To think this woman should not be put in prison?

[Nooyoiknooyoik]

Bizarre and very unfair Link

she admitted in court that she made “light contact”

Looks clear enough to me.

She moves her weight on her feet and leans from the waist up towards the cyclist as she pushes.

She either shoved her, or the woman on the bike dodged out of her way as she saw the hand coming towards her.

Either way, she's responsible for the incident.

It was not an accident, it went to trial and she was found guilty of manslaughter by a jury.

She caused the death of a 77 year old woman and left the scene of the accident to go and do her shopping.

Jeez!

Mixed use paths are shit. Pedestrians hate them, cyclists hate them. Town planners in their infinite wisdom keep designing them without consultation with either group. Direct your ire that way.

But I’m glad that she was imprisoned.

Not convinced that the path was wide enough. Maybe it is 2.4m, but if you look at the video it looks to me like there is a lamp post by the fence taking up space, so would be more difficult for the cyclist to pass on the other side. The pedestrian if partially sighted would not want to be walking by the edge of the road in case they fell off.

For me, from what I can see from the video what should have happened is that the cyclist should have recognised the passing difficulty, stopped and waited for the pedestrian to clear the area of the lampost and then slowly rode past or walked the bike past on the pedestrians right. Instead she carried on coming, tried to squeeze past on the pedestrians left and then ended up in the road.

Of course there is a lot more evidence that I haven't seen and there isn't much excuse to leave after the accident. But I think a jail term is harsh.

She will get off on appeal.

Even if it's a purely pedestrian pavement, it's not her job to police cyclists using it, so gesticulating and shouting is more than enough to distract someone and cause them to have an accident. She's every bit as liable as if she'd physically shoved the poor woman under the car herself, so prison time is absolutely justified. To saunter off to Sainsbury without even stopping to check on the cyclist is just the icing on this particularly horrible cake. Zero concern shown at the time, zero remorse since. Her disabilities don't give her the right to act as a law unto herself, nor do they excuse her revolting behaviour.

Remorse goes a long way in sentencing and she showed none. She lied in interview. She deserves it

In the article it says that the case wasn't able to establish whether it was a shared path or just a normal footpath. I think it would be reasonable for a partially sighted pedestrian to expect it to be a footpath in that case. As someone said above, she had probably had a lifetime of near misses - and with partial sight she will get less warning of approaching cyclists, and with CP be less able to react and move out of their way.

It’s a shared cycle / pedestrian path. Cyclists are allowed to use it to cycle on. At whatever speed they like.

Of course you can't go at whatever speed you like-there are pedestrians to consider.

She deserves to go to jail in my opinion. It’s clear from the footage that she caused the lady to fall into the path of the oncoming car.

She then left the scene to go and do her shopping so clearly didn’t give two shits. Disgusting.

Also her CP doesn’t give her the right to do whatever she likes without consequence.

I think we'd need to see the rest of the video to be able to make a judgment (which presumably the court were able to) but it does look at the end as though she actually moved to push her. She admits she made 'light contact' presumably because to refute contact would have been pointless given the video evidence.

She'll be out in 18 months though and that's disgusting

Right so that means she deserves to die?! Get a grip on yourself.

All this, plus she lied in her interview and didn’t show a shred of remorse prior to sentencing.

A dishonest, dangerous, scumbag who is only getting sympathy due to her demographic, and the public’s general dislike of cyclists.

There are only inconsiderate idiotic pedestrians who cannot fit within their 1.2m of pavement to consider.

No. It wasn’t an accident. The woman who died was probably scared and in getting away from the aggressor she died. It’s no different to the aggressor pushing her off the bike into the road.

No she didn't. The car did.

That’s like pushing someone off a building and claiming the ground killed them.

Someone pushes someone else off a cliff. It’s the cliffs fault, obviously!!!

YABU, and hopefully the sentencing will give pause to other people who act like this.

I have seen the small amount of footage on the BBC website which shows pretty clearly what happened just before impact. It’s tragic that the cyclist died but I agree it was an accident caused by aggressive but not (IMO) criminal behaviour.

I expect that pedestrians shout aggressively at cyclists all the time (and vice versa) and that is not considered criminal behaviour. I don’t think the tragic consequence of the behaviour in this case alters the nature of the behaviour- i.e. someone dies and it’s criminal/ no one dies so it isn’t.

I have endless sympathy for the victim of this tragedy and her loved ones. I also have some sympathy with the Defendant who have various disabilities and is likely to suffered from the shambolic state of the criminal legal aid system.

PS. Her lies and leaving the scene are inexcusable IMO and she should be judged harshly for that.

I thought that it was illegal to cycle on the pavement. That doesn't look like very wide pavement, so I think that I would be pretty angry if a bike came hurtling towards me too.

Perhaps the council, or whoever designed this, should be held accountable.