tim's experiment

Talk about the law’s delays. You will recall the case of the cyclist who stopped at a traffic light and was rammed (as we can now say, the proceedings having finished) by a car driven by a senior retired policeman. The cyclist was charged with careless cycling and not having a bell. He pleaded guilty to the bell. Hearings over the careless cycling seem to have occupied at least three days, spread over a month or more.  As Hamlet said, “Rightly to be great, Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw, When honour’s at the stake.”  Even given that honour was at stake, though, this seems an awful lot of fuss for a rather trivial matter. Anyway I gather that readers in distant territories where the Hong Kong newspapers do not circulate are agog for the result of the proceedings. So here it is: the cyclist was aquitted.

And now that the thing is over we are free to comment, as we were not before, that common sense rebels at the notion of prosecuting a cyclist who is run over by a car driver. What nonsense! The driver, in his defence, said that the cyclist “just appeared in front of him”. This inspired in at least one reader the thought that this is what things do when you are not paying attention. There is apparently no prospect of the driver being prosecuted, though if the cyclist was not careless that leaves only one possible culprit. It seems that members of the law and order industry stick together. The magistrate made no order as to costs, so being innocent turned out to be rather expensive. As the fines for careless cycling are fairly trivial, cyclists who are run over by retired cops would probably be well advised to plead guilty.