[QUOTE 5027696, member: 9609"]nor yours[/QUOTE]
If you’re imagining that I’m inclined towards leniency because he’s a cyclist, let me make it clear that I’m not. I just don’t think that a custodial sentence is appropriate in this type of case, where a person has caused injury (serious but not life-threatening) through recklessness and idiocy rather than with malice aforethought.
The guilty verdict is correct, the sentence isn’t. I suppose it comes down to what you think is the purpose of prison. For me, it should never be used as a purely retributive measure. Hence the feelings of the parents are irrelevant.
Why I’m concerned with the comparison between this and cases like the earlier mentioned van driver is not that the van driver escaped prison, but that he wasn’t found guilty of what is blatantly a crime - that of driving in a place where the law expressly forbids it (on the pavement) and killing someone as a result.
How is it possible that the cyclist can be found guilty of a crime and the van driver not? Well, it partly depends on what charges are brought... After the Alliston case, we were told that the law relating to cycling needed to be reviewed but clearly the law was able to find Alliston guilty of the crime he had committed, and again the cyclist was found guilty in this case. That the van driver was found not guilty shows that it’s the law relating to motoring offences that’s in serious need of review.
Also bear in mind why the police have released this footage: to highlight exactly why cycling in pedestrian areas is not a good idea. Which is fine. A good idea, in fact. Education is a good thing. Unfortunately, that’s not the effect the video has created. Instead it has become yet another stick with which to beat cyclists as part of the prevailing anti-cyclist narrative. And yet it remains the case that it is not cyclists, as a category of road user, who are the major problem in society, as the road death stats so readily reveal.
