A man has been sentenced to 27 months in prison after deliberately driving his BMW into a cyclist in central London, leaving the victim with a fractured spine. Clifford Harper, 52, hit Peter Corfe following an exchange of insults in slow-moving traffic earlier this year. Witnesses reported seeing Harper get out of his car and tell Corfe, “I’ll do it again.”
Corfe spent nine days in hospital after the collision. Southwark Crown Court heard that Harper had temporarily “lost his mind” due to mounting personal and work pressures. The judge accepted the incident was out of character, handing down a sentence below the maximum of five years. Harper was also ordered to pay £5,000 in damages and banned from driving for three years.
The case has sparked criticism of the legal system’s handling of road offences against cyclists. Cycling campaigners argue that the sentence reflects a wider trend of leniency towards dangerous driving. According to figures, only 1% of driving offences result in a prison sentence, and over 10,000 drivers in the UK have more than 12 points on their licences without being banned.
Roger Geffen of Cycling UK said the sentence failed to reflect the severity of the offence, noting that Harper’s actions could have caused death. “The government has consistently said the legal framework is supposed to reflect the culpability of the driving, but it’s more weighted upon the seriousness of the outcome rather than the seriousness of the offence,” he said.
The case has drawn comparisons to that of Charlie Alliston, a cyclist jailed for 18 months after a collision that killed a pedestrian. Alliston’s case prompted a government review, while Harper’s has received less media attention, highlighting what some see as a double standard in the treatment of drivers and cyclists.
