The case of Charlie Alliston who is currently in court facing a manslaughter charge for killing a pedestrian is getting a lot of media coverage, and it’s surely not just because of the shortage of good news stories in August.

Mr Alliston ran into Mrs Kim Briggs, 44, on Old Street in London. She suffered major head injuries and died a week later. It has been revealed that not only was he doing over 18 mph, but the bike he was riding was a racing model – a “fixie” with no brakes, i.e. with fixed pedals and no front brake when it is illegal to ride such bikes on public roads. He apparently shouted to her to get out of the way, and even shouted at her after the crash.

This is not the first such case. The Daily Mail published a good article by Chris Greenwood earlier this year giving some of the data and other cases. He reported that the number of accidents between cyclists and pedestrians had soared by 47% in seven years, rising to 408 in 2015. He noted several pedestrians were killed which resulted in prosecutions of cyclists. He also reported that the biggest regional spike in the numbers was in London (226 accidents in 2015).

Now I have commented on the problems caused by some cyclists riding “furiously” on London streets before – in a blog post entitled “Are Cyclists Racing on London Streets?” where I came to the conclusion that they were – if not against each other, against themselves – based on the recording on Strava of trip times. As a result I got an enormous amount of abuse from a few cyclists.

After a lot of analysis, I came to the conclusion that the comments did not undermine the main point of the article and I said “it is very clear from anyone who walks, cycles or drives in London that there are a minority of cyclists acting in a somewhat dangerous way both to themselves and other people. In other words, cycling at an excessive speed in relation to road hazards and other road users”. This latest case simply reinforces the message that there are dangerous cyclists in London and the problem is getting worse if anything.

Roger Lawson