Auriol Grey's manslaughter sentence overturned for killing cyclist. Correct decision?

[Locutus2000]

Reported in multiple outlets - BBC.

Mixed feelings - it was a complex case with no winners on any side.

If Grey is such a risk to other users of a shared path, she shouldn't be allowed out on her own.

What's next? force a pushchair out into the road?

Her sight is good enough to see a woman on a small wheeled shopping bicycle and her actions led to the death of an innocent person, she also has shown no sorry for her actions.

The UKs attitude to road deaths is shocking, want to kill someone? run them over in your car or in this case, shove them into the road.

The original sentence of 3 years was far to lenient but this appeal makes a joke of this poor womans death who was doing nothing wrong at all.

I wonder what the correlation between Greys supporters and hatred toward cyclists is?

"A Cambridgeshire County Council spokesperson said: "We cannot categorically say it is a shared use path as we could not find any legal records to evidence this."

@Alexandra2001 I am a cyclist and know to not cycle on pavements unless they are clearly marked as cycle path. Sticking only to that side of a clearly marked path. My kids have been raised to never ride on a footpath. To wear safety gear when cycling and all of us, if in doubt, stop and dismount.

This was not a clearly marked cycle path. It had street furniture which made it difficult for users to navigate. Bigger road users are supposed to look out for smaller users, which includes cyclists and pedestrians.

And as for sight being good enough to see a cyclist coming towards someone, you woefully lack understanding of what partial sighted and visual impairment can be.

Even being registered blind, people can have some sense of sight but not be able to see detail.

Cyclists need to start taking more responsibility for their own behaviour. They couldn’t prove the cyclist had any right to be on the pavement and they couldn’t prove the cyclist was pushed, only that she was ridiculously close to a pedestrian who was waving her arms about aggressively and warning her not to get close to her, but being ignored. It doesn’t take a shove for someone to fall off their bike - getting too close to someone waving their arms around is plenty. The cyclist should be more aware of that than the visually impaired, learning disabled pedestrian.

That's a lovely clear path though. The one in Huntingdon was less obvious or it would have been totally clear to everyone it was shared use. It wasn't.

We have shared use signs here where the path is around 1m wide. Keen Cyclists never use these and, in fact, pedestrians don't much either. We seem to have the situation that only families use these shared paths. They seem prepared to dismount. The keen cyclists would never dismount, so they don't use them. They cycle on the roads with a wide shared path adjacent and even a dedicated cycle lane, and then hold up all the traffic. I do wonder why they don't care about their safety?

@Walkaround

I’m very ‘on the fence’. If the lady had the capacity of a child, you could see a child walking into a cyclist here and potentially causing a death. However that would be likely be unintentional.

I think it was an aggressive action. I don’t think there was remorse. I think it could happen again if the lady is unsupervised.

I’m surprised the lady on the bike didn’t see her coming and slow down/avoid/dismount. If on a shared path, you should have that awareness of pedestrians. Was she wearing a helmet? She was cycling next to a very busy road.
Better signage is crucial here too. The confusion over shared path or not meant this was an accident waiting to happen.

doing what's safest for her causing the death of someone? Oh well as long as AG feels safe who cares who she injures or kills?

Do you think AG can now go about in the community with this belief, 'I can push that buggy put of my way....I don't feel safe, I'm allowed'

Point is though that some people simply despise cyclists. Drivers don't want them on the roads and the roads aren't safe for all cyclists.

Pedestrians don't want them on parks and pathways even when it clearly is a shared pathway as either the one I showed in the picture.

You can see from this thread that plenty of people are gleeful in Celia's death.

It's truly horrible but some people are I guess and you won't change that.

It was established. There were cycle path signs further back and no end of cycle path signs. So legally she was entitled to be there.

what they spent time establishing was whether there should have been an end of cycle path sign and if the council had forgotten to do this. But it was eventually decided this wasn’t the case and clearer cycle path signs are now up. But even if they had forgotten an end of cycle path sign it would legally have been a cycle path until such a sign is reached.

So cycling on the footpath is punishable by death then. If you did that in a car, you would just get a few points on your licence.

I’m surprised the lady on the bike didn’t see her coming and slow down/avoid/dismount.

I'd say she made a quick decision to keep going to get past her and away. Rather than dismount and risk abuse and possible violent assault. I'd cross the road if I saw a person who appeared unhinged, but that may have not been easy here.

A push chair is completely different to a bicycle, surely that's not difficult to understand.

Her conviction has been overturned.

I agree, some people are so anti cyclist they will defend AG and not too far from the surface think the cyclist deserved it. This is why the anti cyclist rhetoric is so bad, it dehumanises cyclists and subconsciously encourages dangerous behaviour towards them

Of course she's doing what safest for her. She's a partially sighted pedestrian walking where she should be safe.

What do you want her to do? Fly?

And if councils all over the UK did what is safest for all then they wouldn't allow cycling on pavements.

It's not anti cyclist.

What people are objecting to and cyclists taking over pedestrian safe spaces, listed of keeping to cycle paths and/or the road.

It wasn't firmly established that cyclists should not have been cycling on that particular pavement.

Of course but its something that she could turn her attention too, whats so difficult to understand?
Do you wave your arms and shout at cyclists you meet on a shared path or are you a little less irrational?

Someone so mentally & physically ill is capable of doing anything at all including taking her anger out on anything that happens to be in her way.

An innocent person died, doubtless a car driver traumatised, yet this woman gets away scot free, with no remorse whatsoever, thats not justice, whatever the CofA said.

If she’s partially sighted and unsteady on her feet then surely the most obvious and safest thing to do would be to stand still and allow the bike to pass her, even standing still and sticking her arms out would make more sense than stepping towards her and waving her arms around shouting, but then she was well known for attacking cyclists, wasn’t she?

Cyclists are not allowed on the pavement unless it's been clearly marked as a shared path.

This stretch wasn't.

Maybe she lost her balance? Maybe she was startled and reacted on that?

I did wonder (or hope, given how chilling it is) if perhaps she was in shock afterwards, and that’s why she left to go shopping. And older BBC article states that she showed no remorse though, and also gave a ‘dishonest account’ in interview.

So awful.

@ChardonnaysBeastlyCat have you watched the video?

I have and it seems so have the judges in the Court of Appeal.

It was a shared use path which she was on 🤷🏻‍♀️