Author name: Steven Edwards

Sajid Javid has become the latest Conservative politician to weigh in on the viral video – discussed during Tuesday’s episode of Jeremy Vine’s Channel 5 show and viewed almost 2.5 million times on Twitter – which shows a motorist failing to stop before narrowly passing a five-year-old cyclist.
The former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has also served as the Home Secretary and Secretary of State for Health and Social Care during his time in government, joined Tory peer Baroness Foster and Conservative London Assembly leader Susan Hall in pointing the finger at the child’s father for letting him cycle on the road in the first place.

Junctions: a key LCC focus
London Cycling Campaign (LCC) has now launched separate campaigns around three of the most dangerous junction systems in London: King’s Cross, the Shoreditch Triangle and Holborn.
These three junctions head a list of over 20 central London junctions requiring urgent action, identified in the initial phase of LCC’s Dangerous Junctions campaign; a list that it is now announced will be updated and expanded in the second phase of the campaign, early in the new year.

Noise-detecting traffic cameras will be trialled in four areas in England in an attempt to crack down on “boy racers” who rev engines and use illegal exhausts, the Department for Transport has announced.
The so-called noise cameras will be installed on the roadside in Bradford on Tuesday, before a rollout in Bristol, Great Yarmouth and Birmingham over the next two months.
A video camera will photograph vehicles and several microphones will record sound to help identify road users who break the law by revving their engines unnecessarily or use illegal exhausts as they drive by.
The technology – in which the government has pledged to invest £300,000 and tested on a private track – will be used to create a digital package of evidence that can be used by police to fine drivers.

Sophie Howe

In a bid to future-proof against cost of living emergencies, public transport should be made free for under 25s, says the future generations commissioner for Wales Sophie Howe. 
Other measures proposed by Howe include expanding the basic income pilot to pay more people enough to meet their daily needs. 
Howe urged the Welsh Government to explore how it can offer short and long-term protection against the cost of living and the climate and nature emergencies. 

@WeAreCyclingUK

A legal loophole that allows motorists who have 12 penalty points on their licence to avoid a driving ban by claiming it would cause them “exceptional hardship” must be closed, argues Cycling UK.

More than 83,000 drivers in the past 10 years have escaped disqualification due to “mitigating circumstances”, the charity estimates.
Cycling UK said the legal loophole has resulted in the death and serious injury of other road users.
In October 2020, the Sentencing Council issued guidance for magistrates, which was intended to reduce the number of offenders with totting up offences who avoided disqualification.
However, the Sentencing Council said that some magistrates and legal advisers have suggested that courts are too often imposing short discretionary disqualifications (of less than 56 days) where people have received 12 or more points.