Let me confess: when I learned that a woman pedestrian had been sent to prison for causing the death of a cyclist she had forced off the pavement, only my second thought turned to the horror experienced by the victim and sympathy for her family. My first, entirely selfish, thought was: there but for the grace of God go I.
For I, too, have shouted at cyclists who occupy pavement space when I think they should be cycling on the road (though school ma-am rather than swearing is more my register). I, too, have a tendency to put my hand out to keep an intruding cyclist at bay. I have even been known, by standing my ground, to force a cyclist to dismount at the barriers designed to stop them slaloming through narrow pedestrian passageways.
As a driver stuck in a single lane, reduced in size to accommodate those on two wheels, I might also have been guilty of hooting at a cyclist, taking one hand off the wheel to point demonstratively at the mostly empty cycle lane that has been expensively paid for with my taxes. Why has he or she swerved into ‘my’ lane? To avoid the red light that would fractionally delay their progress in their own.
A friend was recently knocked over by a cyclist who ignored a red light
Although it has never, I repeat never, happened, that anything I have said or done has forced a cyclist into the path of another vehicle – as you probably know, the cyclists’ usual response is to shout back, give two fingers up, and carry on doing exactly what they were doing – it seems to me that the tables have suddenly been turned.
For if something did happen, and if I came before the same judge as Auriol Grey, 49, did for the manslaughter of Celia Ward, 77, I would not be sitting in my study tapping at my computer, but facing a stint at His Majesty’s pleasure. A stint that would quite likely be more than the three years Ward received, as I would have no disability to be taken into account as she did.
The police have asked people to ‘think twice about commenting in relation to this case when they are not in possession of all the facts’. It is true that those of us who were not in the courtroom don’t know all the details about what happened on that day last October in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. But to speak, as the police have of ‘ill-informed comments’, while they refuse to release the whole CCTV of the incident, does little to dispel speculation.
Nor is it hard to deduce that the reason the police made their plea against ‘ill-informed comment’ was that the manslaughter verdict, and especially the prison sentence, have drawn a great deal of attention, much of it in the social media and much of it highly critical. Indeed, I was one of those who took to Twitter to object that pavement cyclists will henceforward have a free pass and to express the hope – rather timidly compared with many other contributors – that Grey would be given leave to appeal.
Why so much attention? Partly, because English law proceeds by precedent, and the verdict in this case risks giving carte blanche to pavement cyclists. There seems to have been some dispute in this case about whether the pavement was a ‘shared space’. But from now on, will cyclists be given the benefit of the doubt, even when there is an adequate road alongside? Any right of pedestrians to walk unhindered in the only space still reserved for them risks going by the board. Oh, I know about all those appeals to our better nature to ‘learn to share nicely’, but have you seen what happens when cyclists, e-scooters, e-bikes and goodness knows what else all compete for the same surface with pedestrians?
Which is another reason for all the attention. Many people have been affected by this. A friend was recently knocked over by a cyclist who ignored a red light. She suffered no more than cuts and bruises and torn clothes. But the cyclist offered no apology, and seemed unaware he was actually endangering people’s lives. As a pedestrian, I was also run into a couple of years ago by a (phone-absorbed) cyclist approaching from behind. Her explanation was that she was trying to cross the road; a gentle suggestion that she might look where she was going in reality rather than on her screen was not well received.
Anyone who lives in urban areas where motorists, cyclists and pedestrians have to coexist will see encounters such as these practically every day. They will also be aware that the recommended Dutch etiquette, where the least powerful take precedence over the more powerful – so cars cede to cyclists, who cede to pedestrians – is rarely in evidence. Now, cyclists will doubtless be even more convinced that the law is on their side.
The unusual feature in this case is that both the cyclist and the pedestrian were women, and women, what is more, of a certain age. They were not heedless teenagers, nor were they Lycra-clad racers. It may also be, as the detective in the case insists, that if the public did see the full CCTV, they would accept the verdict as ‘cut and dried’.
For the time being, however, the message I and other pedestrians will hear is that anyone on foot who objects to a cyclist in his or her path risks not just the wrath of the cyclist, but a criminal record. The certainty of the police, and the decisiveness of the jury verdict – though their deliberations will have been at the judge’s direction – point to this having been a straightforward case of right against wrong. Then again, maybe it is not just hard cases that make bad law?
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