Motorist is very sorry for killing cyclist.

[hemo]

Sounds like the defence is trying to use the victim blaming card.

[Mike Sales]

Sounds like the defence is trying to use the victim blaming card.

The "expert witness" seems to say that if you cannot see a bright red light, it's fine to charge ahead.
The Highway Code says otherwise in rule 126.

Drive at a speed that will allow you to stop well within the distance you can see to be clear.

.
This is a very different thing, but I fear that many drivers do not observe this rule.

[Nearholmer]

What the expert said is a bald statement of fact*.

A single light, especially a single steady light, is not ideal.

One might then ask what is ideal, which could lead on to holding the reply up to ridicule, because ideals can always be ridiculed, and one might also point out that the law doesn’t require “ideal”, it requires one red light, flashing or steady, and one might point out that drivers should be alert to single lights, whether they be ideal or not.

Among the doubtless vast number of things we don’t know, because the snippet doesn’t tell us, is what the line of cross-examination of the expert by the prosecution was. They may have kippered him, or he may have held up well. We just don’t know.

*It actually doesn’t even need to that, because experts are allowed to give opinion as evidence, I think they are the only sort of witness who are.

[drossall]

What the expert said is a bald statement of fact*.

A single light, especially a single steady light, is not ideal.

Setting aside the issue of whether anyone should be able to see a red light, I struggle with it as a topic for a court. Surely Parliament (and its delegated authority in traffic regulations or whatever) sets the rules on what should be adequate lighting, and courts enforce them? If you think the law is wrong, there are routes to get it changed. Isn't that how the separation of state and courts works? But I am not a lawyer...

[Nearholmer]

I don’t see it as a campaign to change the law, merely a point of evidence that may or may not lodge in the minds of jury members and help shape their thinking about whether the defendant is innocent or guilty of the charge.

The guy is charged with causing death by dangerous driving (he’s already pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving), and it’s worth reading-up on what ‘dangerous’ in that context means, and what the prosecution has to prove to secure a guilty verdict. How easy or difficult it is to pick out a light and identify it as a bike could be material.

If case after case threw up evidence that drivers really struggle to pick out single, small steady red lights in traffic as bikes, and that people were dying as a result, that I can imagine leading (after hugely protracted debate) to a change in law. Coroners put forward observations/recommendations to (I think) The Home Office if they spot trends of that kind.

[Vantage]

No no no no no.
A motorist has one job above all else. Not killing or injuring the occupants of the vehicle or the people outside of the vehicle. If he/she cannot do this without difficulty then he/she should not be driving. Period. This isn't rocket science.
It doesn't matter what's going on inside or outside the vehicle, it doesn't matter what the weather is doing or the time of day or how bright or dark it is, it doesn't matter if there's a sea of red tail lights drowning out that one puny little underpowered cycle light. There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for a driver to hit and injure or kill anyone else on or off the road.
As for flashing cycle lights. They may very well shout cyclist, but they also make it more difficult to judge distance. Or so I've read.

[gazza_d]

Some thoughts are occuring to me catching up with this thread. IF (and it's doing some heavy lifting) the single rear light didn't help, as opposed to being a convenient excuse to divert responsibility from the driver which is surely is. How many have blamed motorcyclists for only having one light? And I see plenty of cars etc with a bulb out and no one crashes into them.

Current UK cycle light regulations are a complete mess.
Maybe we need a rethink and legal rear lights need to be of a minimum brightness and size. You can get some lights which do seem quite small and dim. It should be illegal to sell and use them.

Also outlaw flashing lights, certainly as a primary light. They do seem to get lost in heavier traffic and can make distance reading harder.

If one light is deemed not enough then I am not sure that two vertically would make it much better.
Maybe what's needed is them mounted horizontally on a long pole to make the rider look like a small car from a distance.

Personally I have a large bright dynamo rear light which is about 100mm wide.

But this is just victim blaming by the drivers defence.
Gaz

[Nearholmer]

A motorist has one job above all else. Not killing or injuring

True, but also completely missing the point of the trial.

The law doesn’t say “If for any reason whatsoever, a person dies in an incident involving a vehicle that you are driving, you are guilty of a crime”.

It has two offences: causing death by careless driving, and causing death by dangerous driving, the first revolving around whether your conduct fell below the standard expected of a careful and competent driver, the second far below.

That being the case, lots of details about the circumstances come into play. From what little we know of this case, two relevant factors seem to be:

- whether or not a careful and competent driver would have identified that there was a person on a bike ahead of them; and,

- whether a careful and competent driver would have allowed themselves to attend to a fretful child travelling with them, while on the move, which might be thought of either as allowing themselves to become distracted, or taking sensible action to temporarily mitigate a distraction., and perhaps whether a careful and competent driver would have used the particular means to pacify the child that this guy did.

There might be a stack of other factors that we don’t know about.

The guy has pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving, so he admits that he fell below the standard expected of a careful and competent driver, and could get five years in jail, the question is did he fall far below, making him liable for a longer prison sentence, up to ‘life’.

As vulnerable road users, we might prefer the law to be “the other way round”, requiring any driver involved in an incident where a cyclist of pedestrian is killed to prove themselves innocent of causing death by dangerous driving, or we might prefer a range of harsher sentences to be applicable to careless driving, but unless or until the law is changed, it is what it is, and a person faced with the possibility of life imprisonment is surely entitled to mount a defence …… they might, after all, not be guilty.

Adopting a “lynch mob” attitude in any instance where a motor vehicle is involved in an incident where a cyclist dies is no different from The Daily Mail mentality of forming a lynch mob around any case where a pedestrian dies as a result of an incident involving a person riding a bike.

Everyone is legally and morally entitled to a fair trial, including mounting a defence, it’s as simple as that.

As for flashing cycle lights. They may very well shout cyclist, but they also make it more difficult to judge distance. Or so I've read.

That does seem to be the case, and I’ve read several posters here say that they display one steady and one flashing for that very reason.

[mattheus]

What the expert said is a bald statement of fact*.

A single light, especially a single steady light, is not ideal.

No: it's not fact, it's just an opinion. (which luckily for the defence, he's allowed to offer as "evidence" in this situation.)

Your opinion is worth no more than anyone's here, just for reference.

And a reminder for you:
he killed her because he chose to be distracted by his phone and his child in the back seat (in some combination), taking his eyes off the road; not because the dead woman's lighting didn't match your standards.

[Nearholmer]

That is a clear example of prejudice, in the original meaning of the word: making a judgement in advance of seeing the facts.

You don’t know, I don’t know, none of us here knows, unless we are on the jury, in which case we shouldn’t be discussing it, the full range of facts and opinions that have been put before the jury so far, and given that the case isn’t finished, even the jurors can’t know what more might be said.

Either you believe in the right to a fair trial, including the right to mount a defence, or you don’t. Do you, or don’t you?

Regarding lights: a small single, steady light is very definitely, factually “not ideal”, for the simple reason that it is possible conceive of better, more visible, lighting arrangements. More lights, bigger lights, flashing lights, an entire fairground of lights on a big framework. But, as I said before, that sort of isn’t the point, because neither the law nor common expectation suggests the use of “ideal” lighting, whatever that might be.

[Vantage]

There is no prejudice here Nearholmer. The driver admitted that he took his eyes of the road "for a split second". The split second part I think is horlicks because as we all know, we cyclists don't just appear out of thin air.
But the expert witness stating as evidence that a single rear light is a less than idea method of lighting a bicycle is also horlicks. And top it off, you said that a single non flashing rear light makes it difficult to identify it as a cyclist. You also said that other factors may be to blame.
All this is I believe what the majority of us are disagreeing with.
There are no excuses. The driver hit and killed a person on the road as a result of not being in control of his vehicle. Plain and simple.
There are millions (literally) of road users out there who have never hit anyone despite driving or riding for a lifetime in difficult conditions. To say that this driver in particular or any other driver for that matter faced a set of circumstances so unusual as to cause a loss of life is ridiculous.

[mattheus]

That is a clear example of prejudice, in the original meaning of the word: making a judgement in advance of seeing the facts.

You don’t know, I don’t know, none of us here knows, unless we are on the jury, in which case we shouldn’t be discussing it, the full range of facts and opinions that have been put before the jury so far, and given that the case isn’t finished, even the jurors can’t know what more might be said.

Luckily you and I aren't in the jury, so we can type stuff here with barely a minute's thought, instead of feeling obliged to deliberate for as many hours as it takes. But meanwhile:

The driver said as much. I'm not showing any prejudice by believing his statement!

[Postboxer]

Presumably, the time and date of the accident is fairly accurately known, the weather conditions. The victim had also taken a photo within an hour of the accident, so light and weather conditions could be drawn from that. The bike, light, clothing etc should all be known, surely it's not impossible to recreate the conditions to see how visible the cyclist was, whether there were any reflective surfaces on the bike or rider, how much the front light of the bike might be reflected back to the driver etc etc. I find it impossible to believe there is any way that the only thing to see was a single, stationary light, on a presumably moving bicycle.

They may also have some idea, or an accurate picture, of how many competent drivers managed to safely pass the victim.

I just don't buy the idea that the driver just passed the child an unlocked phone, with a social media app open on it, so the lights would distract them, they could cause no end of mayhem on there, if you were doing that, and apparently did it often, you would have a dedicated app or something on the phone for the purpose.

[Pete Owens]

Regarding lights: a small single, steady light is very definitely, factually “not ideal”, for the simple reason that it is possible conceive of better, more visible, lighting arrangements. More lights, bigger lights, flashing lights, an entire fairground of lights on a big framework. But, as I said before, that sort of isn’t the point, because neither the law nor common expectation suggests the use of “ideal” lighting, whatever that might be.

The facts of the case were that the driver drove into legally lit cyclist.

Either he was paying paying attention in which case the act was deliberate and a murder charge would be appropriate. Or he was was not paying attentiion which case he is guilty as charged.

[Cugel]

That is a clear example of prejudice, in the original meaning of the word: making a judgement in advance of seeing the facts.

You don’t know, I don’t know, none of us here knows, unless we are on the jury, in which case we shouldn’t be discussing it, the full range of facts and opinions that have been put before the jury so far, and given that the case isn’t finished, even the jurors can’t know what more might be said.

Indeed. Why are you & others discussing this particular case and offering up all sorts of spurious opinions about it, then?

The answer: the power of the mass-media, which offers us all potted opinions on sensational happenings along with the encouragement that this somehow makes us adopting these potted opinions "knowledgeable" or "in possession of the facts". This is a delusion.

That's not to say that a discussion of the attributes of various forms of warning lights on a bicycle isn't a useful thing to hold. Why tie it to a case such as this, though?

Cugel