2009-06-12 - Rider Down/Fatality, Holborn

In the Metro last Friday there was an article about a city Co Director woman who was killed on a bike in London, regretably other "lesser" peeps don't seem to get mentioned. The death and injury rate are being swept under the carpet.

To be fair to newspapers, some families simply don't want the publicity, but you're right--which cases attract attention is very much a random process. There is definitely a bias towards people who can be written about (from the newspaper's perspective) in glowing terms--standard ideas of 'attractive' and 'successful'.

Someone told me yesterday that the law that the motorist was guilty until proven innocent in place in parts of Europe was rejected by Mr Blair- I know that cuts across the way we do things over here- innocent until proven guilty, but if it was in place, it might make motorists think twice.

That's not really what this is--it's more a case of the motorist being presumed to have to show their innocence, i.e. the burden of proof is on them and not the vulnerable road user (VRUs, basically pedestrians and cyclists, although some also count motorcyclists under that heading). This makes sense, as the Continental experience is that the majority of VRU collisions is caused by motorists, not the VRUs, and in those rare cases when a collision is caused by a VRU, circumstances tend to be such that their fault is more easily established.

As to Boris, he does have a man who deals with cycling, I've met him twice on club runs and he's a tidy rider so knows his stuff on cycling, (he was a higher ranking cop before that) I know he recently spoke at the Pedal Club dinner, I'm buggered if I can recall his name[/quote]

What's his position and which organisation does he work for? The Mayor's Transport Adviser is Kulveer Ranger, and the London Assembly's Ambassador for Cycling is Andrew Boff, but to the best of my knowledge neither have been policemen. Would be interesting to hear whom you mean.