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Shah of Persia crossroads, Poole (Google Maps)Tougher sentences call for cyclists who cause serious crashes
The mother of a motorcyclist who died following a collision with a cyclist has said that she wants to see tougher sentences for cyclists that are similar to sentences available to drivers of motor vehicles.
Last year, we reported that cyclist Garry Kopanycia-Reynolds was found guilty of riding a cycle on a road carelessly without reasonable consideration for others after colliding with Callum Clements in Poole, Dorset, in December 2021.
Now, Bournemouth Echo has reported that the 23-year old maintenance gardener's mother is now calling for a change in the law after the court handed the 60-year old cyclist a maximum penalty available of £1,000.
Kopanycia-Reynolds was pulling across the Shah of Persia Crossroads in Poole, Dorset in December 2021, when he collided with Clements, who had a green light.
> Cyclist found guilty of riding carelessly in crash which killed motorcyclist
During a trial in November, the judge ruled that Clements had the right of way and Kopanycia-Reynolds failed to properly check the road was clear at the traffic light junction when he went to turn right. As well as the maximum penalty for his crime, Kopanycia-Reynolds was ordered by Poole magistrates to pay £450 costs and a victim surcharge of £190.
Mr Clements’s mother Fiona is now pressing for similar court sentences to be available for cyclists as those who drive motor vehicles. At present, offences for cyclists who are deemd to be at fault in crashes differ to those driving motor vehicles.
“It just feels to me like Callum has been let down, like his life did not matter,” Miss Clements said.
“My goal is to make sure this does not happen again because the trauma of the whole thing itself and then it is like you are reliving that trauma and to have nothing at the end of it,” she said. “Even if it helps just one other family, it would be worth it.”
> Grant Shapps calls for new ‘death by dangerous cycling’ law
However, Miss Clements also mentioned that her son’s crash was ‘unique’. It was also noted that the cyclist suffered significant life-changing injuries as a result of the crash.
During the ruling, prosecutor Stuart Ellacott told the court that while Mr Clements was riding at 40mph in a 30mph zone at the time of the crash, the excess speed could not be used as part of the cyclist’s defence as the road the motorcyclist was travelling on was visible for 150 metres from the centre of the crossroads.
“Either the defendant failed to see Mr Clements, who was there to be seen over a distance of some 150 metres for a period of some seven seconds, or he saw him and decided to risk making the turn following the vehicle in front of him and not pausing and misjudging his ability to make that turn,” Ellacott said.
When questioned as to why he made the right-hand turn with the motorcyclist approaching, Mr Kopanycia-Reynolds – a keen cyclist who knew that particular road “pretty much off by heart” – replied: “I made that turn because I obviously felt that I had the space and time to make that safe manoeuvre.”
“I would not have attempted it unless I would have made it safely.”
He also told the court that he was “totally” sure that the manoeuvre was safe and that he had seen the motorcyclist’s lights coming from the opposite direction but believed that they “were in the distance”.
Police Constable Leanne Howes, of Dorset Police’s serious collision investigation team, said, “This is a demonstration of the truly awful consequences that can be caused by any road user failing to pay sufficient care and attention.”
Recently, London Mayor Sadiq Khan had pledged to “raise awareness” among London cyclists to stop stop at zebra crossings in accordance with the Highway Code, for improving the safety of floating bus stops.
“We need to not just raise awareness, we need to try and ensure there is enforcement as well,” he said last week at the Mayor Question Time, when asked about how was he planning to improve the pedestrian-cyclists interaction in places like floating bus stops.
He added: “What I am willing to do, and what I think we must do, is look into safety concerns raised by not just those who are visually impaired but others to make sure, in the quest to make cyclists safe, we don’t inadvertently, because a minority of cyclists aren’t following the rules, endanger others.”
Last year, the former Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps called for new ‘death by dangerous cycling’ law, intends to introduce harsher penalties for people on bikes who kill or injure others through “dangerous cycling”. However, such a bill is yet to be put through to the Parliament.
Adwitiya joined road.cc in 2023 as a news writer after graduating with a masters in journalism from Cardiff University. His dissertation focused on active travel, which soon threw him into the deep end of covering everything related to the two-wheeled tool, and now cycling is as big a part of his life as guitars and football. He has previously covered local and national politics for Voice Wales, and also likes to writes about science, tech and the environment, if he can find the time. Living right next to the Taff trail in the Welsh capital, you can find him trying to tackle the brutal climbs in the valleys.
Latest Comments
- David9694 8 min 51 sec ago
Calling car 237, come in car 237 ...
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Far more of the handheld phone drivers I see now are using it to message / scroll / watch something, rather than to have a conversation.
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I'm hoping I've just missed the joke - you're not really suggesting this was a mistake?...
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That's not how it's commonly understood. Primary is usually used to describe centre of your lane. Secondary is somewhere to the left of there (but...
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Then why do they all own cars, if the infrastructure to use them is not there? ...
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I've been carrying the big heavy butyl for over five years...
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I have a Shazam mini and love wizard works, but it's a bit chicken and egg - the Shazam does look quite a lot like the bags Carradice have been...
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- Nobski 3 hours 7 sec ago
100% agree, it's nothing to do with them, how public opinion is split.
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47 comments
So lets look at what they want - Add cycling to death by careless driving.
Look at sentencing guidelines.
Oh, this would be at the low end, so Band A fine (25-100% weeks income) + 40-80 hours community service is the start point
Add mitigations for : Speeding by motorbike (permitted for DBCD unlike for just careless) and injuries to cyclist.
So the injuries would I expect rule out community service; So basically penalty would be Band A fine.
So to be fined what they were they would need to earn 52k/year or more. (And that assumes the maximum fine permitted)
So basically the only difference to the result would be the offence recorded.
A cyclist collided with a motorcylist that was exceeding the speed limit, but the cyclist was found guilty of a traffic offence because in the prosecutions view the cyclist did not look properly. The cyclist didnt have a good lawyer.
A few years back a cyclist collided with a pedestrian who had stepped into the road without looking, the pedestrian died. The cyclist was found guilty because in the prosecutions view they had not looked properly and their lack of a front brake meant they could not stop in time rather than there was no time whatever brakes might have been available. The cyclist didnt have a good lawyer.
Meanwhile, on an almost weekly basis we hear of drivers mowing down cyclists, whilst speeding, and driving away to leave the cyclist to die in the road. The drivers often get a minimal fine or community service at worse, because the sun was in their eyes. The drivers have a good lawyer, or the judicial system is heavily biased.
That is only my opinion, of course.
The notion that the motorcyclists's speed could not be used as a defence / mitigating circumstance seems really questionable to me; is this standard practice for these scenarios, or specific to this case?
I personally think that on one level yes, the motorcyclist will have been visible for seven seconds, but equally, travelling at up to 50% above the speed limit, its not hard to understand how the cyclist miscalculated the motorcyclists speed.
To simply dismiss the additional difficulty the excess speed will have placed on other road users decision making just seems odd, arguably biased.
I feel incredibly sorry for the mother, however the fact remains, if her son had been travelling at a legal speed, he would still be with us. On that basis how can you seriously ask for more serious punishments?
I believe the problem is not that his speed could not be used as a defence/mitigation but, as I and others have noted further down, that it wasn't put forward as a defence/mitigation because the cyclist chose not to have representation in court. One can only assume he thought it was so obvious that he was not to blame for being hit by a motorcyclist exceeding the speed limit by over 50% that he thought he didn't need a lawyer. I'm surprised he hasn't appealed it but maybe after all the trauma, physical and mental, the case must have caused him he just wanted to put it all behind him rather than get involved in further legal battles.
Maybe that's an invalid reason for appeal - "I didn't bother mentioning a highly relevant detail".
It also wouldn't be fair on the victim's family.
I've never been to court as the accused so not 100% sure how it works, but presumably another explanation is that the defendent would have had to pay for any such representation, and with a maximum fine of £1,000, hiring a solicitor would have made no financial sense - he would probably have spent more on legal fees than the maximum fine, and even then is likely to have still been convicted and subject to some penalty (even if the solicitor successfully argued it down from the maximum).
Nor have I, I hasten to add! As the accused he could've got legal aid if his income was low enough, I think the bar is actually quite generous, somewhere around £30,000 p.a. income IIRC.
Or be a very well off, lying, ex prime minister.
Which one did you have in mind?
Victim's mother might be acting more out of spite than concern for other road users. I find English people (and that includes me) have a reserve of spitefulness you don't see in other Europeans.
I don't think that's necessarily fair, it must be utterly heartbreaking to lose a child and it's understandable that she might want to try and make some sense of her trauma by creating a narrative where it couldn't possibly be her child's fault; the same thing occurred with Kim Briggs' husband where he is determined to attack cyclists without accepting that if his wife hadn't stepped into the road without looking the incident would never have occurred. I've been lucky enough never to suffer such a traumatic loss and I'm not going to claim that I would necessarily be any different to them if I did, none of us can know how we would react to such tragedies until we experience them. The spite that exists, and that people should be ashamed of, is that coming from the anti-cycling lobby (the Daily Mail have been all over this case without once mentioning the motorcyclist's speed) who are encouraging and abetting these grief-stricken people in their campaigns.
The Daily Mail also mentioned that the motorcyclist had a green light and showed a map (clearly wrong) that would have suggested that the light must have been red for the cyclist. In fact reporting at the time made it clear that both had green lights.
What's that, Skippy? You don't think that mistake was accidental? You think someone should raise it with the press complaints commission? Yes, that's probably a good idea, Skippy...
Whoa! The cyclist cannot use the motorcyclists excessive speed and lawbreaking as defence! But the cyclist must have made a decision to turn based on the distance and the motorcyclist travelling legally. If the motorcyclist had been acting responsibly and obeying the law the collision would never had occurred.
That was my thought, too.
I think I can see some sense in this. The cyclist was just charged with cycling inconsiderately. It seems harsh to get the maximum fine but there it is.
If we make decisions at junctions based on assuming all motorists obey the law so we should be OK, I don't think we would last too long. On this basis, his actions could be said to be below the standards expected of a cyclist and I think the decision was understandable.
Had he been charged with 'causing death by careless cycling', as the mother was asking for, then I think the actions of the motorcyclist would have been relevent to the point I feel the cyclist would be not guilty. i.e. yes he made a mistake but not one that should have led to the consequences that sadly it did.
Where the media coverage of this case is completely wrong in my opinion is comparing this to the Mrs Briggs case. In that case the police made a lot about their lack of choice of charges. In this case I do not think any of the proposed stricter charges would have applied anyway.
which? those seem mutually exclusive.
The scientific explanation is the concept of 'looming'. The approaching motorbike will only (to cyclist Garry) appeared to have increased in size by 10% when 160m to 140m away but will have doubled in perceived size when 40 to 20m away, when too late to do anything about it. Thus, if the cyclist Garry had based his initial planning on first sight and perception, given the (exessive) speed of the motorbike, it's not terribly surprising that his assessmnt turned out to be incorrect. So the excess speed was a highly relevant factor in terms of Garry's perception.
Exactly. Almost every time I leave my neighborhood, I have to either turn onto or cross a road with a 40 MPH speed limit, where I have a stop sign but four lanes of cross traffic do not. To my left, a bend in the road limits my sightline to about 180 metres, or 0.1 mile. That should give me about nine seconds of visibility. If I pull out when a car is just visible in the distance, I'm fine if it's going about 40 MPH, but as I'm facing straight onto it I really can't judge its speed. A few drivers like to go about 60 MPH, which turns nine seconds into six seconds, and suddenly there's a car almost on top of me!
It is a sad case indeed, as for me a grieving mother has all rights to say anything that could mitigate her loss. A lost child is the worst possible scenario for a parent.
There was an erroneous view on speeding on this case though. Urban speed limit aren't set low just for visibility reasons. Their primary reason for being low is survivability in an event of a crash as in many cases the driver or rider will have no time to react. A lower speed, means better chances in getting less injured.
https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/speedmgt/ref_mats/fhwasa1304/Resources3/08%2...
While I can understand the mother's anger, I can't understand why she thinks that higher penalties will save anyone's life.
The cyclist suffered significant life-changing injuries, so I can't see that a financial penalty is going to work as a deterrent when cyclists already have extremely good reasons for not getting involved in collisions.
clearly they will not. Is she really arguing that the cyclist saw the motorcycle coming, thought "If I go now there may be a crash, but it will only result in a fine so I'm not going to wait"?
Are life changing injuries not enough of a deterrent?
People pull dangerous manourves all the time, why? because 99% of the time no crash results.
Want to reduce the risk of this happening in the future? then prosecute every dangerous driving incident that does not result in a crash. Because only br cracking down on near misses will collissions be reduced, not be draconian sentances on those unfortunate not to get away with crap driving/cycling.
Miss Clements may be horrified to learn that the person held responsible for the collision in which her son was killed has been held to a far higher degree of culpability given the fact of significantly excessive speed on the part of the motorcyclist and has been treated a lot less leniently than many car drivers responsible for causing death in far more clear cut circumstances.
Condolences to all involved.
This is a really bad outcome because it says that it is okay to speed as even if you do, that won't be taken into account as part of the defence as to why the colliision occurred.
It seems ridiculous that a speeding motorist who was unable to brake in time to avoid a collision is not held partly responsible. Maybe the motorcyclist thought he would just nudge the cyclist to teach him a lesson and drive on without consequences? Plenty of times I've seen others or myself been buzzed by impatient aggressive motorcyclists that rev-limit their engines instead of using the horn in an attempt to intimidate other road users.
"At present, offences for cyclists who are at fault in crashes differ to those driving motor vehicles."
And so it should be. The risks are much lower, despite the very rare individual cases. If this did meet the standard of Careless Cycling (not Dangerous, or 'wanton and furious') then it's appropriate to look at the corresponding motoring offence of Death by Careless Driving. With the caveat that I don't know any details, if this was a momentary lapse, and taking into account the inury to the offender, it's quite possible that a motorist would have been given a community order.
Would the mother be saying the same if it had been a driver who had killed her son?
Or if her son had survived with life changing injuries and the cyclist had died?
Doesn't she understand that when motorists hit other road users, saying, "But I thought they were further away / I didn't see them but I'm sure I wouldn't have mader that manoeuvre unless I was sure it was safe to do so / etc / etc" is practically a Get Out of Jail Free card - if Mr Kopanycia-Reynolds had given the same excuses but had been driving a car, I wager that he would not even have been fined.
Lets be fair here, if this was a car that caused this they wouldn't be getting off with a £100- fine. Shes got a point.
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