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You wouldnt think it’s ok for a car driver to honk the horn and drive around a pedestrian who has stepped out without stopping
I don’t think you’d get much argument to that here. However the courts clearly have a very different view of cyclists involved in serious injuries and motorists. Wanton and furious driving offence has a 100% conviction rate in the last 10 and every one of those cyclists has gone to prison for between 50% - 75% of the full tariff, regardless of a couple of them admitting the offence at the earliest opportunity.
If only careless driving had that level of success at getting convictions and custodial sentences the road would much safer and we’d need to build about 10 new prisons, a year!
I don’t really get the puzzlement around this. You wouldnt think it’s ok for a car driver to honk the horn and drive around a pedestrian who has stepped out without stopping so why think its ok for a cyclist? First thing any road user should do when seeing a hazard is apply the brakes. If you don’t drop your speed, whichever vehicle you are operating, then you are consciously deciding to risk a worse injury to the pedestrian you might be about to hit. First course of action is always reduce speed, everything else is secondary.