Road traffic collisions involving cyclists (FOI)

Request

How many drivers have been prosecuted in respect to any form of any road traffic collision that has involved a pedal cycle. Please provide the number in each year between 2008 and 2020

Response

A response including pedal cycle RTC’s was issued in May 2020. This may be useful and can be viewed at the following link:

Road Traffic Collision statistics (FOI) 

The request is asking for information that is not included in the States of Jersey Police’s information gathering process. It is not something that is reported on annually. To this end, the information is embedded in the body of any reports created and therefore, each report would have to be interrogated independently. To do this for all the 260+ reports over the period requested would take longer than the time permitted under the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014.

However, in an effort to provide some data, a significant number of reports have been reviewed covering the years 2019-2021.

13 reports in each of 2019 and 2020 and the 3 reports to date in 2021 were examined.

In 14 cases, the driver of the car was considered responsible for the collision. In most cases this was due to the driver edging out of a minor road with a restricted view. Due to the low speed, the collisions were usually minor. In most cases, the rider of the pedal cycle declined to assist with any prosecution, preferring to deal with the matter by way of insurance. In five cases, the matter proceeded to prosecution either at Parish hall or court.

In nine cases, the cyclist was deemed to be at fault. Losing control whilst travelling at speed was the main cause of injury, riding into the rear of a vehicle. Only one cyclist was prosecuted, for riding on the pavement against the traffic in a one-way street, hitting a vehicle waiting to pull out at a junction.

In the other cases, either no fault could be apportioned, or both were deemed to be at fault. 

Article applied

Article 16 A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive 

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations. 

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.