The court was asked whether it was correct to charge a bicycle as a ‘carriage’ at a toll station for the bridge over the River Thames at Swinford.
Held: On the language of the particular statute a bicycle or tricycle was a ‘carriage’.
Bigham J said: ‘The framers of the Act no doubt did not contemplate anything in the nature of a bicycle or a tricycle, but the language of the Act does, I think, cover things such as bicycles and tricycles, which have come into existence since the Act was passed. The bicycle or tricycle is a thing which carries. It may carry a man, as a horse does, or a carriage does; it may carry luggage or goods as we know that tradesmen’s tricycles do. It is, therefore, in my opinion, a carriage, and, being a carriage, it is made by the terms of the Act of Parliament liable to pay the toll.’
Phillimore J agreed saying: ‘I think that a bicycle or a tricycle is a vehicle or is a carriage. Any mechanical contrivance, which carries people or weights over the ground, carrying the weights or taking the people off their own feet, so that the foot of man and the body and trunk of man do not support his own weight or the weight of the burden carried, is, I think, a carriage, and I do not think it matters that the man who is carried gives his own propulsion to the carriage. If he got the propulsion by the application of levers worked with his hands, as one sees men doing in the streets, the case would be tolerably clear, and I think it makes no difference that he gets his propulsion by pedalling with his feet – an operation which is perfectly different from the operations of walking, running, or skating, in all of which he bears his own weight at the same time that he moves himself. I therefore come to the conclusion that a bicycle or tricycle is a ‘carriage’.’
Bigham, Phillimore JJ
[1900] 2 QB 66, [1900] UKLawRpKQB 67
Commonlii
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Coates v Crown Prosecution Service Admn 29-Jul-2011
The defendant appealed by case stated against his conviction for driving a Segway scooter on a footpath. He denied that it was ‘a mechanically propelled vehicle intended or adapted for use on roads.’
Held: The appeal failed. The district judge . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 05 September 2021; Ref: scu.442521