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“No cars go through a red light – every cyclist does,” claims Nigel Havers

Actor makes sweeping (and false) assertion during discussion with cycling writer Laura Laker on Jeremy Vine’s BBC Radio 2 show

Actor Nigel Havers has claimed that “no cars go through a red light,” while “every cyclist does,” during a discussion with cycling writer Laura Laker hosted by Jeremy Vine on his BBC Radio 2 TV show.

The exchange took place during Vine’s afternoon programme on the station yesterday, with footage subsequently shared on his social media channels by the host.

“All road users break the law in equal amount,” Laker pointed out. “I’m not saying that that’s right.

“We know that roads policing got decimated a decade ago, we lost 20,000 police officers, and so all of road user behaviour has got worse, drivers have become more aggressive, perhaps cyclists have become more aggressive too.”

Interjecting, Havers said: “I don’t break the law, I don’t break the rules” before claiming that “motor cars aren’t going through red lights.”

Havers invited Laker, whose book on the National Cycle Network Potholes & Pavements was published just last week and who is a contributor to road.cc, to join him “at a crossroads where no cars go through a red light, every cyclist does.”

“That’s not true,” Laker countered. “Definitely people break the law in their cars, with mobile phone use, we know that’s illegal and it’s as bad as drink-driving, even driving hands-free.”

“I don’t know what planet you’re on,” said Havers, who is reported to have been fined £500 and banned for driving for 12 months after being convicted of drink-driving in 1991.

“Come  and stand on the crossroads with me and you’ll see every single cyclist go through the red light.”

While it’s true that some cyclists do go through red lights, so too do many motorists, and Laker highlighted that it is the latter who are involved in, on average, five deaths a day on Britain’s roads as well as crashes that leave thousands more people seriously injured.

Undeterred, Havers, who in 2020 called for the removal of the temporary cycle lane briefly installed on Kensington High Street, insisted: “I have not seen a car go through a red light in London in years.”

> 'Scenes of utter havoc': Nigel Havers rants about cycle lanes 'causing gridlock every day' in front of empty Kensington High Street

“I know, but because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” replied Laker.

“So you think cars go through red lights just as much as cyclists?” asked Havers, incredulously.

“It’s not cars, it’s drivers,” clarified Laker, who in 2021 worked alongside Westminster University’s Active Travel Academy in developing guidelines for the language the media should use when reporting on road traffic collisions, which are still all too often deemed to be chance ‘accidents’ or in which vehicles crash without a driver seemingly being present.

“If car drivers are not breaking the law, how come vehicles are killing 1,700 people a year,” asked Vine, whose regularly posts videos of law-breaking drivers to his social media channels.

“Well, I mean …” responded Havers, before pausing, eventually breaking the silence by spluttering the word, “cyclists.”

The issue of cyclists and the law has been a high-profile one in the media this week after a coroner’s inquest into the death of a retired teacher who was struck by a cyclist riding in group in London’s Regent’s Park heard that the rider would face no charges in connection with the crash.

> No charges brought against Regent’s Park cyclist after high-speed crash in which pensioner was killed while crossing road

A Metropolitan Police officer told the inquest into the death of 81-year-old Hilda Griffiths that there was “insufficient evidence for a real prospect of conviction” of the cyclist concerned, Brian Fitzgerald, with the officer also confirming unlike motorists, cyclists are not required to adhere to posted speed limits.

Thankfully, road traffic collisions in which a pedestrian is killed following a crash with a cyclist are very rare, with Cycling UK citing official statistics that reveal there are on average around three such fatalities each year.

And it is the very fact that they happen so rarely that sees such incidents and, in their aftermath, wider cyclist behaviour, become the focus of intense media attention in a way that the vast majority of road traffic fatalities in which a motorist is involved do not.

Often, such media coverage takes the form of newspaper columns from celebrities – one example this weekend being found in the Express, with broadcaster Richard Madely calling for cyclists to be registered, and forced to carry insurance – something the government has rejected time and again.

 

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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116 comments

Avatar
wycombewheeler replied to Rendel Harris | 7 months ago
4 likes
Rendel Harris wrote:
FrankH wrote:

We had a vote, you lost, get over it. it was EIGHT YEARS AGO, FFS.

We had a vote in 1975, Brexiters lost and continued to whine and attempt to undermine the elected governments of the day in order to get their way for the next forty-one years, so we've got a way to go to catch up with you.

to be fair what we had a vote about joining was very different from what we ended up leaving.

In the same way we have a vote in 2016 about being like Norway, but it turned out we would be like Moldova.

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brooksby replied to FrankH | 7 months ago
15 likes

Just because Remain lost that vote, doesn't mean that we have to change our opinion about the self defeating stupidity of Leave. Especially as time passes and the so-called Project Fear is proven correct again and again...

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BalladOfStruth replied to FrankH | 7 months ago
13 likes
FrankH wrote:

We had a vote, you lost, get over it. it was EIGHT YEARS AGO, FFS.

Doesn't stop it from being a sore spot for some. I've just lost my second job in five years over it, and now I'm starting from scratch because the industry I have all of my skills and experince in, is now basically gone from the UK post Brexit. It had a very similar result for other members of my family too.

It's hard to just "get over it" when it's essentially undone the last ten years of your life and put you back at square one.

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bikeman01 replied to BalladOfStruth | 7 months ago
5 likes

 

FrankH wrote:

We had a vote, you lost, get over it. it was EIGHT YEARS AGO, FFS.

We all lost. Unless of course you can explain how you won.

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wtjs replied to bikeman01 | 7 months ago
5 likes

Unless of course you can explain how you won

I think there were lucrative trade agreements with Rockall, Tristan da Cunha, St Helena and the Pitcairn Islands

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brooksby replied to wtjs | 7 months ago
1 like
wtjs wrote:

Unless of course you can explain how you won

I think there were lucrative trade agreements with Rockall, Tristan da Cunha, St Helena and the Pitcairn Islands

Didn't we also sign an export agreement with China or somewhere, which raised GDP by 0.00000000005%?  

(edit) Just googled it and that was before Brexit so it doesn't count 

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eburtthebike replied to brooksby | 7 months ago
1 like
brooksby wrote:

Didn't we also sign an export agreement with China or somewhere, which raised GDP by 0.00000000005%?

I think you may have missed a few zeros.  23 to be precise.

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brooksby replied to eburtthebike | 7 months ago
0 likes
eburtthebike wrote:
brooksby wrote:

Didn't we also sign an export agreement with China or somewhere, which raised GDP by 0.00000000005%?

I think you may have missed a few zeros.  23 to be precise.

It's always 23… 

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hawkinspeter replied to brooksby | 7 months ago
1 like
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chrisonabike replied to bikeman01 | 7 months ago
0 likes

Blue passports.

Snark aside - I think the argument goes "the point is we could win at any point (where something bad hits the EU / they bring in a rule we don't like).  After all this is a massive change and it's too early to say yet".

Unfortunately this argument will not resolve anything as there is no agreement on the point where we judge the results.  Of course it could also be judged a win on "freedom" even if it delivers relative economic woe.

It's clear is that lots of people in the UK never felt particularly European.  This is the case in other countries in Europe of course, it varies - but I believe much smaller percentages.

What surprises me is that despite the wilder Brexiteers (and some not-very-cuddly folks in high office in government keen to "tear up the rule books") what has been delivered thus far is rather middle-of-the-road.  No-one has blown up the Channel Tunnel or proscribed French, German or Spanish lessons.  Albeit there has been much cost, mess and confusion.

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john_smith replied to FrankH | 7 months ago
7 likes

I would say most of us lost, and the loss is still being felt by most of us today.

Regarding the 2016 referendum, it is telling that brexiters (assuming that is what you are and your comment wasn't just a send-up) have yet to find a better justification for the damage that has been done than the twisting of a consultative poll into something that produced "winners" and "losers", which lies at the heart of the perversion that is "brexit".

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Geordiepeddeler replied to Rome73 | 7 months ago
0 likes

I didn't think it would be long before some idiot claims it's Brexits fault. Go back and crawl under your EU rock you emerged from.

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PRSboy replied to Geordiepeddeler | 7 months ago
9 likes
Geordiepeddeler wrote:

I didn't think it would be long before some idiot claims it's Brexits fault. Go back and crawl under your EU rock you emerged from.

He can't because we're not in the Schengen area any more. 

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john_smith replied to PRSboy | 7 months ago
4 likes

Were we ever? The problem isn't so much the border controls as the fact that UK citizens no longer have the right to live and work in the EU that they used to.

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marmotte27 | 7 months ago
9 likes

Othering: I (and the group I belong to) am right, they (and the group they belong to) are wrong.

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ubercurmudgeon | 7 months ago
24 likes

You can follow his train of thought, which is common to many reactionaries like him, on many topics:

  1. I never do anything wrong (at least not that I count as really wrong.)
  2. I'm representative of the "silent majority" of ordinary folk.
  3. Therefore no ordinary person ever does anything wrong.
  4. But wrong-doing occurs, so it must be being done by outsiders.
  5. Which outsiders? It's got to be people who annoy me. For motorists, that means cyclists. For flag-shaggers, that means immigrants.

With logic that circular, of course they don't believe any statistics that refute their beliefs, which must therefore be the product of "woke" organisations like the ONS, the OBR, the police, or the Department for Transport.

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marmotte27 replied to ubercurmudgeon | 7 months ago
5 likes

This!

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David9694 replied to ubercurmudgeon | 7 months ago
0 likes

4A or in a few instances where a silent majority member has been caught red-handed (NB the words in parenthesis in para 1) this is unfair and arbitrary and they should go and catch real criminals and there needs to be a review of whether the method used was fair 

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HoarseMann | 7 months ago
14 likes

17 seconds in and he states he does not break the law:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Havers#cite_note-17:~:text=Havers%20...

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Geordiepeddeler replied to HoarseMann | 7 months ago
4 likes

Quality 👏👏👏👏👏👏 Nice bit of detective work there. I tip my hat to you Sir. Chappeu.

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eburtthebike replied to HoarseMann | 7 months ago
19 likes

"Havers was arrested in February 1990 on suspicion of drunk driving, and taken to Harrow police station.[17] He was later banned from driving for one year, and fined £500, but told a woman's magazine "I don't regret it at all". He continued, "I thought the whole thing was pretty unfair. I was only 300 yards from home in a restaurant and had only used my car anyway because it was pouring with rain." He said "I got the same punishment as people who are three times over the limit. I felt victimised, especially as the police know who I am.""

It would appear that the word arsehole could have been minted specifically for him.

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quiff replied to eburtthebike | 7 months ago
1 like

Really wish someone had pointed this out live on air.

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eburtthebike | 7 months ago
12 likes

Nigel Havers, poster boy for motornormativity.  Never mind the facts, logic or sense, it's always the cyclist's fault. 

I'd suggest that he has absolutely no self-awareness, or he'd be embarrassed to the point of self immolation, but drivers don't have self-awareness, empathy or compassion: only selfishness, self-justification and an endless supply of reasons to blame everyone else.

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brooksby | 7 months ago
9 likes

Is Havers being disingenuous, actually lying for the purpose of his argument, or does he genuinely believe the rubbish he's spouting? Mad 

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stonojnr replied to brooksby | 7 months ago
5 likes

Genuinely believes it I reckon, and because of who he is, either in his professional life or amongst his social circle of friends, probably rarely if ever gets challenged on it in the way Laura did.

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jaymack | 7 months ago
19 likes

Well done Laura top work, the facts don't care a jot for the dotard's feelings.

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