MSPs might do something useful: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-24719458

Ahhh wrong forum

top news that.

not before time.

heres hoping they get it pushed through.

Guilty until proven innocent – not good for anything

Guilty until proven innocent – not good for anything

unfortunately this misunderstanding is all too common.

General public do not understand civil/ criminal distinction. until they do they will believe as jambalaya (possibly) does; that people are to be found guilty of something.

lets hope this sets a precedent for other UK nations. I won’t hold my breath for England though.

Why is England always the last with anything like this?

e.g.
plastic bag tax
smoking ban
Right to roam
I’m sure there are others???

Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are often way ahead of us in these types of issues

thomthumb – Member

General public do not understand civil/ criminal distinction.

Then why don’t you briefly explain the distinctions, Mr Thumb?

Guilty until proven innocent – not good for anything

Like when someone runs in the back of you – that sort of thing?

Like when someone runs in the back of you – that sort of thing?

Yer I reckon, presumed liability.. I think the idea is to make you very very careful.

It’s no good driving around to the letter of law, whilst ignoring actual dangers an hazards. Like would you drive at 30mph past a school where there were loads of kids milling around by the gate/road? I know I would not as I do not want to experience/inflict the pain of killing/maiming someone, even if it is their “fault” for stepping out in the road.

What thomthumb is getting at is that this applies to civil liability, e.g. insurance.

So the onus of care is put on lorry drivers to not crush car drivers, on car drivers to not crush cyclists and on cyclists to not run down pedestrians. If you can prove the ‘weaker’ party was at fault then fine, but otherwise the bigger, stronger, safer party has responsibility to avoid harming the more vulnerable people so they will be held (civilly) responsible in the event of a collision.

This can only be a good thing.

@tomthumb and @Junkyard I appreciate your points but making motorist automatically liable financially until proven not to be the case will just encourage more reckless riding and an excuse for higher insurance premiums. What we need is proper sentencing for causing death or serious injury on the roads, not just of cyclists but anyone including pedestrians and other motorists. Financial settlements then follow.

Junkyard – lazarus

Like when someone runs in the back of you – that sort of thing?

Any chance of a link to that particular bit of law, I’ve never actually seen it?

making motorist automatically liable financially until proven not to be the case will just encourage more reckless riding

Really?

Do you think the people who ride like d*cks are planning on hanging around to exchange insurance details if they scrape a car?

Or are you saying people who are safe riders now will deliberately get themselves run over to make some money?

Do you think the people who ride like d*cks are planning on hanging around to exchange insurance details if they scrape a car?

They don’t need insurance.
Why not hang around for some free cash?
They haven’t “scraped a car”, they’ve just been hit by one! 😀

Bloody nightmare idea and will cause even more anti-cycling bile and hatred.

We don’t need a new laws – we need to enforce the ones we have already and get the Police/CPS to investigate and prosecute bad driving/riding as appropriate, which will then help the correct decisions to be made on civil liability.

I don’t know if I should admit this on here but <deep breath> I drive a car. There , I’ve said it. And the thought of being expected to pay a higher premium because some idiot (who happened to be on a bike) ran into me doesn’t fill me with joy.

But if he ran into you it wouldn’t be your fault.

Stuff your car insurance premiums.
If it reduces the chance of me being run over, it’s a good thing.

Think about this another way.
God forbid you get knocked of your bike and die. Do you want your family to go without, because the driver lied, and said you swerved into their path. Meaning no insurance claim?

if this gets passed im going to reverse over myself

the systems already so **** stupid ill probably get a payout

God forbid you get knocked of your bike and die. Do you want your family to go without

God forbid people are sensible enough to get life insurance rather than freeload

It will be about as effective as those ‘baby on board’ signs, as I wasn’t planning on driving into you anyway 🙄

I drive 20000 miles a year including a fair bit of urban driving and I have absolutely no issue with this at all as a driver.

Having been hit by an inattentive driver in August who did £300 of damage to clothes and bike I support as a cyclist too.

The arguments about nurturing further hostility seem weak to me because firstly it would be hard to create more and also as I just don’t think it’s a rational process to hate cyclists.

Who the hell is going to engineer a bike-car crash deliberately? far better to engineer a shunt in the car that involves rear ending or a flash for cash and get a definite Insurance payout.

You don’t hear many people fixing rear end shunts in front of hgvs do you?

Why should I have to pay for life insurance.
Why not the thiefing bastard insurance company of the shit driver in a 2 ton killing machine?

Why should I have to pay for life insurance.

worlds not safe is it?

some evangelists cyclists would blame shit drivers if they had a heart attack whilst taking a shit (more common than you think)

Massively in favour of this – if it means a few more drivers actively paying attention to the roads, and driving more carefully around cyclists, it’s simply a good idea.

“Lifes not fair”
No, but this will make it a bit fairer.
As an HGV driver, this will affect me more, because everyone is more vulnerable compared to me. But I still think it’s a good thing, it might calm people down on the roads.

Got to be a good idea. Might not stop drivers driving like **** but will make it a lot easier to get compensated for any loss or injuries. And you never know, the publicity that a new law for this might make drivers a little more aware when they’re over taking.

Who the hell is going to engineer a bike-car crash deliberately? far better to engineer a shunt in the car that involves rear ending or a flash for cash and get a definite Insurance payout.

You don’t hear many people fixing rear end shunts in front of hgvs do you?

How can you be so naive?
The less desirables will be getting cheap bikes and just nudging down the side of cars. The car doesn’t have to even be moving for someone on a bike to claim personal injury in a 2mph ‘collision’ It is strict liability remember so you could just pick a random reg plate off ebay and accuse. There may not be any marks from a car hitting a bike. There will be in a car crash.

People don’t often fix rear enders in front of hgv’s as:
a) many are camera’d up now
b)there is a lot more risk of serious injury
c)there is a big up front cost to set up something like this
ie. people you can ‘trust’ to lie
the cost of the car you use to crash
the cost of the insurance the car will need to have to be on the road
d) the fact that it isn’t strict liability
e) a host of other costs associated with a scam

Not having a pop at you personally but I guess you must have more faith in the human race than I do. See this for reference

Carer sues for loss of earnings after patient dies.

So, two lines of thought then:

We have sufficient laws – they just need to be better applied
Vs
We need something to make drivers better – perhaps an easier to apply legal position

At the moment – from all the comments on previous threads relating to motor vehicles and cyclists deaths – it seems that there is a defacto presumption that cyclists are to blame. So why not formalise a position that unambiguously offers greater protection to the more vulnerable road user?

I still think the biggest problem for cyclists is that the Police don’t take cyclists’ rights seriously and when a case does go to court the judge / jury don’t take cyclists’ rights seriously either. The case of the manslaughtering doctor that was covered at length here yesterday being just the latest in a long line of examples.

God forbid you get knocked of your bike and die. Do you want your family to go without
God forbid people are sensible enough to get life insurance rather than freeload

Is dying not a really poor way of freeloading?

Are insurance premiums prohibitively expensive in Europe? Because virtually every country in the EU has such laws. How do they manage ( & why are drivers so much more considerate to cyclists in those countries?)

Is dying not a really poor way of freeloading?

its probably a pretty poor way of doing a lot of things truth be known

Are insurance premiums prohibitively expensive in Europe? Because virtually every country in the EU has such laws. How do they manage ( & why are drivers so much more considerate to cyclists in those countries?)

we covered this last time round bay saying people in europe were more honest and less likely to screw each other over at every opportunity ,

“Lifes not fair”
No, but this will make it a bit fairer.
As an HGV driver, this will affect me more, because everyone is more vulnerable compared to me. But I still think it’s a good thing, it might calm people down on the roads.

Why will it affect you more? Im assuming as a cyclist your driving your HGV with a more cautious approach

Tbark I don’t consider I am being naive just making a judgement based on what I assess to be the benefits and pitfalls of using a fake bike crash as a cash generating scam.

In particular I think people may be under estimating the insurers ability to fight when things look dodgy.

My view its that a 2mph rigged crash won’t bring the rewards that overtaking someone in a car and hauling on the anchors with four of your mates will. In addition if they cock it up then they go unprotected under a car.

When I combine those aspects and what is being talked about here is assumed but not guaranteed liability and that insurers won’t want to pay when there is a hint of fraud I come to the view that it’s not going going to be a wholesale issue that affects vast numbers of motorists

I could be proved wrong and I accept there is a risk but I think the risks outweigh the benefits. On the flip side how many cyclists get screwed when they deserve to get paid now? No justice system is perfect and there will always be some innocent victims.

some evangelists cyclists would blame shit drivers if they had a heart attack whilst taking a shit (more common than you think)

I think it’s fair.

There’s no way you can hit a cyclist if you have left a safe amount of room and are travelling at a safe speed while passing.

Can of worms…

compositepro – Member

God forbid people are sensible enough to get life insurance rather than freeload

I was going to post a more considered response but it basically amounted to WTF, LOL so I’ll just leave it at that.

I don’t know if I should admit this on here but <deep breath> I drive a car. There , I’ve said it. And the thought of being expected to pay a higher premium because some idiot (who happened to be on a bike) ran into me doesn’t fill me with joy.

If you are worried about your premiums then I’d be looking at the ambulance chasing lawyers rather than cyclists.

We were involved in a minor bump (not at fault) 18 months ago. Very minor, but enough to dent the bumper on what was then a brand new car, so I put in a claim with our insurance company. Somehow our details must now be on some database, which shows that we never claimed for personal injury (because there wasn’t any). I kid you not, we have had at least one call a day for the last six months from companies offering to get us money for the injury we suffered. Pointing out that there wasn’t any injury doesn’t help. Once they’ve finished listing all the things you can “self certify” (i.e. lie about) and how much you could get (four figure sum seems be be a favourite phrase) they’ll then tell you that they are happy to claim for the “inconvenience you suffered”. Off course all these awards (plus their nice fat fee) go back on our premiums. To be honest it’s almost worth claiming for something just to stop the damn phone calls, but I’d love to know how much of my premiums is due to scams like these.