‘I fought the blob after cyclist killed my wife’
After seven years of battling bureaucracy, Matt Briggs has helped establish tougher new laws
LATE on Wednesday evening, Matt Briggs popped open a bottle of ice-cold champagne and raised a glass to toast a framed picture of his late wife, Kim.
It was the end of a whirlwind day during which he had sat in the House of Commons watching parliamentary history being made.
An amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill was passed unanimously by MPs, meaning cyclists who ride dangerously and kill or maim will face tougher new laws and longer prison sentences.
It was a legal parity for which Mr Briggs, 53, had been fighting for seven years. Now, he has revealed how one of the greatest hurdles he had to overcome were “forces” within the Government that seemed hellbent on ensuring cyclists were not held legally to account in the same way motorists are. His long-running campaign took on a powerful cycling lobby and faceless bureaucrats – often described as the “blob”.
In 2016, Kim Briggs, aged 44, was hit by a cyclist riding a fixed-gear bike which had no front brakes. She sustained catastrophic head injuries and died a week later.
Mr Briggs, who took his two children to the intensive care unit to say goodbye to their mother, soon learned that despite Charlie Alliston riding a racing bike illegally on a public road, the police were struggling to find a law to prosecute him with.
Eventually, Alliston, 20, was charged and convicted of “wanton and furious driving”, a Victorian law meant to target horse-drawn carriages.
Alliston was jailed in 2017 for 18 months. While motorists would face life imprisonment for dangerous or reckless driving, the 1861 law has a maximum sentence of just two years.
In the years that followed, Mr Briggs, an executive coach, joined other families who had lost loved ones to cyclists riding on pavements, exceeding speed limits or careering through red lights.
The baton in this battle has been passed between many grieving families.
In 2007, Mick and Diana Bennett campaigned for tougher laws after their daughter, Rhiannon, 17, died after being hit by a cyclist in Buckingham.
That cyclist was fined a “laughable” £2,200 for dangerous cycling (a charge with
‘There were forces working against me that it seemed I couldn’t defeat’
no prison tariff) despite having shouted “move because I’m not stopping” before crashing into her.
In 2011, Andrea Leadsom, a Tory MP, unsuccessfully tried to introduce a Bill so cyclists who kill face the same legal sanctions as motorists. Peter Walker has amassed files of correspondence from the Department for Transport (DfT) after his wife, Diana, 76, was killed in 2016 when a cyclist hit her. His letters, which called for police to treat pedestrian and cyclist collisions as serious crime scenes, were invariably met with the DfT mantra that a consultation on the issue and new laws would soon be published.
By 2021, Mr Briggs had met four separate Tory transport ministers and politely given his reasoned arguments for the law change. He is convinced those ministers wanted to act. “Somehow, someone, somewhere wanted to stop this from happening,” he said.
When the Government ploughed billions of pounds into cycling infrastructure during the pandemic, Mr Briggs began to despair that he would never succeed. “Occasionally I felt like giving up,” he said, citing how Grant Shapps, the then transport secretary, had twice stated that new laws would be introduced but never materialised.
“I was brought up to believe that when people in authority say something is going to happen, it does,” he said. “The fact someone could promise law changes to grieving relatives and then not deliver them was unfathomable. There were forces working against me that it seemed I couldn’t defeat.
“I decided to take a more assertive approach and call out this shambolic behaviour.”
The Telegraph revealed in April how he had accused Rishi Sunak of being the “enemy of the pedestrian” amid rumours that No10 was blocking the law change. Chris Boardman, the pro-cycling lobby’s champion and the Active Travel Commissioner who owns a bike brand, fought back, insisting lightning and cows kill more people than cyclists, citing DfT data which shows roughly three people a year die from collisions with bikes. He pointed out that cars kill about five people a day, expressing his “disappointment” with the “focus” being on cycling, but did not object to “everybody having to obey the rules of the road”.
This year, The Telegraph revealed how numerous pensioners killed by cyclists were not included in official DfT statistics because so-called Stats19 data excludes those who die 30 days after any collision.
Polly Friedhoff, 82, was hit and killed by a cyclist on a canal towpath, but because it is not a public road her death is not counted. Jim Blackwood, 91, was hit by an e-bike ridden on a pavement and took three months to succumb to his injuries. He is not counted among Mr Boardman’s trio of annual cycling deaths. John Douglas, 75, suffered 15 broken ribs and two broken collarbones after being hit by an e-bike on the pavement but took six weeks to die, so again does not count.
The debate shifted when The Telegraph revealed how a speeding cyclist who hit Hilda Griffiths, 81, in Regent’s Park could not be prosecuted because speed limits do not apply to pedal bikes.
She took 59 days to die and again is not in official statistics. In fact, had her son Gerard, 52, not invited The Telegraph to the inquest, many people would never have known the Road Traffic Act does not apply to cyclists.
It emerged Paolo Dos Santos was left seriously injured by a cyclist riding on the wrong side of the road at the exact same location at which Mrs Griffiths was hit.
Mr Griffiths, Ms Dos Santos and Mr Blackwood’s daughter, Christine White, all joined Mr Briggs for a series of powerful radio and television interviews.
Then a Tory heavyweight waded in after hearing Mr Briggs on the Today Programme. “I took a call from Sir Iain Duncan Smith who said, ‘Mr Briggs I have a plan’. He was a tour de force. He got me a seat on the floor of the House of Commons for the debate where the roar of ‘ayes’ supporting the amendment was raucous. IDS simply turned and gave me a double thumbs up.”
“When I was at my most despondent, The Telegraph was a constant and listened to our cause, aware that the cycling debate is often too febrile.”
Mr Briggs has received numerous personal attacks on social media for taking on the cycle lobby. “I just switch my phone off – it doesn’t bother me,” he said.
“On the evening after the vote and after I raised a glass to Kim, someone I had so deeply loved, I slept well knowing we had all achieved something; not just for Kim, but for all the families who have campaigned for all these years.”