PI Brief Update

Two Wheels Good, Four Wheels Bad? - Stuart Gist, Clarke Willmott LLP

19/06/15. I was on my way to work last week partly lost in the fug of an early start (I am not really a morning person). Like so many Bristolian commuters, I have a predictable if slightly convoluted weekly travel diary comprising of some days when I drive part way to work, park by my daughter’s nursery to drop her off and then walk the rest of the way in. On my child free days, I cycle.

As with other cities, the morning commute is a battle of wills between the majority on four wheels and the minority on two in an environment where our City Mayor, in his wisdom, has imposed a blanket 20mph speed limit across the built up areas of the City. The effect is therefore, a multi-coloured and mobile mass of individuals, each vying for their precious piece of tarmac as we all meander, at more or less equivalent pace, towards our respective destinations.

Anyway, I was walking to work minding my own business, and as I stepped out onto a zebra crossing with the green man showing, I was stopped in my tracks as a fellow traveller on a folding bike whisked past me either oblivious or indifferent to the red light that had met her at the crossing.

“Hey, the red light means stop!” was my retort as she wafted down the road – hardly Shakespeare but about the most I could muster at that time of the morning, to which she replied, looking back, “not for bikes!”

My immediate chagrin was shortly replaced by more balanced reflection – I know that she is certainly wrong, and the laws of the road dictate that all vehicles are obliged to obey traffic signals, but thinking about it, how much do I really know about the laws as they relate to cyclists on the road? As a personal injury lawyer I really ought to know it all, but do I really?

In Bristol, as undoubtedly with other compact cities, the relationship between motorists and cyclists is mainly a fraught one, very much a “them-and-us” situation. But I am both, so I set about freshening up my knowledge so that next time I feel obliged to shout at a fellow commuter, I can at least be sure that I have right on my side.

So here is a selection of some of the questions I sought to answer, together with some myth-debunking thrown in:

“The legal obligation to stop at a red traffic light doesn’t apply to pedal cycles on the road”...

Image ©iStockphoto.com/drudoran

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