I have an online friend who was stopped by the police at the beginning of the year because the police said he was holding up traffic while doing 3OmphThey said he should to the left of the white line marking the edge of the road, something which is illegal for any vehicle except in an emergency.
He made a note of the officers number and then contacted the police station with a description of what had happened and asking that it ode made dear that cyclist should be on road.
In hindsight that might have been a mistake, The police have charged Dan with obstructing the traffic end he had his Court hearing this week.
It didn't go well and Dan lost his case and was charged £300.
The Judge ruled that Dan should have been using the cycle path on the otherside of the road which would have required Dan to get off and cross 3 lanes of traffic to travel less than 0.6 miles to the next roundabout.
John Franklin appeared as an expert witness for the defence and said Dan was doing exactly the right thing for the conditions. For those that don't know who John Franklin is, he writes the governments own guide to cycling on the road called Cyclecraft.
This ruling does not create a legal precedent
since the court is not high enough but in theory an appeal could.
However what this Judge has effectively said is cyclist should not be on the road if there is ony sort of cycle path provision.
I have donated some money to the Cyclist Defense Fund end I urge you to do the same.
Just for the record, this judge (Bruce Morgan) has made some other decisions which have been a bit contraversal and then got over turned. He is the Judge that aqquitted an Police Man for driving an unmarked vechical at 159mph on a motorway and over 60 mph in a 30 zone http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/shropshire/4559173.stm, This decision was overtuned on the 1 Feb 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/shropshire/4669594.stm.
Categories: Cycling_
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