00:00 Intro
02:28 Yvette Cooper’s Legislation
04:00 The Case Of Kim Briggs
04:71 The Case of Hilda Griffiths
04:44 Common Sense Perspective on Cycling Law
05:28 How The Law Treats Drivers
05:52 The Case of Kaylan Hippsley (Victim of Drunk & High Driver Harley Whiteman on The Footpath)
06:55 The Case of Ada Bicakci (Victim of High Bus Driver Martin Asolo-Ogugua on The Footpath)
07:41 What Happens When a Case Has No Aggravating Factors?
08:01 The Case of Ian Winterburn (Victim of Right Hook Driver)
08:41 Aidan Webb (Victim of a Drunk Driver)
09:16 Summary of Cases and Legal Framework
09:43 Conclusion
On the 29th of April 2026, the British government quietly passed a law that could see cyclists jailed for life. No fanfare. No meaningful public debate. Just a clause buried deep inside a sweeping crime bill, slipped through parliament while most people were looking the other way. If you ride a bike in the UK — whether you’re a daily commuter, a weekend warrior, or a serious road cyclist — this law affects you. And the picture it paints of how this country really feels about cyclists is not a pretty one.
Yvette Cooper’s Crime and Policing Act 2026 introduces a raft of new cycling offences, including causing death by dangerous cycling, which now carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. On the surface, that sounds reasonable. Cyclists should be accountable for the harm they cause, just like anyone else. But dig into the numbers and the logic starts to fall apart very quickly. In 2023, just six people in the entire country were convicted of dangerous cycling. Six. In a nation of 67 million people, on roads used by millions of cyclists every single day, the government looked at that figure and decided the most urgent priority was making sure those six people could theoretically face life in prison.
So why did this happen? The honest answer is that it has very little to do with evidence and a great deal to do with politics. The media has spent years portraying cyclists as a menace — running red lights, ignoring pedestrians, riding recklessly through city centres. And politicians, predictably, have responded not to data but to headlines. The result is a piece of legislation that treats cyclists as a serious threat to public safety at a time when the actual data shows they are responsible for a vanishingly small proportion of road danger.
Then there’s the question of consistency. Because the same legal system that just handed cyclists the threat of life imprisonment has spent years handing drivers who kill people sentences that barely register. Drivers who kill children while drunk and on drugs. Drivers who flee the scene, obstruct first responders, and show not a shred of remorse. Drivers who kill cyclists and receive four-month suspended sentences, never spending a single night in custody. The courts have had life imprisonment available for dangerous driving since 2022. They almost never use it. Bereaved families are routinely forced to fight through formal appeal processes just to get sentences that begin to reflect the reality of what happened to their loved ones.
This video breaks all of it down.
Sources:
GOV.UK – Crime and Policing Bill: Dangerous Cycling Offences Factsheet
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/crime-and-policing-bill-2025-factsheets/crime-and-policing-bill-dangerous-cycling-offences-factsheet
House of Lords Library – Cyclists and the Law
https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/cyclists-and-the-law/
Highways Magazine – New Law to Introduce Dangerous Cycling Offence (Chris Boardman quote)
https://www.highwaysmagazine.co.uk/news/law-introduce-dangerous-cycling-offence
GOV.UK – Crime and Policing Act 2026
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/crime-and-policing-act-2026
GOV.UK – Killer Driver Who Fled Scene Has Sentence Increased (Kaylan Hippsley / Harley Whiteman)
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/killer-driver-who-fled-scene-has-sentence-increased
GOV.UK – Bus Driver Who Killed Child After Taking Drugs Has Sentence Increased (Ada Bicakci / Martin Asolo-Ogugua)
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bus-driver-who-killed-child-after-taking-drugs-has-sentence-increased
Hansard – Victims of Road Traffic Offences: Criminal Justice System (Ian Winterburn)
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2024-01-30/debates/24013028000001/VictimsOfRoadTrafficOffencesCriminalJusticeSystem
ITV News Anglia – Parents of Milton Keynes Teenager Killed by Drink-Driver (Aidan Webb)
https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2024-10-21/we-waited-21-months-for-justice-our-sons-killer-was-jailed-for-less
Onward Think Tank – Cleared to Kill (driving ban statistics)
Sentencing Council – Causing Death by Careless or Inconsiderate Driving (community order to 4 years range)
https://sentencingcouncil.org.uk/guidelines/causing-death-by-careless-or-inconsiderate-driving/
Business enquiries: averagemanonabike@gmail.com
45 Comments
I was knocked off my bike by a driver who came round a corner on the wrong side of the road and hit me head-on.
When the police and ambulance arrived, his car was still on the wrong side of the road, and my bike was about twenty-feet behind me where it had landed. Both bike-lights were still on and shining brightly.
I suffered left-leg, hip, shoulder, and arm injuries, and was unable to work for six-months, and I had twelve weeks of physiotherapy before I could return to work (I was a Nurse). My bike was completely smashed-up beyond repair.
The police, A.K.A. useless bastards, decided not to prosecute the driver because "there were no witnesses…..and therefore a lack of evidence", even though neither vehicle had been moved before they got there.
It just seems to be that if you choose to be in a minority group, you are somehow less worthy as a person. Cyclists experience this on a daily basis. If you are teetotal you are "miserable", if you don't eat meat you are "preachy", if you try to keep yourself fit you are open to ridicule from the fat and lazy mainstream.
There needs to be a huge change in people's attitudes, but most of it is media-generated because it sells papers, or packs-out a dull news day.
Who rules the roost? The press, owned by the entitled and titled wealthy, wants to keep the status quo it has had since 1979 and pre-1909. Politicians will claim the press is the people's voice; it isn't. Rather, it is the press manipulating the people and, therefore, the re-election-seeking politician. What to do? Demand as in Sweden, a non-partisan press, with full FOI concerning thier owners.
So if I kill Yvette Cooper on a bike with my car I get a light sentence and if I do it while she's walking on the pavement I get a medium sentence but if I do it while riding my bike I get the heaviest sentence.
In truth, some politicians may be beneath contempt, but it's really not worth my while going about assassinating them.
They are anti cycling. Or at least Yvette Cooper is. The Labour Party is unrecognisable now. Or it would be to it's founder if still alive today.
The law works on a yes/no basis. Once you start introducing exemptions based on low likelihood …
lets decriminalise attacking someone with a fork as it's such a rare occurrence?
Arbitrariness occurs when things that are essentially alike are treated differently, or things that are essentially different are treated alike. And arbitrariness is unlawful.
drivers never get life so nowt to worry about
These laws, as well as laws that seek to make e-bikes and electric scooters illegal, as well as restricting and making accoustic bicycles more difficult and less convenient to use exist specifically to prop up the automotive industry and energy companies.
As cars become outrageously expensive and unaffordable and fossil fuels become more scarce and more expensive, these are two massive industries that have a hand in this. They resent people, especially the younger generations, choosing ebikes and e-scooters instead of buying cars and going in the massive amounts of debt.
Where I live in Pennsylvania, all Electric Scooters are banned. Which is absolute bullshit. I live in the Philadelphia Metropolitan area. Thanks to far-right politics gerrymandered into and entrenched in our state government, public transportation is underfunded and unreliable.
There are millions of people living in this area that do not have the money for a broke ass 25 year old jalopy that then has to meet some of the most strict annual safety and emissions inspections requirements as well as skyrocketing insurance rates.
These people who have the option of getting to work an hour and a half early and getting home from work 3 hours after their shift ends because of our haphazard public transit schedule or buying an $800 electric scooter to get back and forth to work or school, are being targeted as criminals for trying to have a practical means of getting around.
Like you, I am not proposing that there should be no rules and regulations and that e-bikes and e-scooters and regular bicycles etc should be the wild wild west. But, the dangers posed by a reckless person on a 35 lb bicycle going 30 mph and a reckless person in a 6500 lb SUV going 90 miles per hour are two very different things.
Give em the 🪑
Friends don’t let friends drive bicycle
This law is proactive to target the amount of unrestricted e-bikes which now plague urban areas.
I'm thinking if someone actually did get a life sentence for a cycling "crime", they could state the cases you have mentioned & ask why a car crime is less of an offence than a cycle crime?
Oops sorry, you sait that at the end of the video!
I guarantee a cyclist will get life time imprisonment before any driver in the UK.
Have you heard the latest laws of nature, a cyclist is more healthier than a car driver so, we should live longer.
As my so says “they’re jealous.”
7:53 Two cyclists in my old club were killed in two separate incidents: Alex Anderson on June 13th 2010 from behind by an ignorant motorist on the A419 during a 25mi TT. The details of the crash are lost to history but I recall the driver was shown to have been speeding and under the influence as he hit Alex.
And Lee Martin was murdered on the A31 near Bentley by Christopher Gard at 60mph from behind in a Ford Transit who'd been texting seconds before on 12th August 2015. Gard had seven prior offences for using his phone while driving, yet had pleaded hardship just six weeks prior in court if he'd faced a driving ban. He got nine years and is no doubt out of prison now. He got a fourteen and a half year ban. Probably driving despite the ban. Meanwhile Lee is forever 48.
Yet both are mere footnotes on the web, no legislation was brought into law off the back of either case, yet here we are with this absurd legislation.
Such a good channel. Keep the good work up man. Brings reality to light.
You forgot to add that oil companies and car manufacturers, some of the largest companies on earth, have a vested interest in ensuring cycling and cyclists are viewed in a negative light. People cycling is a threat to their bottom line. Those organisations are absolute professionals at influencing public discourse to suit their interests. Look at climate change discussions over the last few decades. The media narrative around cyclists existing, the disproportionate media frenzy about the negatives of ebikes & escooters, and the near complete media silence on the public health crisis that is cars, this is all the result of corporate lobbying.
This is exactly the kind of lawmaking that destroys public trust. Nobody is defending reckless cycling, but threatening life imprisonment over an issue that resulted in just SIX convictions nationwide in 2023 feels completely detached from reality. Meanwhile, drivers who kill people through genuinely dangerous behaviour still routinely walk away with suspended sentences or minimal jail time.
The imbalance is impossible to ignore. Cyclists are being turned into a political scapegoat because it’s easy headline material, not because the data supports it. If the government genuinely cared about road safety, we’d see consistent sentencing across ALL road users and far more focus on the behaviours that actually cause the overwhelming majority of deaths and serious injuries.
Every cyclist in the UK should be paying attention to this.
Regards from Bonn, Germany: here, kitchens knives are banned from pedestrian zones and public space in the inner, city while cars are weapons, that really K1LL people, are "careless driven"… #doublestandard
Cyclist here with a 12 mile each way daily commute, so definitely in the pro cycling camp, but I can get behind these laws.
Why?
I live in a city, and on a daily basis I'm witness to balaclava masked idiots riding derestricted e-bikes dangerously, often in groups, wheelies through red lights being a perfect example of their behaviour.
When driving, I am often overtaken or undertaken by this same type of people with zero regard for other road users,
As such, I strongly believe that this may be the main driver behind the introduction of these penalties, it's only a matter of time before someone is killed by an e-bike hooligan, and the tools to deal with this are now in place.
Ps, I'm all in favour of e-bikes, declining health has me considering one, but I won't be dressed head to toe in black, hoodie up and face masked when riding it.
Should I ever decide to pursue a career as a hit man, the car will definitely be my weapon of choice. First, it's just convenient and comfortable, second, it provides a quick and easy way of escaoe, and third, if I really get caught and indicted, I will likely receive the minimal punishment conceivable. Note to self: A bike is no alternative.
I don't think that ebikes, featured much in this and I'm not particularly fond of the way some of the e scooters are driven, but yes this is an eye opener
You weren't being very safe when trying to open that snickers bar while riding..
new laws for e-bikes
Very depressing. As a person who deals with statistical data and shape my decisions based on them in my daily job, I am so angry with this approach of the politicians. Either they are brainless, or just cxxts or both thinking only about their voting bases. I really need those separate cycling infrastructure now
And what about motorists driving and parking on the pavement and what a motorists hit and run what about drinking and driving nothing so fxxxx politics
There is also the constant push from the media to set cyclist against cyclist. All while the death toll from cars rises at pace…it's like US school shootings, where similarly, nothing changes…or for the worse if it does.
Germany is just a few steps behind.
Drivers are stupid, but abloud majority, and the only currency a politician accepts is votes.
So no matter how stupid a majority is politicians will speak to their mouth.
Doubling up on laws. Has anyone EVER been killed by a cyclist?
The government claims that this new change to the law was based on an 'independent legal review (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a9d67e2e5274a7bd0047fa4/cycle-safety-review-report.PDF)' that was commissioned immediately following the Alliston-Briggs case, all that time ago.
I read that review when it was first published, and want to point out the top takeaways for me – my own commentary in parens:
1. Nobody was really asking for this change. The only thing courts really wanted was tougher punishment for cycling on pavements – since that was the most common factor in cycle-killings.
2. Even if such a change was made (now it has been), it could only justifiably be used, on average, less than once per year. That was based on the analysis of every fatal-cycling-crash for the preceeding 5 (or was it 10?) years. (I don't believe for one nanosecond that the intention is to use these laws so rarely. I think they will be used very often to pillory cyclists whenever possible).
3. If such a law were to be considered, it should ensure the punishment is commensurate with the guilty act itself – that's required for it to be truly a 'parallel law' to the driving offences. (The subtext is: The stats already show that cycling dangerously or carelessly is extremely unlikely to have a severe negative outcome, so maximum sentences should be tiny compared to the same acts performed with a motor vehicle. Of course, that's not at all what we got. Moreover, as you pointed out, the driving offences are only ever applied in the most minimal and lenient way, so that in practical terms any new such cycling laws should have an approximate maximum sentence of zero, to be truly in line with that.)
4. In these rare cases where a cycle-pedestrian crash results in fatality, the stats show it's more often the pedestrian who is deemed at fault for it. (Yes – that's right, even with the huge anti-cycling lean of the police and courts, they still find that the pedestrian is more often the one who causes these incidents – so why exactly are we making anti-cycling laws now?).
In my opinion, the changes made to the law do not in any way reflect the findings of the independent legal review, nor are they made in the public interest. It is quite clear that these laws are intended to be weaponised against cyclists at every opportunity. I can guarantee that fault will be shifted to the cyclist as much as possible at all times. I would therefore urge every cyclist to keep these laws in mind, and ensure that there is never even a chance for pedestrians to get close. My own specific recommendations would be:
1. Never use any shared-use pedestrian/cycle path. Just ride in the road.
2. Never use any paint-on bicycle lane adjacent to a footpath/pavement. The chance of a pedestrian stepping into your path is too high, just take primary position in the road.
3. Never use any segregated bike lane if it's adjacent to a footpath/pavement. Same argument as for (2), and you have even less room to evade should a pedestrian step into your path. Just ride in the road instead.
4. Never ride in secondary position on any road unless you have perfect visibility of the verge. A pedestrian could step out from behind any bush/hedge and into your path – you /will/ be blamed for it. Stay in primary, basically always.
It baffles my mind that so many people get very angry when a cyclist hits a pedestrian. But when a driver runs over a pedestrian or a child, nothing, quiet.
Here in Canada, an elderly lady ran over several Girl Scouts. 1 passed away and 4 or 5 have life changing injuries. It did not make the headlines and the news made it look like an accident. Her clocked speed was 80kmph in a 40kmph zone.
so drivers will also get life in prison for killing some oh wait it's the uk.
Honestly, this is a propaganda war brought on by both the auto and fossil fuel industries. People who ride bikes, especially as their desired mode of transportation, are not contributing to the profit motives of their industries. It is also why they fight mass transit initiatives here in the States as well.
I made a video on the old days of youtube where listed about 30 sentences of drivers and cyclists who were involved in deaths and the sentences received. Up until 2016 the average sentence for a driver was a suspended and a £400 fine. The average for the cyclist from what I could find was about 2 years jail time, sometimes with a hefty fine on top. The DFT has some figures of causation going way back, and other depts have info on sentences. Back then we had to put in FOI requests to get some of ths info.
Oh and dont forget. Manslaughter is still on the books with the new laws.
A car deliberately tried to drive my friend and I off the road. I had the whole thing on camera. I reported it to police, I had the make model and number plate. They didn't even get back to me.
Can we have laws against careless walking, careless standing, careless breathing and careless farting next? I don't think there are enough laws.
I can't wait until we run out of oil and people can't drive cars. Get everyone back on bicycles and horses. That's the future I look forward to.
Ahhh yes dangerous cycling….. How many does the car driver, kill or mame a year? How many actually get that sentence?
The car is the biggest tax cow and they happily pay year after year and they don't mind paying more. So alienate cycling and get more people driving.
What a mess! Cyclists getting fu*ked over as usual!
I can name more people who were killed by cars than by cycling, one of which I knew personally. He was 16 when he fell asleep behind the wheel and drove off the road. His vehicle rolled. I also attended another memorial where two people were killed in a rollover because the driver overcorrected. Another time the gunner was killed in a rollover. Another time person I knew had his hip crushed in because the driver was trying to avoid a cow and rolled the vehicle. He was the passenger. I've seen someone had to rush their dog to the emergency vet because they lost control of it and a truck decided he was too busy to hit the brakes. I don't know if the dog survived but it was wobbling. Truck never stopped and fled the scene. I know someone who lost a cousin from another driver who was speeding on the highway. No alcohol or drugs involved. I've seen semis catch fire. What I have never seen was anyone including myself die, kill someone, or seriously injure someone or themselves, including the time I sideswiped a tree (although they did use the wirebrush on me, I was out the same day).
Prison bar tape in the thumbnail, outstanding!
When a bike is involved in an incident it's seen as the cyclist at fault, never a mention of the make of bicycle. When a car is involved the emphasis is on the make or type of vehicle that caused the incident instead of on the driver.
Mrs Miggins, 80, riding her shopping bike at 16kmh is obviously a far greater danger than a 10-ton lorry doing 60kmh.
The problem isn’t cyclists themselves — it’s the high levels of immigration that have dramatically increased the number of people doing these gig economy delivery jobs