A lot of tragic and pertinent stuff there. What sticks out to me is the shocking levels of victim-blaming from the Metropolitan Police. wtf?

I’m unclear on what she was found not guilty of. There are differing reports of what the charge was with some sources saying death by dangerous driving and some deiving without due care. This is important because I agree she didn’t necessarily cause the death which may have been prevented with a helmet (and in court it can be that cut and dry), but she’s clearly not driving with care and attention if she didn’t even stop!

The charge was causing death by careless driving.

condolences to his family

That makes me afraid to ride my bike in traffic.
If a cyclist with lights on a lit road,cycling reasonable can be killed with the driver not seeing him before, during, after a collison ,not prosecuted by the police, where is my protection?

Thanks Bez, in that case the result makes sense to me given how the courts work. It also explains some of the attitude of the police since they would have known they couldn’t get a guilty verdict on that charge. I’m curious why they tried for that though, perhaps shooting for a bigger penalty?

Ms Purcell must be well connected.

Wear hi viz? Have you ever been driving in twilight and seen a grey/silver car with no lights on? Why should drivers not all have to drive bright yellow cars?

I agree she didn’t necessarily cause the death which may have been prevented with a helmet (and in court it can be that cut and dry), but she’s clearly not driving with care and attention if she didn’t even stop!

Except that is not the case at all. The case law on what constitutes causing death is actually surprisingly robust. e.g. if the passenger in another car wasn’t wearing a seatbelt (a legal requirement, unlike a cycle helmet) you can still cause their death; if a person gets injured and then months later dies of an infection associated with the treatment, you can still cause their death. The CDF prosecutor should have emphasised these points in his closing speech, so that the jury understood too – I am not sure if the (s)he or the Judge did so. The CPS know this, it is their job to know and understand the law and make charging decisions based on it. I assumed, seemingly wrongly, that the police had to submit a report on every fatal road accident.

I can’t help feel that CDF have let inexperience beat them here. If they had known the expert witness would undermine the case they could have called their own expert to give contrary views. I don’t know how experienced their prosecutor was, but I am sure if it had been a high profile case the CPS would have had a barrister on it who knew the case law inside out, was used to defence tactics around it being too difficult to drive on busy streets, and would have asked pointed questions to point out the apparent failings in the accident investigators evidence.

How does a case like the get reviewed? There just seems so many errors, and wider issues of attitude and wording of guidelines.

I don’t think there is any realistic route to do that. Double Jeopardy means its very hard – in theory the appeal court can order a retrial if “new and compelling evidence” comes to light. In practice I think it has only been used for murder trials, and even then would need some evidence that wasn’t available to the original prosecution.

I’m not sure if it has already had an inquest – that would seem to be the only prospect now for questioning some of the comments. However I am not sure that the inquest remit really stretches to the investigation? The right coroner would have some robust words though. The wrong coroner may just reinforce the issues.

.       Mr Mason was displaying lights on his bike, but these lights could have easily be lost to a driver’s sight in a busy London road in the dark where there are numerous other lights displayed.

This seems to be the crux of the aquittal. The driver consistently maintained she didn’t see Mr Mason, and the police agree that this could easily be the case. Or at least in the opinion of the reviewing officer. Add that no witnesses saw the actual “collision” I’d have been more suprised if a guilty verdict had been given.
The whole thing is very sad and difficult for the Mason family, they very much have my condolences .

Thanks Bez, in that case the result makes sense to me given how the courts work. It also explains some of the attitude of the police since they would have known they couldn’t get a guilty verdict on that charge. I’m curious why they tried for that though, perhaps shooting for a bigger penalty?

Causing death by careless driving is the lowest charge that could have been brought in relation to causing a death. Are you thinking of causing death by dangerous driving?

I can’t help feel that CDF have let inexperience beat them here. If they had known the expert witness would undermine the case they could have called their own expert to give contrary views.

Pc Gamble was not an expert witness, he was the investigating officer. Both prosecution and defence obtained reports from expert witnesses and the former’s was indeed called.

Exactly one week ago I spent 4 hours riding all over the centre of a busy capital city with my kids.
No hi-vis
No helmets
No danger
No assertive or especially vigilant cycling required.
Just efficiently and safely going from a to b.

The difference being it was Copenhagen.

And now we are home I just despair.

It isn’t just infrastructure that makes Copenhagen work. It is attitude. Doing the decent thing. Everybody obeying the rules and respecting each other (drivers, cyclists and pedestrians).

I’d love to see the same thing here, but simply don’t know how such a total change in attitude could be achieved.

Read a report many years ago how a motorcyclist tested out different levels of visibility enhancing equipment each month & read similar report more recently by cyclists – the only apparel that made any difference to drivers behaviour was to have the appearance of a police officer 🙁
Sadly the only reason i wear hi viz and helmet is to attempt to prevent victim blaming should the worst occur.
I also think there is a certain amount of truth in at fault drivers not being able to mentally accept what a terrible thing they have done so somehow blank out reality.
I have said it before but having been a witness to a near fatality accident – if you are ever unfortunate enough to be in a similar situation, record and photograph as much as you can, do not expect or rely on the authorities to do it 🙁
Thoughts to any family’s involved in such tragic circumstances.

Notwithstanding the MET’s deplorable approach to this case, I agree that the crux of the problem in this and other cases is the way the legislation for careless and dangerous driving is understood, explained and applied.

Duty of care, required skill set & knowledge upon anyone operating said machinery in any other environment than the PH requires routine testing to ensure the operators skill are still upto speed.

For some **** reason this train of thought is NOT deemed applicable or reasonable for the majority of road users…………

The sad fact of it is your right, because if ‘we’ (society) tasked everyone to drive with the care they really should the police and courts would be overloaded in days. Look at how many cars crash into each other, and nothing is done about 99% of those incidents, it just goes through insurance.

In this case, driver in a complex and busy environment was clearly fixated on what most drivers are, the red traffic light they were approaching. There are accidents every day of drivers crashing into a car directly in front of them because the driver is looking BEYOND what is in front of them.

It isn’t just infrastructure that makes Copenhagen work. It is attitude. Doing the decent thing. Everybody obeying the rules and respecting each other (drivers, cyclists and pedestrians).

I’d love to see the same thing here, but simply don’t know how such a total change in attitude could be achieved.

^ This x 1000
Sadly our Brexiters seem to be largely of the Daily Mail/Soaraway Sun – ‘I hate cyclists’ mindset, and with some kind of ‘road-tax’ on the horizon it seems set for their aggressively-voiced entitlement mentality to only increase on our roads.

In this case, driver in a complex and busy environment was clearly fixated on what most drivers are, the red traffic light they were approaching.

I suspect it was the elephant in the room of mobile phone use, not impending traffic signals. The witnesses imply that the driver was not concentrating on her surroundings. (Faster than the rest… etc.)

Similarly the helmet or absence of such is completely irrelevant. Quite aside from there being no evidence that Mr Mason would have survived the result of the driver’s actions had he been wearing a helmet, in English law you take your victim as you find them. It’s not the case that the law allows you to excuse yourself from criminal liability because the victim could have taken further precautions to mitigate the impacts of your actions upon them.

The police making the absence of a helmet an issue, let alone their implication that it would have changed the outcome, is utterly deplorable.

It’s all very well discussing it amongst ourselves here in our safe, warm and secure forum, but what do we do about it? We can’t all move to Copenhagen. Anyone got any ideas?

The frustration from such cases and the lack of any indication that a change in the law or even a change in the guidelines is even being considered suggests that the only answer to that is vigilantism

It isn’t just infrastructure that makes Copenhagen work. It is attitude. Doing the decent thing. Everybody obeying the rules and respecting each other (drivers, cyclists and pedestrians).

I’d love to see the same thing here, but simply don’t know how such a total change in attitude could be achieved.

Obsessing over the punishment of a tiny minority of drivers whose actions cause a fatality won’t do it. Even if Gail Purcell had been found guilty, it would not act as a deterrent to other bad drivers, because they do not consider themselves to be bad drivers, and they would not identify with her and think that they could just as easily similarly kill a cyclist or pedestrian, and so they will not modify their behaviour and driving.

Every day tens/hundreds of thousands of other drivers drive just as badly as Gail Purcell or worse. Even though 99.999% of the time there is no accident and no one is hurt, that is where we need to focus our attention.

My own view is that some of the approaches used in workplace health and safety and in management systems generally should be introduced. So the priority should be on reducing all ‘deviations’ (bad driving) by ‘corrective actions’, rather than punishing a tiny minority who just happen to fall foul of the law of large numbers and be the one whose mistake causes a death or injury (I’m not suggesting for one minute that they should not be punished, but that their punishment is not the priority when it comes to achieving improved road safety). By ‘corrective action’ I mean things like giving police traffic officers the power to require a driver to re-take their driving test for careless driving (not as a criminal punishment, but as a ‘corrective action’, in the same way a warehouse manager might decide a fork lift driver who has had an accident should undergo early refresher training and testing). Similarly, if a driver exceeds a certain number of points on their licence, take it a step further and require the driver to pass an advanced driving test. I suspect that fear of being required to pass a test would also be a far more effective deterrent than fines and points.

I would even extend the same approach to cyclists, so for example a cyclist who jumps a red light is required to do a cycling proficiency course.

nail, head interface – though it’s worse than that, I don’t think Gail considers herself to be a bad driver, and nor apparently does PC Gamble or 12 people sitting in a courtroom.

Hence whilst I agree that the focus needs to be on all the bad drivers, including the majority who are lucky, you have to start by changing those attitudes before you can get anywhere with addressing the bigger picture. The scale of punishment for drivers causing death certainly isn’t the most important thing, but you do at least have to find fault with their actions!

I suspect that fear of being required to pass a test would also be a far more effective deterrent than fines and points.

I would even extend the same approach to cyclists, so for example a cyclist who jumps a red light is required to do a cycling proficiency course.

I suspect you’re right, and that punishment needs to be separated from licensing. Satisfying as it might have been, it’s not obvious that locking up Purcell would have been useful, or even justified. Stopping her driving, either permanently or until she had demonstrated sustained attention and competence might have been both.

Even better might be to make the bad drivers pass Bikeability first.

Whilst the views expressed by Slowster are admirable, I fear we lack the numbers of traffic police to make any significant impact on people’s driving standards. I speed on my motorbike because I know the chances of getting caught are slim. If the odds of getting caught became much higher I’d not do it. I know where the fixed cameras are and the prospect of being seen by a police car are slight. I seldom see them when on the road, likewise camera vans.

We need to strengthen the fact that a licence is a privilege, not a right. The more that privilege is withdrawn the better things might become. We also need to treat those who drive without a licence more rigorously. I’ve lost count of the number of time I’ve seen disqualified drivers given little more than another disqualification on shows like Traffic Cops and the like. What’s the Point? They didn’t stop driving the first time, what makes the courts think that they’ll obey the order this time. Lock them up.

We won’t change people’s mind set by being nice, they’ll continue to take the piss. The more we read about the likes of Ms Purcell getting away with murder the more well think that we will too. I doubt that she meant to kill, but she did and should be punished in my opinion.

If nothing else, hopefully this tragedy will get the Police to take a long hard look at how they investigate these cases. Their failure to follow up witnesses and evidence at the time is what has caused this terrible saga to drag on, and so influenced the jury to acquit.

Let’s concentrate on pushing them to get that right for the future. Nothing to be gained now from continuing to point out how crap the driving/observation was.

How do we get rid of ‘careless driving’ from the statue? It seems to be that dangerous driving is used basically never in RTCs involving cyclists. Online petitions seem to be ineffectual so how do we lean on justice ministers

how do we lean on justice ministers

Via your MP.

makes for an interesting read. I can understand not seeing bikes on the road even when they having lights in some circumstances. There is also the issue of ineffectual and poorly positioned lights. I’ve lost count of the number of people in Glasgow that don’t have lights, don’t wear helmets, have lights in stupid places or pointing down so you can hardly see them.

How does not wearing a hat excuse an inability to see someone?

its not, I’m assuming its listed because it contributed to his death

Only in the same way that not having one “contributes” to the death of a pedestrian killed by someone hitting them with a car.

Anyway, you’d dropped it into a list of reasons for not seeing someone, which was what I took to be the context. Hence my error 😉

You’re assuming? You listed it!

If you’re referring the report in the OP, then there appears to be no evidence that the lack of helmet made any difference – though it’s fundamentally irrelevant to the liability of the driver and appears to have been thrown in simply to shift responsibility (which amongst other things leads me to question the motivations of PC Gamble – if I was inclined to vigilantism I’d be tempted to start with him rather than the driver, thankfully he has retired and hopefully is an example of a dying breed).

I referenced because of the unsafe manner of people I see in Glasgow cycling.

Did the CDF forget to cross examine PC gamble? Surely any competent brief could have pissed holes in that ‘evidence’?

This bit boils my wee:

“….. in a further interview, she explained that she heard an impact to the right of her car, but she “didn’t know if it was a pedestrian or if something had come from the sky, a bag of potatoes”.

So, what’s more likely to have caused an impact in the middle of London? A sack of spuds falling from the sky, or an actual person? So she carries on driving, presumably because she thought it most likely to be the potatoes?

Imagine a scenario where everything is the same except she didn’t hit the cyclist but, instead, she hit and killed a police officer crossing the road.

Does anyone think there would be the same legal outcome?

Why are cyclists consistently regarded as second rate citizens?

Utterly disgusting.

This concluding point is a biggy IMO:

The current classification of careless and dangerous driving offences, how driving standards are assessed, and charging standards, are simply not fit for purpose. They must be changed, with the standard of driving required being more objectively determined. Currently, the law requires jurors to consider whether another driver’s standard of driving fell “below”, or “far below” the standard which they believe would be expected of “a careful and competent driver”, whatever that standard might be. One person might well think they’re a careful and competent driver as they overtake a cyclist whilst speeding, leaving a 30 cm gap. I would disagree, so our perspectives on what falls “below the competent and careful driver” test will be irreconcilable. We are asking jurors to apply a standard that few understand, and which is far too subjective.

It’s easy to blame the jury, and say they simply carry the prejudices and bad habits of drivers in to court with them, but if the measurement of “careless” or “dangerous” isn’t actually defined with clear measurable criteria then prosecutions will continue to fail or defendants plead down to lesser charges…

Such a definition might not be particularly easy to come up with but it would be worthwhile.

We’re essentially disposable on the roads.
Every time another of these private prosecutions fails, it subtly reinforces the idea that basically a driver can get away with pretty much anything. So long as you’re not blind drunk or more than about 50mph above the speed limit, so long as you stop and express great remorse you’ll be let off.

Assuming death of the cyclist, at every single point the courts will seek to blame that individual. They shouldn’t have been riding on that particular road, they should have been wearing a helmet/hi-vis, they should have had lights, they shouldnt have swerved/been that far out in the road, there is a good cycle path only half a mile away which they should have been using…

At every possible turn, the cyclist’s actions will be questioned, picked to pieces and they will be blamed while the driver (who remember is of previously unblemished character / a good Christian / a charity fundraiser*) will be left to get away with a “momentary lapse” caused no doubt by her two angelic children in the back or some other such harmless “it could have happened to anyone” scenario.

*all of these have been used in court cases where the driver has killed a cyclist.

It really is disgusting.

A momentary lapse of justice.

Adopting Strict Liability as law as in Holland and Denmark could help a lot. Not just for poor drivers but also for poor cyclists.

I suspect the issue there is the standard of proof required – which seems the angle defence solicitors work in all similar cases. All they have to do is find some aspect of the case to introduce “reasonable doubt”, and the word of a police officer however discredited it might be under cross examination is sufficient for that with a jury which is likely to be sympathetic when told about the difficulties faced by drivers.