ChrisButch wrote:I'm hoping for something authoritative on this from Martin Porter, but I notice that's his blog has been inactive since the end of the Alliston case.
At the time of that case - under a heading using some expression like "mis-trial" which was later changed - he suggested that the case might adequately have been dealt with under the regulations covering brakes on pedal cycles. I've no idea of current practice, but I'm pretty sure that had Alliston been stopped and reported for defective brakes on a pedal cycle before the crash, then he would have been likely to have received a caution. IMO MP's strength is civil law.
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bovlomov
The Alliston case isn't about speculation: it happened.
FWIW, I think the speculation took place when the parliamentary draughtsmen were preparing the Road Traffic Act and decided that as cyclists were unlikely to kill anybody, there was no need for a specific offence. One question that that enabled them to duck was the maximum penalty. At present, dangerous driving has a max of two years while dangerous cycling is only a fine. As I keep saying, if somebody is killed they are dead. They can't be slightly killed. It's hard to see a justification for a difference in the maximum penalty for the proposed offence.
Re meic's suggestion that we only have road traffic legislation because of motor traffic, I'll reiterate what I said above about there being less legislation affecting pedal cycles than motor vehicles, and the penalties generally being lighter. In an age when traffic enforcement has collapsed, some riders feel less inhibited about the law - in common with a lot of drivers.
