New Labour’s Ministry for Daft Ideas has come up with a brilliant scheme to introduce novel laws in a bid to promote greener transport methods and are considering making motorists legally responsible for all fender-bender accidents involving cyclists or pedestrians – even if they are not at fault.
Government advisers are pushing for changes in the civil law that will make the most powerful vehicle involved in a collision automatically liable for insurance and compensation purposes – so if a mother with a baby’s push chair collides with a scallie on a skateboard – she’s responsible?
Que – excuse me – did Broon’s shit-for-brains government just make common sense and Hegelian dialectic redundant – as well as moral responsibility?
The move, intended to encourage a quantum leap switch to environmentally friendly modes of transport – like walking – is likely to anger some drivers – many of whom already perceive themselves to be the victims of money-grasping speed cameras and Gestapo styled traffic wardens.
However legions are set to argue that it is the intentional kamikaze behaviour of some cyclists – particularly the lemming types who jump red lights and ride the wrong way along one-way streets and dual carriageways – that are to blame for a significant number of crashes.
According to Mybestroadbikes, conversely policy-makers believe radical action is required to get people out of cars and onto bicycles – or to walk more. Less than 2% of journeys are at present made on pedal-power bikes or Shank’s pony.
Other proposals to promote greener — and healthier — transport include the imposition of blanket 20 mph speed zones on residential streets for cars – while roller bladers and BMX cyclists will be able to tear-arse along at whatever Mach speeds they can achieve with ‘leg power’.
Supporters want such measures to be included in the government’s National Cycling Plan and Active Transport Strategy, due to be published as soon as the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified and Brussels can legally impose their Big Brother totalitarian European Federation communist state on us all with impunity.
Jacko McScrunt, chief executive of Hellhound Bikers, an agency funded by the Department for Transport (DfT) to promote cycling, said four key policy changes were needed.
“We wanna see the legal onus placed on motorists when there are accidents – even if the cyclist is a head-banger or the pedestrian’s on a suicide mission.”
“We want speed limits reduced to 20mph on suburban and residential roads; cycling taught to all schoolchildren – especially the couch tater slob types – and four lane cycling provision included in major planning applications for future roads and motorways.”
“Further, we also want adequate cycle lanes through the Channel Tunnel and across all the EU states – so that should keep the Brussels’ transport bod’s busy for a while.”
Such proposals will be seen by some as part of a battle for control of Britain’s roads between motorists and cyclists.
In London, where cycling has bucked the national trend and increased sharply, clashes are already common – with celebrity Mayor Bonkers Boris Nonsense getting knocked off his own bike again recently by one of the City’s pervasive death-dealing bendy buses – the outcome of which resulted in the bus driver being incarcerated in the Tower of London’s dungeons on charges of attempted murder and domestic terrorism.
Last week Guido Fuctifino, one of the ubiquitous number of television celebrity chefs, described to a reporter from the Daily Shitraker his joy at running a group of cyclists off the road and into a hedge while test-driving a new Aston Martin sports car.
Fuctifino was forced to apologise after thousands of angry cyclists protested and the offending sports car was posted through his front door letter box in bite-sized bits – along with the well-gnawed bones of his barbequed Doberman guard dogs.
Ghengis McTwat, a columnist for The Cormorant Stranglers Gazette, was similarly coerced to backtrack last year after suggesting that piano wire should be strung across roads to decapitate cyclists.
McTwat claimed he was only joking, but statistics show that cyclists are actually among the most vulnerable road users, with 85,115 deaths last year alone – without counting those snuffed in collisions with shopping trolleys while biking around supermarkets.
Last week lobbyists for cycling, skate boarding, roller blading, walking and jogging groups met with Fellattia van der Gobble, the Highways and Byways Department official in charge of sustainable transport who is drafting the national ‘Get Off Your Arse and Leg-It’ scheme, to press their case for radical changes in traffic laws by penalising motorists who fail to demonstrate obligatory courtesy and ignore safe distance factors involving cyclists.
However placing the onus of responsibility on motorists is perhaps the most controversial move under consideration.
Such a scheme would lay the presumption of blame against whoever was driving the most powerful vehicle involved in an accident, so they or their insurers would be liable for costs or damages – and possible criminal prosecutions.
If a cyclist were hit by a car, the presumption of culpability would fall on the vehicle driver, while a cyclist would automatically be blamed if he or she knocked down a pedestrian while biking along the pavement.
Transport Minister Lord Norman Donut opined to Fux News that it was wrong to see cyclists and motorists as separate and opposed groups. “Many cyclists are motorists and many motorists are cyclists – just like myself.”
“Simple changes in the law that assume one party is in the wrong because of what they drive will not help harmony on the roads,” Lord Donut concluded – just before being run down by a mob of scallies on skate boards, roller blades and BMX bikes.