by Late Wednesday afternoon, Matt Briggs opened a bottle of ice-cold Champagne and raised a glass to toast a framed picture of his late wife, Kim.
It was the end of a whirlwind day when he sat in the House of Commons watching parliamentary history being made.
An amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill has been passed unanimously by MPs, which will mean tougher new laws and longer prison sentences for cyclists who ride dangerously and kill or injure them.
It was legal parity that Mr Briggs, 53, had been fighting for seven years.
Now, he has revealed that one of the biggest obstacles he faced was “forces” within the Government who seemed desperate to ensure that cyclists were not legally responsible in the same way that there are drivers.
His long-running campaign took on a powerful cycling lobby and faceless bureaucrats – often referred to as the “blob”.
In 2016, cyclist Kim Briggs, who was just 44 years old, was hit by a fixed gear bike that did not have a front brake. She suffered catastrophic head injuries and died a week later.
Mr Briggs, who took his two children to the intensive care unit to say goodbye to his mother, soon learned that despite Charlie Alliston riding a racing bike illegally on a public road, the police were fighting a legal battle to find to prosecute him.
Eventually, Alliston, 20, was charged and convicted of “reckless and furious driving”, a Victorian law meant to target horse-drawn carriages.
Alliston was jailed in 2017 for 18 months. Although drivers could be jailed for life for dangerous or reckless driving, the 1861 law only carries a maximum sentence of two years.
In the years that followed, Mr Briggs, an executive coach, joined other families who lost loved ones to cyclists who rode on footpaths, exceeded speed limits or ran red lights.
The baton in this battle has been passed between many grieving families.
In 2007, Mick and Diana Bennett campaigned for tougher laws after their daughter, Rhiannon, 17, died after being hit by a cyclist in Buckingham.
That cyclist was fined a “disgraceful” £2,200 for dangerous cycling (a charge without a jail charge) despite shouting “move because I’m not stopping” before crashing into her.
In 2011, Andrea Leadsom, a Tory MP, tried unsuccessfully to introduce a Bill so that there would be the same legal sanctions for killing cyclists as for drivers.
Peter Walker has collected files of correspondence from the Department for Transport (DfT) after his wife, Diana, 76, was killed in 2016 when she was hit by a cyclist.
His letters, in which police were asked to treat pedestrian and cyclist collisions as serious crime scenes, were always accompanied by the Department of Finance’s mantra that a consultation on the issue and new laws would soon be published.
‘Somehow, somebody wanted to stop this’
By 2021, Mr Briggs had met four separate Tory transport ministers and politely presented his reasoned arguments for the law change. It is certain that those ministers wanted to act. “Somehow, somebody wanted to stop this,” he said.
When the Government plowed billions of pounds into cycling infrastructure to promote bikes as a healthy mode of transport during the pandemic, Mr Briggs began to despair that it would never succeed.
“From time to time I felt like giving up,” he said, citing how Grant Shapps, the then transport secretary, had twice said new laws would be introduced but never materialised.
“I was brought up to believe that when people in authority say something is going to happen,” he said. “It was unacceptable that someone could promise grieving relatives legal changes and not deliver them. There were forces working against me that I couldn’t seem to defeat.
“I decided to take a more assertive approach and call out this shambolic behaviour. This year, I started hitting people on the head.”
The Telegraph revealed in April how he accused Rishi Sunak of being the “enemy of the pedestrian” amid rumors that No. 10 preventing a change in the law.
Chris Boardman, champion of the cycling lobby and Acting Travel Commissioner who owns a bike brand, fought back, claiming that lightning kills more people than cyclists, citing DfT data which shows that around three people die in per year from collisions with bicycles.
He pointed out that cars kill around five people a day, expressing his “disappointment” at the “emphasis” on cycling, but was not opposed to “everyone having to obey the rules the road”.
This year, The Telegraph revealed how many pensioners killed by cyclists were not included in official Department of Finance statistics because the so-called Stats19 data excludes those who die within 30 days of any collision.
Polly Friedhoff, 82, was hit and killed by bicyclist on a canal towpath, but because it is not a public road her death is not counted.
91-year-old Jim Blackwood was hit by an e-bike on a footpath and took three months to recover from his injuries. It is not counted among Mr Boardman’s three annual cycling deaths.
John Douglas, 75, suffered 15 broken ribs and two broken collar bones after being hit by an e-bike on the pavement but took six weeks to die, so he is not counted again.
The debate changed when The Telegraph revealed that speeding cyclists who hit Hilda Griffiths, 81, in Regent’s Park could not be prosecuted because speed limits do not apply to pedal bikes.
She took 59 days to die and again she is not in official statistics.
In fact, if her son Gerard, 52, had not invited the Telegraph to the inquest, many people would not have known that the Road Traffic Act does not apply to cyclists.
It emerged that Paolo Dos Santos was left seriously injured by a cyclist riding on the wrong side of the road at the same place where Mrs Griffiths was hit. Mr. Boardman’s lightning struck strangely twice in the same place without a cow in sight.
Mr Griffiths, Ms Dos Santos and Mr Blackwood’s daughter Christine White all joined Mr Briggs for a powerful series of radio and television interviews.
Then the Tory heavyweight joined in after hearing Mr Briggs on the Today Programme.
“I took a call from Sir Iain Duncan Smith who said, ‘Mr Briggs, I have a plan’.
“It was a tour de force. He got me a seat on the floor of the House of Commons for the debate where the supporters of the amendment were enthusiastic. IDS simply turned and gave me a double thumbs up.”
Mr Briggs then met with Mark Harper, the Transport Secretary, who supported the Bill, promising to ensure that the statutes were passed.
“I am extremely proud that citizens in this country can put their hands up, say something is wrong and ultimately create change,” he said.
“At my best, the Telegraph was steadfast and I listened to our cause, knowing that the cycling debate is often too feverish.”
Mr Briggs has received many personal attacks on social media for doing the cycling lobby.
“I turn my phone off – it doesn’t bother me,” he said, explaining that he is more worried about his children, Emily, 18, and Isaac, 20, who laugh at him every time he hits his stomach after to see him. himself on a television monitor during an interview.
“The evening after the vote and after raising a glass to Kim, someone I loved so much, I slept well knowing that we had all achieved something; not just for Kim, but for all the families who have been campaigning for all these years.”
