However, Adrian Darbishire KC, for Ms Grey, said in the appeal: “Hostile gesticulation is not a crime, otherwise we would have 50,000 football fans each weekend being apprehended.”
Tho’ a slight correction M’Lud. 50,000 fans at each stadium each weekend.
Echoes of the “Mere vulgar abuse” clause in libel. “Lord A is a vile fuckwit” is not a libel because it’s mere abuse. “Lord A sells credit cards for tax evasion” is a libel.
Well, the bloody moron should have been punished for cycling on the footpath, but I think the death penalty is a tad too far. What next, break them up for organ processing?
What next, break them up for organ processing?
There’s a lot to be said in favour of that policy.
I have noticed that, in addition to cyclists, the damn e-bikes also tend to share the attitude that footpath means bike path.
As you’ve guessed, I don’t have a bicycle. Or an e-bike.
I always felt that the guilty verdict was a gross miscarriage of justice. Cyclists other than children shouldn’t be on the footway in the first place. Secondly, cyclists shouldn’t just fall off their bikes when someone stops a cyclist running into them. Thirdly, the car driver should have been a bit more aware of the old girl on the bike.
Last week I found myself in a similar (but obviously not identical) situation. I was driving towards a pedestrian crossing with a woman waiting, although I had the green. On my left was a teenager on an e-bike, on the pavement of course. There is a dropped kerb on my left for access to a parking area. The e biker swerved very close to the dropped kerb to avoid a pedestrian. I’d slowed down for the e-biker, and so I was in a good position to stop for the pedestrian who mistook my slowing for an invitation to cross.
Yeah, sure I’m smug that I didn’t run anyone over. The car driver in Auriol’s case clearly wasn’t driving with care for other road users.
I saw that the d1ckhead representing the CPS had the nerve to request a retrial.
For once a judge showed some common sense and told him to go forth and multiply
@Excavator Man: I’m betting 1.10 that you are or very recently have been a pedal cyclist yourself.
Good anticipation mind.
I love the cyclists hate. Funny enough, being someone who’s dependent on Foot or Pedals ( trains and buses have their own, quite large impressions..) I agree with a lot of them.
That said… even when I’m in pedestrian/ cyclist friendly Clogland, I’ve had to break two driver’s seat windows, and mauled a couple of mirrors…..
Seems that being in a rolling tin can brings out the worst in people, and that sometimes you have to ….Assert… yourself to the idiots who think traffic rules, however consciously applied, are for Other People.
I like re-educating those idiots. Especially when they were about to hit someone who could be your Mum . Doubly so when they were checking their Mobile Device.
And yes, I also Elbow Youth scooting past me on an electric bike in a pedestrian area. Or scootmobiles doing a Charge of the Light Brigade.
I’m an Equal Opportunity Educator in that respect.
And amazingly… Still not charged, and my city centre is ….mostly civil… as I’m not the only one…
“Seems that being in a rolling tin can brings out the worst in people,” My experience as a cyclist was that it was fellow cyclists whose misbehaviour most put me at risk – they were all too likely to force me under the wheels of cars or buses.
The great exception – the bunch of car drivers who really were a menace – were taxi-drivers.
I often cycled on one particular stretch of a wide pavement. The pedestrian traffic there was so light that I would always dismount before passing, or overtaking, a pedestrian.
I cycled for years (and still do), and the only time I’m on the FOOTpath is when I’m on FOOT walking my bicycle across the footpath. The terror of cycling with vehiclar morons around remains in my driving style, and I will, for example, subbornly not overtake cyclists on blind corners when some moron behind me is revving and tooting at me to move out of the way. Ditto waiting for an oncoming horse to pass, or dropping down into first to crawling speed to overtake an, err.. offgoing? horse.
My main bugbear as a cyclist is when using shared spaces and moron pedestrians (ok, and some cyclists) completely oblivious that IN THIS COUNTRY WE TRAVEL ON THE FUCKING LEFT!!!!!!! Somebody is approaching me, I slow down and move left, they move into my path, I slow down and move even further left, they move further into my path, I slow down *EVEN* *FURTHER* and fall over into the brambles and dog poo.
From time to time now, when this scenario is approaching, I just come to a stop, put out my left arm and lean against the surrounding wall/tree/bush/lamp post/whatever. And JUST SIT THERE. You wanna get past me? PASS ME ON YOUR LEFT!
My understanding is that the path in question was a shared footpath and cycleway. Both the pedestrian and cyclist had a right to be using it in the manner in which they were using it.
The cyclists death is a stark reminder to cyclists that you are the most vulnerable road users. You are vulnerable to instant death occasioned by both your own misjudgement resulting in one poor decision, in addition to the actions of others. Like Grikath I have had motorists break bits of their precious vehicles on my body on two occasions. One left me for dead, and had to be traced by numberplate, one had the courtesy to wait for the police, perhaps only because an AA man, so just about the best expert witness you could hope for, saw the whole thing and placed that call to the police.
So excuse me if I don’t have a lot of time for someone asserting incorrectly that someone else’s behaviour is wrong in a way that occasions that person’s death. I am sure gesticulating like a retarded maniac is not in itself illegal and should not be. But that does not eliminate other ways to be commiting the crime of illegal or involuntary manslaughter. If it did then you are no longer able to hold anyone accountable for the disastrous consequences of their wantonly negligent, but not specifically prohibited , actions.
I must also agree as cyclist, that the most common offenders who inhibit my progress or otherwise do idiotic and illegal things, are cyclists. My pet hate being riding the wrong way on a cycle path, this being kind of normalised behaviour in the Reich, where the rules of the road (obeyed with typical German precision which in itself borders on aggressive aggressive) are among the last remaining sacrosanct elements of German culture.
That said this behaviour has never once endangered my life. Car drivers on the other hand endanger my life to the point I need to take evasive action twice a week on average.
@BiG
Shared footpath or not, the onus would be on the cyclist – being the one that’s a vehicle & travelling faster – to exercise due caution when passing a pedestrian. And if need be stop. That she managed to fall off into the road in front of a moving car would seem to indicate she didn’t.
The original verdict in this case would to be the opposite of the cyclist who hit & killed a woman while cycling in Regents Park. The cyclist was adjudged to have not broken the law & thus not prosecuted. Despite the fact that he was estimated as travelling at 29 mph in a 20 limit zone whist engaged in some sort of competitive time trial with several other cyclists
If bicycles are so dangerous and cyclists are so vulnerable to fatal accidents, have you considered NOT RIDING A FUCKING BIKE?
@big
All manslaughter is involuntary, by definition. But also by definition, if gesticulation is not an unlawful act, then even if death results from it then it’s not unlawful act manslaughter! “The prosecution must prove an intentional act (not omission); that the intentional act is unlawful; that it is an act which all sober and reasonable people would inevitably realise must subject the victim to at least some risk of harm.”
The alternative form of manslaughter is gross negligence manslaughter, but that can be harder to prove. Unlawful act manslaughter does not require a duty of care, and you only need to show an obvious risk of harm rather than of death. Gross negligence manslaughter needs more: “the breach of an existing duty of care which it is reasonably foreseeable gives rise to a serious and obvious risk of death and does, in fact, cause death in circumstances where, having regard to the risk of death, the conduct of the defendant was so bad in all the circumstances as to amount to a criminal act or omission”.
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/homicide-murder-manslaughter-infanticide-and-causing-or-allowing-death-or-serious
Fwiw when I saw the original conviction I thought it would be likely to quashed on appeal given the weakness of the purported “unlawful act”. And cases like this make me wonder if we need a law change that excludes some of the more trivial unlawful acts. Whether someone is guilty or not of manslaughter, with a potential life sentence, doesn’t feel like the kind of thing that should rest on whether a gesticulation is sufficiently grave to count as a minor public order offence.
In an ideal world this case would have been prosecuted (or a decision made not to prosecute) under specialist road traffic legislation. For driving, we have a sensible hierarchy: causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving (with a separate offence for causing death by careless driving under the influence of drink or drugs), causing death by dangerous driving, and if serious enough then manslaughter (unlawful act or gross negligence, but the latter requires “a very high degree of negligence, making the case one of the utmost gravity”) and even murder if there’s intent. But going beyond the statutory charges and into the realm of manslaughter requires quite extreme circumstances. “It is clear that killing another person on the road can be the result of conduct which, in terms of culpability, lies above that contained within the definition of causing death by dangerous driving but short of establishing the intention required for murder. It is in that space that is found the crime of manslaughter. On the authorities, the risk of death involved in such an offence must be very high…”
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/road-traffic-fatal-offences-and-bad-driving
If we had a statutory framework for other users of roads and footpaths that was similar to what we have for drivers, then would anyone have considered manslaughter an appropriate charge in this case? Surely any charge would have been at a lower rung of the ladder, be more appropriate for the circumstances, and had a more realistic prospect of conviction. Deaths caused by cyclists are far rarer than those caused by drivers, but there’s enough of them that we’re overdue offences like causing death by careless or inconsiderate cycling, and causing death by dangerous cycling. And apparently being a careless/dangerous pedestrian.
’…leading her family to call for “lessons to be learnt”, saying that vulnerable people needed better support from the justice system.’
Surely the mistake in the first trial was that they did indeed do this, but they focussed on the wrong person?
jgh said:
“My main bugbear as a cyclist is when using shared spaces and moron pedestrians (ok, and some cyclists) completely oblivious that IN THIS COUNTRY WE TRAVEL ON THE FUCKING LEFT!!!!!!! “
Wheeled vehicles drive on the left. There are no absolute rules for pedestrians, but in this country we generally walk on the right (apparently it’s a spontaneous order thing, although like the driving it possibly goes back to where your sword goes, although for different reasons).
The problem comes when two things using different rules share the same space. If you’re in their space, you should follow their rules.
If it’s a shared space it’s more complicated, but the Highway Code says that pedestrians should still walk on the right when using a road (better to see oncoming traffic), unless they are in a large group (or at least it did when I passed my driving test).
Also boats go on the right; one of Alan Herbert’s spoof legal cases in the ‘30s had a car and a rowing boat meeting on a stretch of road that had been flooded by the Thames.
dearieme said:
My experience as a cyclist was that it was fellow cyclists whose misbehaviour most put me at risk … The great exception – the bunch of car drivers who really were a menace – were taxi-drivers.
That fits with my experience as a pedestrian in London in the ‘90s.
However I would add the third category – women in Volvos. There was something about he school run that turned middle-class Islington mothers into death-dealing monsters.
When I was crossing a side road, following the main road, if someone turned off the main road to knock me down, without indicating, it would always be one from those three groups.
However I would add the third category – women in Volvos. There was something about he school run that turned middle-class Islington mothers into death-dealing monsters.
Round here its women on the school run in general no matter what they drive. I had the misfortune to be driving through the next village past the local popular primary school yesterday morning at school time and women on the school run will just not give way on these tight roads, even when its obvious they should be slowing down so we pass at a wider part of the road. As for them popping in to passing places, forget it, they’ve got one tracked minds.
My experience as a cyclist was that it was fellow cyclists whose misbehaviour most put me at risk … The great exception – the bunch of car drivers who really were a menace – were taxi-drivers.
me too. I used to use Boris bikes when I was working in London and my main fear was lunatic bike riders cutting me up and pushing me towards traffic, especially at junctions. Taxi drivers not so much, although from my discussions with them they do see cyclists as some of the lowest life forms.
As to being a pedestrian, unless there’s clearly marked out lanes for cyclists and pedestrians I’m walking on the right and facing oncoming traffic, and I class bicycles as on coming traffic, and its their job to avoid me as they can see what’s coming behind me. I will however step aside to my right if I can and its safe to do so as I don’t want to deliberately impede them.
Cyclist was reckless to go into the road like that, therefore responsible for her own death, send the next one in please Samantha.
Looking forward to “man who shouted at woman through her windscreen” being released from his apparently impending prison sentence next year when everyone calms down a bit. Yes he was an arse but an apology and £500 to her would have surely done the job rather than an expensive prison sentence.
So we all agree, then, that Jeremy Vine should be popped into a shredder?
Popped? What happened to ssssllllooooowwwwwly?
” I had the misfortune to be driving through the next village past the local popular primary school yesterday morning at school time and women on the school run will just not give way on these tight roads, even when its obvious they should be slowing down so we pass at a wider part of the road. As for them popping in to passing places, forget it, they’ve got one tracked minds.”
Women drivers generally do not do ‘give and take’ in road situations. If someone lets me into slow moving traffic for example, its almost always a man, often a van or lorry driver. If you allow a stream of traffic through a narrow gap when you actually have priority, 80%+ of male drivers will acknowledge you as a ‘thank you’, for women its about 30%.
Its odd really because we are constantly told that women are the empathetic sex. Their behaviour at the wheel of a vehicle tells otherwise.
Jim,
Not sure it’s empathy, just different bell curve wrt good/crap drivers. Perhaps more the “worse at space/time” thing? We mention it wrt parking, but it’s obviously more than that.
If it’s a shared use space, then yes damn well the pedestrians travel on the left BECAUSE YOU’RE SHARING IT WITH OTHERS WHO ARE TRAVELLING ON THE LEFT. Shared use means *anybody*. WTF do you expect people to do – regardless of locomotion – when they approach somebody coming towards them?
The “walk on the right” thing is that you walk on the right side of a road WHERE THERE IS NO FOOTPATH, so by definition there won’t be any pedestrians approaching you BECAUSE THEY WILL BE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD. Where there is a footpath you fucking well apporach oncomers on the fucking left so that you don’t bash into each other.
Seesh, how did these people manage to get into primary school without being crushed underfoot?
“My understanding it was a shared path…”
If this was a shared space, *somebody* was in the wrong. If they were approaching each other, one of them was keeping to the wrong side and obstructing the other. If they were travelling in the same direction, the overtaker overtook inapproriately, or the overtakee irratically, unpredicatably, or misdirectionally ricocheted around getting in the way of the overtaker.
“the onus would be on the cyclist to pass safely”
It is *ALWAYS* on the onus of the *OVERTAKER* to overtake safely, regardless of who they are, as they are the one with cognisance of the situation, they can see what is happening, the one being overtaken cannot BECAUSE IT’S BEHIND THEM. Y’know, the direction in which they do not have eyes. But it is also the onus of the potential overtakee not to be a dick and behave in a manner that causes problems for people you cannot see because your eyes point forwards.
It is the onus of *ALL* people using a shared space not to act in a manner that causes that shared space to become dangerous to other users of that shared space. Whether that be letting dogs run around an harass other users, suddenly dropping anchors and sticking a pram across the path, or bouncing around irratically getting in other people’s way.
OK, I’ll walk on the left, so much easier to draw my sword and run you through.
BTW, country lanes and roads are a shared space, so why does the Highway Code say this:
See also, narrow country lanes. I’ve lost count of the number of times when a woman driving the other way and with a passing place 10 yards behind her, expects me to back a trailer 100 yards round the previous bend to the passing place behind me.
BiW
“and with a passing place 10 yards behind her”
That would be even more difficult than parking… 🙂
jgh,
“It is the onus of *ALL* people using a shared space not to act in a manner that causes that shared space to become dangerous to other users of that shared space.”
This woman was a Darwin Award winner, and thankfully didn’t lead to anyone else dying. She clearly didn’t do what you should do in this situation and slow the bike down and maybe even stop and let the pedestrian through.
As we’re at it;
School drop offs and pick-ups. Mummy parks with the flow of traffic, fine. Occasionally, they do actually check the mirrors before opening their door.
But, the kiddie’s car seat is directly behind the driver. So, they stand in the road, door open, getting their kid out of the seat, out of the car, and into the fucking road.
What the flying fuckitty fuck is wrong with you?
Anon, thanks for the breakdown.
In Germany the pedestrian would likely have been committing the offence of “coercion”, section 240, in attempting to impede the cyclist or divert her course. Is it not illegal in the UK to do things that generally endanger traffic? That would open her to a manslaughter charge.
Killing people while driving recklessly (the classic is racing through urban areas) is routinely prosecuted as murder here.
“Not sure it’s empathy, just different bell curve wrt good/crap drivers. Perhaps more the “worse at space/time” thing? We mention it wrt parking, but it’s obviously more than that.”
I wasn’t referencing empathy with regards to driving skill, back round corners, driving close to the edge of the road etc, more the ability to put yourself in the other drivers shoes, and let them do something that they don’t have the ‘right of way’ to do – for example letting someone out from a side road in heavy traffic – by ‘rights’ they should have to sit there for ever until the traffic subsides, an empathetic person would look at that situation and think ‘Its only going to put me back one car, so let the poor bugger out, otherwise he’ll be there for hours’. Similarly if a driver stops and lets you through a narrow gap when technically they have the right of way an empathetic person says thank you, with a raise of the hand or suchlike, to acknowledge that they have deferred to you when they didn’t have to. Women don’t seem to have this nature, by and large. Which is odd, because we are constantly told they are the empathetic sex.
Jim,
I understand.
I think what I was trying to allude to – with my customary lack of eloquence/precision – was more that if someone is firmly in control of a situation, then sure, attributes like empathy (or thinking more widely with the “acting rationally” examples you’ve given) will more easily express themselves. Alternatively, if technically less firmly in command of one’s environment, then it’s more effort involved to manage the extras.
I see lots of drivers who are let’s just say “more focused on the immediate” and hence less aware of their wider surroundings/circumstances, and yes I agree – on balance (bell curves etc) more likely to be women. FWIW, I might see that less as an empathy issue and more one of broader competence (or experience). That was what I was trying to allude to.
Although – perhaps there will also be those just accustomed to getting their own way (ruling their roost etc), which might translate into particular driving styles! Which would indeed express as lacking in empathy… 🙂