We were willing to pay a high price for exclusive publishing rights for this Letter by Bill Riley, Barrister and Solicitor. The legal information was deemed so important, that the Editor-in-Chief agreed in exchange, never to publish any of his vast repertoire of lawyer jokes.
Please share this Letter with all cyclists.
Here is Bill Riley’s lengthy Letter from Lotusland (he is a lawyer after all, not an editor. Oops, we almost broke our promise)
April, 2012
Dear Mr. Editor-in-Chief,
I write, firstly, to express my astonishment that you would grace me with the title, “Foreign Correspondent”, and, secondly, to get on with the task of earning that honorific title. Although it reminded me of my regular and formulaic insobriety a lifetime ago within the hallowed halls of the Foreign Correspondents Club (the “FCC”) during a stint in Hong Kong, I am now no longer certain, in the days of the www, exactly what constitutes a foreign correspondent. A correspondent is surely anyone who corresponds, writes a missive or notice and includes great poets, statesmen and evangelists, but also ranting bloggers, spam artists and those pesky collection agents threatening foreclosure yet again. “Foreign” could easily mean unfamiliar, strange or from outside, such as those nasty foreign bodies lodged deep in the road rash upon one’s buttocks, for example.
Bike Law
I must say, this “foreign correspondent” gig is feeling less distinguished by the moment.
Now, to the task. As I let you know in advance, a minor but persistent injury kept me out of competition in 2011(a gluteus medius in spasm, if you really care to know). I am on the mend though, and may yet contest some late season races in 2012, just when you least expect me. Until I can report more fulsomely on bicycle racing from a firsthand perspective, I thought I might instead feign expertise in the litigation of negligence and highway traffic laws as they pertain in British Columbia to cyclist/motorist interactions and, indeed, to collisions.
Rather than lecture you and your readers on the subject generally, I have chosen to report on three recent (2011) case reports from the Supreme Court of British Columbia, all of which concern cyclists being hit by motor vehicles. I can’t say that any of the three cases is precedent setting, but they are all current and illustrative of what cyclists and motorists might expect should they choose to seek recourse in the Courts for damages incurred on the road. They all address the respective duties and responsibilities of cyclists and motorists.
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