War on Cyclists  19/6/2010

Why higher fines for bikes are bad law and bad policy

Bad law

Higher fines for bicycles are bad law.  We are told that (for example) going through a red light is the same offence for a bike and a car, so the fines for bikes have been raised to be the same as fines for cars.  Now, if I walk up to you and slip a knife into your ribs and you die, I would go to jail for 20 years for murder.  If on the other hand I merely sock you on the jaw and you get a bruise, I might get a fine.  The punishment should be proportional to the crime. 

Now imagine you are a pedestrian stepping out onto the road.  Suddenly you see a car heading towards you at 60 or 80 km/h.  You are about to jump out of the way but you would land in the path of a bicycle which will collide with you.  What do you do?  Stay still and get hit by the car?  Or jump out of the way into the path of the bicycle.

Now decide whether bicycle offenses are the same as motor vehicle offences. 

Bad policy

Once again in the War on Cyclists, the technique is to shift the blame for road trauma onto the victims.  This allows Government to avoid providing real measures for bicycle safety, and helps to supress cyclist demand for better facilities.  Higher fines are interpreted by police as a directive to spend more time bullying cyclists, and are interpreted by motorists as justification for their aggresive and dangerous behaviour toward cyclists.    We believe that encouraging cycling is good public policy for the reasons on the home page.  Punitive fines for minor offences are bad public policy.

• Supressing Cyclists in Australia (as seen from Great Britain)
• The Age on higher fines.