Offences Committed By Cyclists

No, we are not going to talk about jumping red lights. Just stop doing it.

The law relating to offences committed by cyclists has evolved rather more slowly than that relating to offences by drivers. As with most evolution, this is because there has not been the same pressure to change: there are many more cases involving poor driving than poor cycling. I am not going to get into a debate about whether this is because cyclists are better than drivers or because of some mythical “war on drivers”. Let’s just work on the basis that it is because cyclists empirically cause less damage and kill and injure fewer people, so fewer cases come to court. If you want to have some other reason in your head, feel free to do so, but please keep it there.

Over the years, driving offences have proliferated. Not so long ago, you really only had causing death by dangerous driving; dangerous driving and careless or inconsiderate driving. Now there is also causing serious injury by dangerous driving, causing death by careless driving, causing death by careless driving while over the limit for alcohol or drugs, causing death by driving while uninsured and so on. Most of these have arisen because of some form of outcry at perceived injustice.

The same outcry has rarely arisen in the case of cycling, with the result that as far as the Road Traffic Act 1988 (the main Act that covers this sort of thing) is concerned, we really only have the offences of dangerous cycling and careless or inconsiderate cycling. These are under ss28 and 29 respectively. Both are triable only by the Magistrates’ Court and carry a maximum penalty of a fine. They are not endorsable, so you cannot get points on a driving licence for them. Interestingly (if you like that sort of thing), you can be disqualified from driving, since the Courts have the power to do that in relation to any offence.

There is also an offence under s30 of the Act:

Note that the test for this is not whether you are over a certain limit as it is for driving. The question is simply whether are capable of having proper control.

Miscellaneous Points

Speed limits do not apply to pedal cycles. At least, regular speed limits on roads do not. There are byelaws in some places that impose speed limits binding on cyclists. This tends to be in parks and the like. Even if you are not in such an area, however, excessive speed may be evidence of dangerous or careless cycling.

There is no law against using a handheld mobile phone while cycling, more’s the pity. As with speed, however, it may well be evidence of dangerous or careless cycling.

Deaths and Injuries Caused By Cyclists

You’ve probably heard of Charlie Alliston, the cyclist who hit and killed a pedestrian who stepped into the road in front of him while he was riding a fixed gear bike with no front brake. I am not going to discuss his case in any depth and I am certainly not going to go into the rights and wrongs of it. I mention it only because it brought to public attention the vexed question of deaths and serious injuries caused by cyclists.

As noted above, there are no offences under the Road Traffic Act 1988 dealing with causing death of serious injury by cycling. This has in the past led to some results that are arguably anomalous: in 2014, for example, a cyclist jumped a red light and hit a pedestrian, causing serious brain injury. The cyclist was fined £850 (the maximum for the offence being £1000). Readers are free to praise or criticise this outcome at their leisure (ideally not on my blog or timeline, as it really isn’t the point).

The lack of dedicated offences under the Act leaves a couple of options. The first is to use the old offence of causing bodily harm by wanton or furious driving and the other is to charge a non-driving offence.

Wanton or Furious Driving

Yes, it sounds ridiculous, now can we move on? It doesn’t even make the top ten ridiculous sounding offences in English law, trust me.

Section 35 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 (now you see why it has such a silly name) reads as follows:

This used to be a really useful offence for drivers but the Road Traffic Act means that it is rarely used now (although it can be useful if the offence happens other than on a road). It remains useful for offences involving cycling, however.

Note that it includes any vehicle (including bikes). Note also that it involves any kind of bodily harm (which includes death). The bit about wanton or furious has been held by the Courts basically to amount to the same thing as dangerous driving (dealt with in my last post, here).

This offence remains probably the most useful one for prosecuting cases of injury or death caused by cycling. It is what Charlie Alliston was convicted of and he was not the first. In 2008 and 2009 people went to prison (well, Young Offenders’ Institutions…) for this offence. In each case, they were riding on the pavement when they hit and killed pedestrians.

Manslaughter and GBH

The other option is to charge an offence that does not actually require driving or riding as part of it. The main ones are manslaughter (if death is caused) or causing grievous bodily harm. These are both offences that could quite happily be the subject of separate posts (and probably will be). I shall give the briefest outline here.

Before I do so, I should note that these offences and others like them are used against drivers as well. A driver who deliberately drives at somebody and kills them may well find themselves charged with murder and/or manslaughter. Causing grievous bodily harm is rarely charged anymore because it has a maximum penalty of 5 years, which is the same as causing serious injury by dangerous driving. Before that offence was created, however, I personally prosecuted a number of drivers for causing grievous bodily harm where their driving was especially bad and it was felt that the 2 year maximum for dangerous driving was insufficient. What is still sometimes charged is the more serious offence of causing grievous bodily harm with intent, which carries a maximum sentence of life. Again, this requires an actual intention to cause serious injury, so is only used where the car is being used deliberately as a weapon. Technically, you could charge a cyclist with murder or causing GBH with intent but this is unlikely as very few cyclists deliberately hit people with their bikes. If their riding is bad enough, however, they may well be charged with manslaughter or causing grievous bodily harm.

Manslaughter can be committed in two ways (as far as driving is concerned): unlawful act manslaughter and gross negligence manslaughter. Neither is specific to driving but they can apply to it.

Unlawful act manslaughter is when you are doing something that is unlawful and dangerous and you cause death. Now, you might think that this therefore covers any death by illegal driving but you would be wrong: the Courts have held that dangerous driving and careless driving are not enough to trigger the unlawful act part of manslaughter.  This may seem nonsensical but there it is.  This offence is supposed to be something more than causing death by dangerous driving.  It is therefore generally reserved for cases where there is intention to cause either fear or injury (short of GBH, because then it would be murder).  The killers of PC Andrew Harper were convicted of unlawful act manslaughter.

Gross negligence manslaughter has a definition that does not really need to be defined here beyond the fact that in the context of driving it basically covers cases that could be charged as causing death by dangerous driving but where the driving was even worse than that normally associated with that offence.  I expect this offence to stop being used almost entirely in the context of driving once the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill increases the maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving to life, since that is the main reason to charge manslaughter (maximum life) over death by dangerous (maximum 14 years).

And after that minor detour into driving offences, let’s return to our bikes.

GBH by Cyclists

As noted above, cases of cyclists deliberately ramming people are rare, so cases of causing GBH with intent will also be rare.  That leaves the option of charging the offence of causing grievous bodily harm.  This requires that the injury be caused deliberately (rare) or “recklessly”.  Recklessness here means that the cyclist recognised that there was a risk of causing injury but went on and risked it anyway.  Clearly, that is going to be reserved for cycling that is obviously dangerous.  Given the option of the “wanton or furious” offence, GBH is likely to be charged only in cases more serious than that, since wanton and furious carries a maximum 2 years and GBH 5.

Manslaughter by Cyclists

Unlawful act manslaughter is likely to be extremely rare since, as we have said, cyclists tend not to ram people deliberately.  Gross negligence manslaughter is far more likely.  Taking the CPS charging standards for driving (here) and adapting them for cycling, it requires that the cycling fall far below the acceptable standard and that it give rise to an obvious and serious risk of death. This is what Charlie Alliston was charged with but he was acquitted by the jury (but convicted of the “wanton or furious” offence).

Realistically, cases of manslaughter by cyclists are likely to be relatively few in number since even most cases of death (and very few people are killed by cyclists each year) will not reach the requisite standard. This does have one quirk to it: most cases of causing death will be prosecuted as causing bodily harm by wanton or furious driving. This has a maximum sentence of 2 years. If somebody causes serious injury short of death, however, they can be charged with causing GBH, which carries a maximum of 5 years. While not ideal, in practice this is unlikely to have much effect, since it is highly unlikely that a cycling case would receive anything like such a high sentence.

Conclusions

As usual, this was a rather less succinct summary than I planned when I started it. We have seen the various offences that can be committed by cyclists. They are: dangerous cycling and careless cycling; cycling whilst unfit (all under the Road Traffic Act 1988); causing bodily harm by wanton or furious driving; causing GBH; manslaughter.

There is an argument to be made that the law on cycling offences should be brought rather more into line with driving offences. Not that the penalties should necessarily be the same (since fault rarely is, given the relative mass and speed of the vehicles) but there is something to be said for having offences of causing death by dangerous cycling and causing serious injury by dangerous (or careless) cycling. That would obviate the need to rely on offences that were not really designed for the situation and would help to rationalise the law somewhat.

But that is topic for another day.