Was Boris Johnson 'naughty' for giving his wife a backie?
Boris Johnson was "naughty" and should have known better than to be caught giving his wife a "backie" on his bike while cycling in London. That was our light-hearted reaction when the Press Association called for our reaction to this silly-season political knockabout story. We assumed this would play to the media's characterisation of 'Boris the buffoon'.
Yet some newspapers still managed to portray CTC's reaction as straight-laced affronted criticism - particularly those papers who were keenest to have a go at Boris. And this in turn prompted something of a Twitter backlash from people who felt CTC should instead have celebrated the 'Boris Backie' as a positive act of civil disobedience, calling for a relaxation in the law!
On the one hand, CTC's standard response to stories about red-light jumping, pavement cycling etc, is to make it clear that we believe all road users need to respect one another's safety and the rules of the road. We do not defend law-breaking by cyclists, any more than you'd expect the AA to defend lawbreaking by drivers.
Section 24 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 makes it an offence in Great Britain to carry a passenger on a bicycle unless it is "constructed or adapted" for this purpose (although there is no definition of what this means). Moreover, similar offences were contained in the preceding Road Traffic Acts of 1972 (s21) and 1960 (s13).
Yet as blogger @AsEasyAsRiding (aka Mark Treasure, chair of the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain) observed in his wonderful "Not dangerous" blog, what Boris did would not only be legal in the Netherlands, but perfectly normal.
(photos: Mark Treasure)
Admittedly, Dutch bikes are generally better adapted to giving backies: they have stronger and thicker spokes, they have wheel-guards as well as chain guards (to prevent clothes becoming caught), and the rear stays and racks are typically stronger too.
But the point is that Boris's backie is hardly the most heinous of crimes. According to this table of legal actions on cycling offences (provided in response to this Parliamentary Question), there were just 44 court prosecutions and 36 convictions for this offence in England and Wales over the period 2003-13. That's out of a total of 23,851 court prosecutions and 18,595 convictions for all cycling offences over this period (an average of 2,168 prosecutions and 1,690 convictions annually).
The one respect in which Boris stands out is that the offence of passenger-carrying is overwhelmingly committed by cyclists in the 10-17 and 18-30 age groups - Boris, you're too old for this sort of thing!
Fixed penalty notices (FPNs) for backie-riding aren't exactly common either. This Freedom of Information Act request revealed that cycling with an unauthorised passenger accounted for 7 out of 3985 FPNs for cycling offences in London in 2010, 13 out of 3758 in 2011, and 9 out of 2752 in 2012 (see table).
Still, if Boris wants to legally give his wife (or anyone else) a backie, he can always go to the Netherlands! Then maybe he'd come back full of ideas on how to transform our streets and junctions to be safe and cycle-friendly - in other words, to create Space for Cycling. Then he could really get on with making London the sort of place where nobody would bat an eyelid at a bit of backie-riding.
What do you reckon? Does Boris's backie make him a dangerous criminal or just a bit of a rogue? Have your say on the CTC forum.
