.

It looks like a witch hunt because of a) the abuse that was shouted and b) that she went to Sainsburys afterwards, like some sort of psychopath.

Well said bananaman. Also "indisputably breaking the law"?! Wtf, the article literally says that the police couldn't say for certain whether it was a shared path - meaning that no cyclist cycling on it could ever be prosecuted as police don't even know if it's a crime!

What a stupid thing to say re benefit of the doubt. There are shared signs further down the road. 

I said:

If the police cannot be clear [whether it is or isn't a shared pavement], surely the defendant should get the benefit of the doubt on the point?

Your point seems to be that it was clear that the pavement was shared.  If it was clear, then my point, by its own terms, is not applicable.  That does not make my point stupid.

This person has clearly hammed up their disabilities as they are walking fine on the CCTV.

I'm not sure how someone "walking fine on the CCTV" bears on whether or not they are partially sighted.

that she went to Sainsburys afterwards, like some sort of psychopath.

I assume that, as this was reported, it was something that the jury were made aware of as part of the evidence. My knowledge of the laws of evidence is limited to say the least. However, I would have thought that what the defendant did afterwards has little or no relevance here and that it should have been excluded from evidence on the basis that its prejudicial consequences far outweigh its probative value.

The pavement is at least 1.5m wide.

Accepting that is the case, when I look at the Dept for Transport Local Transport Note 1/12 from 2012 on Shared Use Routes for Pedestrians and Cyclists (https://www.winacc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/shared-use-routes-…) it proposes a minimum width of 3m for unsegregated shared use (i.e. where there is no line dividing the pavement between a pedestrian path and a cycle path).

So the Note recommends a width that is twice the 1.5m that you reference.

The Note recognises that it might not always be possible to meet the minimum width recommendations for the route as a whole. It says that on lightly used routes, especially rural shared use routes that avoid high speed roads which have no specific provision for pedestrians or cyclists, a narrow route might represent a considerable improvement on existing conditions. However, my understanding from the reporting and prior posts here is that:
- the road here is a high speed road;
- the road here is an urban not a rural road; and
- the road here is not "lightly used"

As a pedestrian there are occasions when you're walking toward someone and each of you needs to move slightly in order to pass, and at first you both go the same side - and then the other - but within a couple of seconds you've worked it out - and often you smile and/or nod and acknowledge it.  That's possible at a pedestrian speed.

Two cyclists going towards each other you know that (in UK) the norm is to stay on your left and pass each other that way. 

Cyclist and pedestrian on an unmarked shared use path, I'm not sure that there's a proper norm. On the one hand, it would be normal to go to the left - but that puts the pedestrian between the cyclist and the road - which seems like the wrong way to go. If I were the pedestrian I think I would have moved to the right to left the cyclist pass me on my left, which is what the cyclist seems to have expected would occur.   

From the CCTV recording, I notice that the cyclist was wearing quite a large bag over her left shoulder. That in itself seems to me to be an incredible unsafe way to cycle: basket, rear carrier, backpack, courier type bag across my back. I've never seen anyone cycling wearing a bag on a shoulder like that. I wonder whether the weight of the bag contributed to the cyclist swerving right into the road - certainly the weight of the bag would magnify any rightward momentum. 

all I can say is the video seems to give evidence on which a jury, properly guided, could convict. Whether they should have done so and whether the prosecution should ever have been brought I don't know, you'd have had to sit through the whole trial. Clearly a difficult and very sad case. 

Heffalump20 Feb 23 14:55

impossible to express a view without seeing the CCTV recording

*CCTV is published*

Heffalump28 Feb 23 11:24

I don't know, you'd have had to sit through the whole trial.

Get off the fence, you'll get splinters in your arse! 

That lady's mental health is going to take a terrible battering in prison. It serves nobody's purpose putting her in jail. Being a slightly annoying busybody is not criminality. I hope she gets freed after 2 weeks so her cell can be taken by somebody who deserves it.

Prison sentences often serve no useful purpose but that's not a reason to ignore sentencing guidelines. Also, objectively speaking, being a busybody clearly does constitute criminality when it causes someone's death and you are convicted of it...  

Yes but I think there is a real issue in terms of causation here.

What is the busybody lady loudly farted as the cyclist approached and laughed in a condescending way and as a result the cyclist lost concentration and went into the road? Would you still want to convict?

If you are a cyclist you have to take responsibility for your own safety as much as is reasonably possible, which includes being alert to possible distractions.

"...and in conclusion your honour, my client was simply waving his chainsaw in the manner many of those less familiar with Debrett's might greet an acquaintance in the street. The words "illegal act" are merely guidance, and one has to consider the rank stupidity of those unable to afford a driver in steering their "bicycle" into the carriageway when met with such an innocuous act."  

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