The cyclist was appearing as a witness. He wasn't charged because no law was broken. It was accepted that the person had walked out right in front of the cyclist without looking. There was no indication that the person's death was as a direct result of the incident. The incident could have occurred in just the same way if the cyclist had been moving at 20mph.
How should CTC/CUK BC LCC IWGBCB (if at all) respond to this report?
Not at all.
Quite. The cyclist apparently had less than 2m to respond. If that had been a car, the unfortunate victim would possibly have been killed instantly, but the news reports would have been blaming her, not the driver.
This is not meant to be taken as my apportioning blame, merely predicting the likely story told by journalists.
The financial and administrative burden of treating bicycles the same way as motor vehicles -- obliged to be equipped with specific instrumentation, tests for roadworthiness -- is impractical, and it would put many people off cycling.
The cyclist wasn't "speeding". The word is being used to imply that the cyclist was breaking the speed limit. The speed limit does not apply to bicycles, therefore he was not speeding. He might have been travelling in excess of the speed posted as a limit for vehicles weighing 1.5 metric tonnes, but then his bicycle probably weighed in the order of 0.5% of that.
Working out the kinetic energy, for a cyclist plus bike of a combined weight of 100kg travelling at 25mph vs a car plus driver travelling at 20mph, the latter has more than 10x the kinetic energy of the former. The issue isn't that the cyclist was travelling faster than the upper limit set for motor vehicles, it's why he failed to miss her when the rest of them didn't, and why she stepped out in front of him when he was so close. We would need to understand that to prevent future incidents of this nature.
Everything else about this story is aimed at provoking outrage in people who think bikes are toys for smug middle aged men.
Sam