Cycling campaigners were dismayed yesterday after an appeal against the unduly lenient sentence of a motorist convicted of killing a second person on a bike was upheld.
Gary McCourt was found guilty in April of causing the death of Audrey Fyfe in Scotland by driving carelessly. The 75-year-old died two days after McCourt clipped the back wheel of her bike in Edinburgh in August 2011.
McCourt, 49, was banned from driving for five years and ordered to carry out 300 hours of community service by Sheriff James Scott.
"British Cycling is writing to the Cabinet Secretary for Justice in Scotland to ask for a review of the justice system - as we have done with the UK government."
British Cycling Campaigns Manager Martin Key
At the end of his trial at Edinburgh Sheriff Court, it emerged he was jailed for two years after being convicted in 1986 of causing another cyclist's death by reckless driving. George Dalgity, 22, was killed as he cycled along Edinburgh's Regent Road on October 18 1985.
Mrs Fyfe's family and cycling campaigners, including British Cycling, criticised Sheriff Scott's sentence and prosecutors lodged an appeal on the grounds that it was not tough enough.
But at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh today, Lord Menzies, sitting with Lady Smith and Lord Bracadale, refused the appeal.
Commenting on the outcome, British Cycling's Campaigns Manager, Martin Key, said:
"British Cycling is writing to the Cabinet Secretary for Justice in Scotland to ask for a review of the justice system - as we have done with the UK government. Lenient sentences like the one handed down to the driver who killed Audrey Fyfe send out the wrong message."
