Roads: Motorists and Cyclists

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, told us, the way to encourage cycling is to make it safer. One way of making it safer is to provide separate road space for motorists and cyclists. Frequently, however, that is impossible. Cyclists and motorists have to share the road. Certainly the Highway Code should apply to all road users, but in practice that does not always happen. When I was knocked off my bike by a car turning left from the outside lane, the driver's explanation was simply that cars have priority over bikes. That attitude simply discourages cycling by making it less safe.

When I ride on the continent, in any country apart from Portugal and the Republic of Ireland, I feel safer. In all those countries the presumption in law is that if there is a collision between a motor vehicle and a bicycle, the driver of the motor vehicle is at fault. That makes sense because figures from the TRL indicate that in serious and slight crashes that injure cyclists over the age of 25, drivers are far more likely to be deemed solely liable than the cyclists. This is simply a measure to protect the more vulnerable road user and make the road users who are protected more aware of the dangers that they pose to cyclists. As a letter in Saturday’s Guardian from Dr KJ Eames pointed out, this is fair as a presumption can have its validity tested against evidence if it should be necessary. There is no doubt that this simple measure would improve the rate of cycling here.

Urban design can also change the balance of responsibilities. Have noble Lords been to Exhibition Road in South Kensington recently? It has been converted into a shared walking, cycling and driving area. There is a 20 miles per hour speed limit, and although walkers and cyclists must still give way to motorists, it has become a far more pleasant area, with more space because there is no car parking, there are no traffic islands and traffic is much reduced. I am sure that many people will want their suburban areas changed to shared-use zones of this kind, where the traffic is more strictly controlled, cyclists and pedestrians have more freedom and there is more open space.

The noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, is right: there is a lot of work to be done in rebalancing the legal responsibility of motorists and cyclists on the roads, but all as part of an effort to encourage cycling. What will the Government do about that?