"We are missing him terribly and we are lost without him."

The family of a man who died after being hit by a car have described him as kind and generous and say they are lost without him.

Christopher Ashman, 47, of Headlands, in Kettering, was left by the side of the road and died after he was hit by a black Ford Mondeo when he was cycling to Thorpe Malsor.

He died when out cycling a route near his home that he knew well and had gone on hundreds of times before.

If convicted, the killer driver will undoubtedly get his licence back after a few years, because the hit and run killing of a cyclist is regarded by the British judicial system as less important than the right to drive a motor vehicle.

(I’m thrilled to discover that a cycling Q.C. is reading this blog. I shall leave the question of how the law might best be reformed to the experts. As a layperson I don’t like the distinction between ‘careless’ and ‘dangerous’ driving – because to me what the law interprets as careless behaviour by drivers strikes me as being consciously reckless behaviour – and I’d prefer a charge of vehicular homicide in all such cases. And even within the current system it is surely high time that sentencing policy was changed so that hit and run drivers who kill forfeit their licences for life, irrespective of whether they have killed through ‘carelessness’ or ‘by dangerous driving’.)