My way or the Highway Code#
Fri, 20 Apr 2007 12:08:52 +0000
Some may remember that last year there was a new draft of the Highway Code issued and a consultation process about the proposed changes to it. Several of the changes they'd made with regard to cyclists were pretty dumb, and a lot of people wrote and told them so. Because, after all, it's a consultation, right.
Step forward to this year: the revised draft now says "use cycle facilities such as advanced stop lines, cycle boxes, and toucan crossings where they are provided, as they can make your journeys safer". Which sounds better on the face of it, but as the CTC points out
The distinction between the wording of Use cycle routes when practical (on the one hand) and '[Use] cycle facilities where provided' (on the other) means that the use of cycle facilities will no longer be discretionary for any cyclist who wants to protect him/herself from the threat of adverse legal action. The words such as advanced stop lines, cycle boxes, and toucan crossings' do not exclude other types of cycle facility from the legal argument.
If a cyclist was injured and there was a cycle facility nearby (of whatever kind), the drivers insurer would have all the pretext they needed to argue that any compensation due to the cyclist should be reduced on the basis of contributory negligence, i.e. that the cyclist was at least partly the author of his/her own misfortune because if s/he had been using the cycle facility, the collision would not have occurred.