Charlie Alliston case - fixie rider accused of causing pedestrian death

[GrumpyGregry]

Your suggestion that "the law should be appropriate to each" does not appear to disagree with my suggestion that "it should be applied fairly to all" (my emphasis). Am I misunderstanding?

Fair application does not mean same application.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

I have not been ignoring your points, and I apologise if I make it sound that way - your points are well made and I do not dispute any of the three you mention above.

But my thinking is that covering dangerous use of various kinds of transportation should ideally be brought closer together. It might be that current laws are sufficient based on how often they are used, and that there is no need to change anything based on risk (which impinges on the use of limited parliamentary time), but I also think that fairness in the eyes of the public should be a part of lawmaking.

When the public's eyes are squint and their viewpoint inherently skewed in favour of non-prosecution and lax sentence for drivers who kill on the basis of

it was just an accident
s/he didn't set out to kill
it could happen to anyone
mobile phone use when driving is acceptable
who cares, it is just a dead cyclist
a certain level of casualties are inevitable and so long as it ain't me or mine that get KSI'd jog on.
there but for the grace of God...

 

[Alan O]

Fair application does not mean same application.

Fair point - I suggest same letter, but fair application.

 

[Alan O]

When the public's eyes are squint and their viewpoint inherently skewed in favour of non-prosecution and lax sentence for drivers who kill on the basis of

it was just an accident
s/he didn't set out to kill
it could happen to anyone
mobile phone use when driving is acceptable
who cares, it is just a dead cyclist
a certain level of casualties are inevitable and so long as it ain't me or mine that get KSI'd jog on.
there but for the grace of God...

I certainly do not support any of those thoughts.

 

[Alan O]

And yet, you can't cite a single one here.

I could cite a number that I think fit the category, but I choose not to, so it will have to stay at being my view formed through my reading of discussion of the case. It's a small minority, and in my view those few extremists unconditionally calling for the poor cyclist to be exonerated are harming the cycling cause almost as much as the Daily Mail anti-cycling bigots.

Do you mind if I repeat a question I asked you earlier? Do you not think that all road users should be held equally accountable for their actions?

 

[GrumpyGregry]

I certainly do not support any of those thoughts.

Neither do I yet some of them, and variants thereof, have been applied to Charlie Alliston.

I have railed and raged against lax sentences for drivers who kill. Here and elsewhere.

Buggered if I am going to moan when "one of our own" kills another road user and gets an appropriate sentence as a result.

 

[mjr]

I could cite a number that I think fit the category, but I choose not to, so it will have to stay at being my view formed through my reading of discussion of the case. It's a small minority, and in my view those few extremists unconditionally calling for the poor cyclist to be exonerated are harming the cycling cause almost as much as the Daily Mail anti-cycling bigots.

Is zero a small minority now? In other words, I feel you're misinterpreting what you've read here, or confusing it with what you may have read elsewhere.

Do you mind if I repeat a question I asked you earlier? Do you not think that all road users should be held equally accountable for their actions?

I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I gave some moments earlier - in the post quoted, no less.

 

[Origamist]

See, I'm not sure I buy that. It is very hard to deliberately have a collision. Generally if you realise you are going to have a collision you instinctively take evasive action.

As you say in hindsight it may not have been good or effective evasive action. It may have been hampered by the brakes. But I'm not sure that makes the riding up to that point dangerous in and of itself. The part where I started to lose confidence in the judge is where she implies that CA somehow "forced" himself past the HGV, which is clearly nonsense.

CA himself admitted that he misjudged the ped, that she stepped back into his intended path rather than continuing forwards. People misjudge other people's path all the time, we are all subject to it with SMIDSYs often with severe injuries but they do not result in a dangerous driving charge because it is put down to a "mistake".

Perhaps if the judge and jury were keen cyclist they would realise that cyclists make mistakes too. They are often on bikes with poor stopping distances in the wet. That does not mean they are dangerous cyclists.

Those paragraphs would be a far more compelling if he had a front brake. He hugely reduced his options to avoid a collision when he chose not to fit a caliper brake. He was a danger to himself and others - the tragic death of Mrs Briggs bears that out.

 

[Alan O]

Is zero a small minority now? In other words, I feel you're misinterpreting what you've read here, or confusing it with what you may have read elsewhere.

It's not zero, and I don't think I have misinterpreted everything I have seen or that I am confused. I just don't want to hold up specific examples because I don't want to personalise it - if you feel that makes my opinion unsupportable, I can respect that.

I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I gave some moments earlier - in the post quoted, no less.

Ah, yes, sorry, the "Yes but that doesn't require extending the motorists' get-out-of-jail-free offences to cyclists" is a qualified yes. My view is that no offences should be seen as or practically used as "get-out-of-jail-free offences" - and I suspect we might agree on that.

I'm opining on what the letter of the law should say, and I think you are commenting on current enforcement practice of the law - if we could separate the two, I suspect our opinions would be closer than they might seem.

 

[mjr]

I'm opining on what the letter of the law should say, and I think you are commenting on current enforcement practice of the law - if we could separate the two, I suspect our opinions would be closer than they might seem.

It's not possible to separate the two. Seeking to add more letters to unhelpful practice makes matters worse. I urge you to focus on fixing the practice of the law as a priority and join something like the RoadJustice campaign.

 

[Alan O]

It's not possible to separate the two. Seeking to add more letters to unhelpful practice makes matters worse. I urge you to focus on fixing the practice of the law as a priority and join something like the RoadJustice campaign.

I think the two aspects can be pursued independently, so we must therefore disagree.

 

[Sharky]

It seems crazy that any bike manufacture could make & sell track framesets that were not drilled for a front brake. Even if the intention is initially just for the track, I can't imagine many scenarios where track bikes don't end up being sold off and used on the road when they come to the end of their track life.

As I ride TT's mostly on fixed, I have been looking for an aero track frameset with a front brake drilling for a long time, but they just don't seem to exist.

But, my google friend has just spotted this dia compe brake for a non drilled fork:-
http://www.velodromeshop.net/track-bike-brakesets/dia-compe-track-bike-front-brake/

Has anybody used one?
It could open up my options for frames in my price range.

 

[KnackeredBike]

[QUOTE 4964274, member: 43827"]"The ped" did have a name you know!

I would expect that a very small percentage of the population, including judges and jurors are keen cyclists so I'm not sure the relevance of this statement. This judge and jury did not convict and sentence him simply because he made a mistake.[/QUOTE]
Because people tend to "like" people that are the same as them. Hence drivers get the benefit of the doubt and cyclists and motorcyclists don't.

If we dispassionately assess that road sentences should be a deterrent against actions likely to cause harm then drivers who kill should get much greater sentences then CA but in reality they don't, they tend to get more lenient sentences.

CA was foolish as I was at a similar age, but not malicious. He fell victim to a freak accident. The number of people riding track bikes on a daily basis is so vanishingly small every one could be offered a free fitted front brake for a fraction of the money it will cost to lock CA up.

As in other threads i am a pragmatist, i don't see the point in throwing loads of money around simply to prove a point.

 

[Profpointy]

Whilst the accident itself was foreseeable, the tragic outcome was very unlucky. Unlike, it must be said, a tragic outcome from bad driving where the outcome is pretty predictable from a ton and a half of steel hitting a person at apeed.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Whilst the accident itself was foreseeable, the tragic outcome was very unlucky. Unlike, it must be said, a tragic outcome from bad driving where the outcome is pretty predictable from a ton and a half of steel hitting a person at apeed.

I take issue with the "very unlucky" part. Hit a pedestrian hard enough that they go down onto a road surface and they'd have to be lucky to avoid serious injury, especially if not braced for impact/expecting the collision. People don't bounce. Head injuries are not exactly uncommon in such circumstances