No Need For Witnesses

[John the Monkey]

http://www.velorution.biz/?p=2198

The National Audit Office has laid bare what we have been saying for years: British authorities are the most callous and devious in Europe: they emphasise the low overall death rate on the roads and disregard the scandalous butchery of vulnerable road users: the ratio of pedestrian deaths/total road deaths is the highest in the continent.

...from a policy point of view, we don’t need witnesses. The system needs to change: if you kill someone while in charge of a vehicle, you are automatically sent to jail and you will never be able to drive again, unless you can prove that the victim was commiting suicide.

 

[andrew-the-tortoise]

Would certainly cut the number of road deaths - not just cyclists & peds.

But it'll never happen.....

 

[jpatterson]

Certainly for insurance purposes this is similar to Holland. If a car is in an accident they assume it was the car drivers fault until proven otherwise.

 

[CotterPin]

Just come upon this thread and it resonates with another thread in P&L on laws to help cyclists. I was also struck by Andrew the Tortoise's comment:

Would certainly cut the number of road deaths - not just cyclists & peds.

But it'll never happen.....

I am not picking on you, Andrew, as this often seems to be the response to such comments. Now it also occurs to me that this section is called "Campaigning and Public Policy". I was just wondering whether there was any mileage in those of us who feel that the idea posited in the linked thread might be good idea working out some sort of campaign via this forum?

I am afraid I have no idea what the campaign might be as this stage. Realistically we cannot change UK law but there might be some lesser campaign objective we could achieve?

I am conscious I am not one of the really regular posters so my suggestion might be a little forward of me when evidence elsewhere on this forum suggests that people are doing good cycle campaigning already (Magnatom comes to mind but there are many others).

Any thoughts?

Also conscious that I have hijacked this thread so happy to start a whole new thread for this discussion if appropriate

 

[marinyork]

I'd have thought the only lesser campaign objective in town would be to get the police to reclassify accidents to get away from "ped carries on walking and collides with car".