It's remarkable how it's suddenly an issue when it's an incident with a bike, but all the deaths and injuries caused by cars are just treated as a fact of life.
Other than that it's basically a non-issue.
The amendment was proposed by a politician who seems to believe in it genuinely. Furthermore, there is a genuine gap in the law. There’s a case to be made that the law is necessary for even an extremely small number of cases.
On the other hand, the governing party is on the verge of losing power and has made a LOT of moves to inflame a “culture war” to attract right-wing votes. Among attacks on minorities, immigration, homelessness, etc., this has included a “culture war on green policies”[1]. The latter has included reducing investment in cycling and walking infrastructure and opposition to safety improvements on residential roads (such as lower speed limits) if they inconvenience drivers.
The prime minister has claimed there is a “war on motorists” - in reference to local government policies to reduce air pollution, lower residential speed limits, improve bus lanes, and reduce people’s distance to businesses to promote walking over driving - and vowed to stop or limit the above[2]. Whilst there are two sides to all these policies (largely economic and cost-of-living arguments against), public statements often use emotive language to foster an “us vs. them” atmosphere.
In that environment, it is easy to see how this amendment may be a happy accident that bolsters their perceived “anti-green” and “pro-motorists” credentials.
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/01/uk/britain-rishi-sunak-cl...
I suspect motor vehicle drivers already have laws governing reckless driving. Thats all.
However, careless and dangerous cycling are both offences already.
If the cyclist was dangerous why wasn't he prosecuted? If he wasn't then this new law wouldn't have applied either.
This law is just kneejerk nonsense. The problems you describe are worsening because the police won't enforce the laws we have. In particular, they ignore pavement cycling because the Home Office asked them to!
The new law evens things up. Clearer article in the Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/19/justice-dangerou...
It's dangerous and annoying as hell. I'm a keen cyclist but for goodness sakes, within the rules of the highway code!
Motorists kill so many people it is too logistically difficult to prosecute them for murder, or manslaughter, or even using health and safety law. Normalization of deviance in action.
citation needed
This is largely just culture war nonsense by the Tory party trying to get more of the right-wing vote.
It does seem reasonably likely that in a counterfactual world where a very similar fact pattern had occurred but in a car, he would have been convicted of causing death by dangerous driving - and his resulting custodial sentence would likely have been meaningfully longer (the offence he was actually convicted of carries a maximum sentence of only 2 years vs causing death by dangerous driving which can now carry up to a life sentence - although at the time of his offence the maximum sentence was 14 years).