Combing my hair….

Last week’s CTC email newsletter drew my attention to the debate about strict liability. There is a good explanation and video here, but essentially it is about removing the necessity to prove negligence in order to be entitled to compensation. If traffic law were amended to place a duty of care on drivers, in the event of an collision involving a cyclist or a pedestrian compensation would be payable unless the driver could show that they caused the collision. Now unlike nearly all other CTC policies this argument didn’t immediately convince me. It struck me as a departure from the usual rule that one is innocent until proven guilty. Eventually however it dawned on me that the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ line doesn’t actually hold many other analogous situations. For example as an employer I have a duty of care – if there is an accident at work  I can be called upon to show that there was a health and safety policy, that I made sure it was followed, etc. The injured person wouldn’t have to prove that I was reckless.And I happily accept that this is hold it should be.

Therefore a motorist choosing to get into a heavy and potentially fast moving vehicle should accept that they have a duty of care for more vulnerable road users. And by extension, I think that it is fair that cyclists should have a duty of care for pedestrians – if the logic apply to motorists it should apply to cyclists. But this is where it starts to become unclear whether changing the law in this way will benefit cyclists. Clearly it will benefit cyclists who are injured by car drivers who will be far more likely to receive compensation, but it is uncertain that there will be fewer injuries. Saying to a driver that they have a duty of care and that message influencing the way they drive are potentially two different things. After all most drivers presumably do not want to cause injuries. If this is the case, it is lack of awareness of the potential harm they can so easily cause rather than a concern about their insurance premiums which determines how they drive.

So the change may not change driver behaviour, but it could change cyclist numbers. A duty of care for pedestrians would mean cyclists could be called upon to have third party insurance. A member benefit of being in the CTC is third party insurance, so I am covered. But imagine if the ‘you don’t pay road tax’ argument morphed into a ‘you should have insurance’ argument and that then got legal backing. The dedicated cyclist would not be put off, my insurance costs me less than a pound a week. But your casual cyclist might be. If this were the case then fewer cyclists on the road would mean a more dangerous environment for cyclists as drivers become even less used to taking account of their needs.

For these reasons therefore, I am not against strict liability, but I don’t think it is necessarily the policy change which I would want the CTC to push for above all others. A cycling test as a mandatory part of the driving test – that would really make a difference. And if that is considered utopian maybe we don’t need a change in the law at all, better enforcement of existing speed limits would be a start.