Trial by a jury of your peers when accused of a serious crime is a bedrock of the English legal system. And careless or dangerous driving can be hugely serious, devastating countless lives every year. But I’m going to argue that when it comes to some driving offences that are triable “either way” – when defendants have the option of trial by a magistrate or by judge and jury – the latter option should be removed.

This might sound like a curious thing for a QC to propose, but I believe it would make justice more likely, particularly for the most vulnerable road users, cyclists and pedestrians, who are currently too often being failed.

Husband of cyclist killed by London lorry cries as driver is acquitted Read more

If you happen to be charged with dangerous driving or causing death by careless driving, should you choose a magistrates’ court trial the maximum penalty for either is six months in prison. But opt for a judge and jury and this rises, respectively, to two and five years.

So why is your defence lawyer likely to advise you to take the latter option? It’s because they know from experience that juries have a poorer record of convicting drivers, especially if the victim is a cyclist or a pedestrian.

In the last weeks alone juries have acquitted a lorry driver who ran down an elderly pedestrian couple crossing a road in a shopping centre car park (death by dangerous driving), a lorry driver who turned left in central London without ensuring there was no cyclist on his nearside (death by careless driving), and a car driver who “clipped” a cyclist while overtaking him before driving deliberately into him when he sought to remonstrate (dangerous driving and assault).

Often these juries acquit after less than an hour of deliberation, even when the evidence against the driver seems very strong.

Why? One reason appears to be that driving offences seem far more likely than other serious crimes to invoke empathy and compassion from a jury. “There but for the grace of God go I” is not a thought likely to cross many jurors’ minds with murder, rape, terrorism or knife crime. But surveys show that a majority of drivers admit to breaking speed limits, and almost all can probably remember a lapse in concentration or worse when in a car.

In contrast, far fewer jurors are likely to identify with a victim not in a vehicle, particularly those on a bike. Two-thirds of trips in Britain are made in a car, with just over a fifth on foot. The figure for cycling is just 2%.

Additionally, juries arguably have little understanding of the sentence likely to be imposed if they return a guilty verdict. They might know that a conviction for dangerous driving could bring two years in prison and feel this is disproportionate.

In reality, only the most serious offences bring any chance of jail. A BBC investigation two years ago found that fewer than half of drivers convicted of killing a cyclist – not just hitting, but killing – were given any kind of jail sentence at all.

Jury trials are thus a massively expensive and rather slow way of imposing what is likely to be just a driving ban or another non-custodial sentence. They are also slow, with crown court delays particularly common when a defendant is not in custody. This has repercussions – there is evidence that certainty and speed of punishment are more important factors in deterring crime than the severity of punishment.

Given all this expense and likely delay there is a considerable temptation on the part of prosecutors to undercharge cases in order to avoid a jury trial. This is hugely undesirable. Careless driving and inconsiderate driving, for which defendants can’t opt for jury trial, are designed for relatively minor infractions such as momentary inattention, queue barging, middle lane hogging, splashing pedestrians and the like.

Fewer than half of drivers convicted of killing a cyclist were given any kind of jail sentence at all

In contrast, typical examples of dangerous driving given by the Crown Prosecution Service include going too fast, driving aggressively, ignoring road signs, overtaking dangerously or being avoidably and dangerously distracted.

There are many knock-on effects of this culture of undercharging and overly sympathetic juries. When convictions are so hard to achieve, police often fail to take action on a case. This in turn exacerbates a road culture where many people feel the roads are too dangerous to ride a bike.

Any changes would, of course, need to take account of the views of victims and their representatives, and we should start with dangerous driving that has not caused death or serious injury.

But we must do something. A generation is being brought up to be driven everywhere, particularly to school, because their parents feel active travel is too dangerous. This attitude continues into adult life and into the jury box. The bad drivers responsible for this perception of danger are a small majority, but they must be tackled.