Active Travel Commissioner Chris Boardman (pictured) has suggested that UK police forces are right to prioritise enforcing driving offences over law-breaking cyclists, the country’s active travel commissioner has said.
The Olympic gold medal-winning cyclist said that although the bad behaviour of some cyclists could “irritate”, police must focus on drivers.
He was responding to reports by The Times which found that the number of penalties handed out to law-breaking cyclists by police forces for offences such as running a red light or riding on the pavement was at its lowest level in five years.
In a letter to The Times, Boardman, who won Britain’s first cycling gold in 72 years at the 1992 Games, said that road policing should focus on preventing death and serious injury rather than lower-level offences.
“People riding bikes should stop at red lights. It’s the law, and there’s no excuse for ignoring it. Not doing so can frighten people and cause collisions and serious harm,” he wrote. “But we need to distinguish between behaviour that irritates us and behaviour that puts lives at greatest risk.
“Someone on a bike and someone driving a two-tonne vehicle do not pose the same potential danger. That does not excuse either breaking the law, but it should inform where we put our limited enforcement resources.
“By all means tackle cyclists jumping red lights. But we should apply at least as much determination to speeding, dangerous driving and distraction. Surely the measure of successful road policing should be how many deaths and serious injuries we prevent, not how many people we catch breaking the rules.”
Data from more than two thirds of forces across the country showed that there were 3,660 cyclist penalty fines last year, down from more than 6,000 fines in 2021, despite a boom in cycling in some cities and a rise in rental bike schemes.
For comparison, Ministry of Justice statistics found there were more than 800,000 motoring convictions last year.
They also revealed that some forces said they had not fined a single cyclist in five years. Some larger forces were barely policing cycling offences at all – Bedfordshire police issued four cycling fines, Warwickshire seven, Staffordshire nine and Devon & Cornwall 10.
Campaigners said that this showed dangerous cycling had been “decriminalised”, while the public was at “breaking point” over the number of badly behaved cyclists.
(Picture: ParliamentLiveTV)
