If a motor vehicle hits a pedestrian, cyclist, equestrian or disabled person, the non-motorised user is far more likely to be injured. This ought to mean that drivers have a greater duty of care for non-motorised users’ safety. However, this is not currently recognised in law.

Although the current civil liability system requires negligence to be proven, this creates an inherent balance against pedestrians and cyclists who, due to their greater vulnerability, are far less likely to recall how the collision occurred with the clarity needed to be a “good witness” in court.

Hence non-motorised crash victims often find it very difficult to obtain compensation for damages. This current situation regularly leads to grave injustice, far more serious than anything that could possibly result if the burden of proof were reversed in such cases.

The law on driver insurance schemes should therefore be amended so that non-motorised road users will be able to claim injury damages from drivers who hit them, unless it can be shown that the non-motorised road user behaved recklessly (this arrangment is sometimes known, but not entirely accurately, as 'strict liability'). In deciding whether a person has acted recklessly, their mental and physical characterisitics should be taken into account, so that groups such as children, people with learning difficulties and disabled people who may not have appreciated the outcomes of their actions would be able to claim damages.

Drivers would not be criminalised under these proposals, which are in line with laws already in place in other European countries. They would merely be required to drive safely, and to take the requisite care around children and other people who can be expected to act unpredictably.

• For the latest update from CTC on our current road safety campaigning, including liability issues, see Roger Geffen's presentation 'Stop Bad Driving - outlining our campaigning strategy' made to the CTC/Cyclenation Campaigns Conference, hosted by Warrington Cycle Campaign in November 2008.  You will also find a link to a presentation from Amy Aeron-Thomas of RoadPeace on 'Strict Liability - the civilised compensation system.'  Click on the above link, then on the 'Presentations' button to the left.

CTC Policy

Drivers must have a liability towards other road users which reflects the danger inherent in their chosen mode of transport.

• The right of vulnerable road users to use the highways should be protected, and burden of risk compensated for by laying a greater proportion of the responsibility for avoiding road collisions with motorists.

• The requirements for drivers’ insurance schemes should be amended to include the requirment to cover the costs of injury damages, where a vulnerable road user is injured in collision with a motor vehicle, unless the driver could show that the vulnerable road user had acted recklessly.

• In deciding whether a person has acted recklessly, their mental and physical characteristics should be taken into account, so that drivers are required to take the requisite care around groups of people with an inate inability to grasp the nature of a road environment (children and people with learning difficulties).

Duty to Drive Safely

The first step towards resolving driver liability would be to put in place a 'duty to drive safely'. This would help to emphasis that the standard of driving must be safe to other road users, and go some way toward redressing the imbalance of risk.

CTC proposed the following amendment to the Road Safety Act 2006:

• A person who drives a mechanically propelled vehicle on a road or other public place is under a duty to drive with proper regard to the safety of any person who may be affected by a breach of that duty.