Japan Cycling Rules 2026: When a Warning Becomes a Ticket

In the first month of Japan’s new bicycle ticketing regime, police across the entire country issued 2,147 fines. In that same month they issued 135,855 verbal warning slips — a gap of roughly 63 to 1 — and nationwide, the number of people ticketed for the offence every guidebook warns about, riding on the footway, was five. Total citations actually fell to around 60% of the same month a year earlier. So if you are about to rent a bicycle in Kyoto, Karuizawa or on the Shimanami Kaido, the useful thing here is not a table of fine amounts. It is a single test: whether you get a ticket depends far less on what you did than on what happened afterwards. One identical action can branch three ways — a verbal warning, a fixed-penalty ticket, or full criminal procedure — and most English coverage describes only the middle branch. This guide draws the two dividing lines, and covers the three things almost nobody writes in English: cars now owe you a metre of clearance, the fine can only be paid in cash at a bank counter, and there is exactly one thing you can do at the roadside that makes everything worse.

What actually changed in April

Not the rules. What happens to you after you are caught.

From April 1, 2026, Japan’s traffic violation notification system was extended to bicycles. The official page states this in the past tense — the system has been applied, not will be — so there is no pending delay to wait out. The legal basis is the 2024 amendment to the Road Traffic Act, Act No. 34 of 2024.

To see what the amendment filled in, you have to appreciate how binary enforcement was before it. An officer confronting a cycling offence had two options and nothing in between. One was a verbal warning, which carried no consequence whatsoever. The other was the red ticket, which routes the case directly into criminal procedure: a prosecutor, an interview, and the possibility of a record. That is a heavy instrument to reach for over one red light, and officers largely did not, which meant that in practice almost every cycling offence in Japan ended at the warning tier.

The blue ticket is the missing middle rung. Its defining feature is that paying the fixed penalty keeps the case out of criminal procedure entirely — no prosecutor, no record. The consequence of the amendment, then, is that penalising a cyclist became procedurally realistic for the first time. Nothing that was legal in March became illegal in April. Officers simply gained a calibration mark between "nothing" and "everything".

One threshold matters especially for visitors: the blue ticket applies only to riders aged 16 and over (Article 125, paragraph 2, item 4). Under-16s are, as a rule, given guidance and a warning, with some prefectural forces issuing a distinct safety guidance card instead. Be careful with a second number that circulates alongside this one: the mandatory cyclist course threshold is 14, not 16. Different mechanism, different age, covered below.

How many tickets the first month produced

2,147. In the same month, 135,855 verbal warnings.

On May 14, 2026, the National Police Agency released provisional figures for the system’s first month of operation. They make the case better than any adjective could:

Read together, those rows produce three conclusions that all run against intuition. First, warnings outnumber tickets by roughly 63 to 1 — the system exists, but being pulled over and told off remains overwhelmingly the likelier outcome. Second, footway riding produced five tickets in the entire country over a month, which is difficult to reconcile with how prominently that offence features in visitor advice. Third, total citations went down, not up, to around 60% of the previous year. In the first month of a crackdown, fewer people were formally cited than before it began.

The agency’s own explanation to reporters was that this reflects placing the emphasis on roadside guidance and warnings. That is consistent with the line running through every official document on the subject: when a cycling offence is identified, guidance and a warning are, as a matter of basic policy, given at the scene. That sentence appears three separate times across the agency’s summary material and its rulebook. It is policy, not politeness.

One boundary has to be stated plainly, because it constrains everything above. These figures cover one month. Monthly enforcement data from May 2026 onward could not be located for this guide — the agency’s bicycle portal carries annual accident statistics only, with no monthly enforcement series. So this article consistently says "the first month (April 2026)" and never "since", "to date" or "cumulatively". The figures are provisional, and the opening month of any new system is naturally weighted toward publicity rather than penalties. Whether enforcement tightens later is genuinely unknown right now.

When a warning becomes a ticket

Not what you did. Whether anything came of it.

That is the most useful sentence in this guide, and it is not an inference — the police FAQ says it repeatedly, in one recurring construction. A whole run of answers there share the same shape: merely doing X will not, in itself, get you cited.

Six questions, one sentence pattern. The police are saying the same thing six ways: these habits carry no dedicated penalty. They are things that make it easier to cross the line that does.

Where is that line? The official example sets it startlingly low. The illustration given for the fourth enforcement category is riding along a footway at speed and thereby causing a pedestrian to stop walking. No contact, no injury, no complaint — a pedestrian who had to halt is enough. Which means "riding on the footway" and "riding fast enough on the footway that people get out of the way" are genuinely different events, and only the first belongs in that five-tickets-a-month bracket.

One qualification, so the table above is not over-read. Earphones, umbrellas and handlebar loads sit under a second layer in most prefectures: violations of public safety commission requirements, which each prefecture writes itself and which carry a ¥5,000 fixed penalty. That does not contradict the "only if something happens" logic — the police are describing these states in isolation.

Warning, blue ticket, red ticket: how the three branches split

The same action can go three ways, and one of them leaves a criminal record.

The police sort enforcement situations into five categories, numbered ① to ⑤ in their own documents. These are not five ways to get a fine. That misreading is easy and consequential, because two of the five are not fixed-penalty matters at all:

Once that table is clear, the whole system is. Only ②, ④ and ⑤ produce a blue ticket. Categories ① and ③ run through criminal procedure, with a prosecutor and a potential record — a different order of consequence from paying a fine and moving on. And everything that falls into none of the five stays at the first tier: roadside guidance and a warning.

Two examples are worth separating carefully:

• Alcohol: always criminal, never a blue ticket. Neither riding while impaired by alcohol nor riding over the legal threshold (0.3 mg/ml in blood, 0.15 mg/l in breath) is a fixed-penalty offence. Drink-riding a bicycle in Japan is not a fine-and-forget matter.
• Phones: two branches, decided by outcome. Holding the phone to talk or holding it while staring at the screen is the fixed-penalty offence — ¥12,000. Causing actual danger on the road escalates it into the criminal version, punishable by up to a year of confinement or a ¥300,000 fine.

There is one further route into criminal procedure that sits outside the five categories entirely: failing to state your address and name when cited, or leaving the scene (Article 126, paragraph 1, items 1 and 2). That clause matters far more to a visitor than to a resident, and it gets its own section below.

What each offence costs

¥3,000 to ¥12,000, with holding a phone at the top.

The table below covers the brackets most relevant to a visitor. Read it knowing that the amount is not the threshold for being ticketed at all — the 63-to-1 ratio above is the operative reality. This table describes what you pay if the ticket does get written.

Three of those offence names look nearly identical in English, mean different things, and differ by a factor of two in cost. This is the most commonly garbled group in the entire schedule:

• Traffic division violation (¥6,000): riding on the wrong side, or riding on a footway where bicycles are not permitted.
• Failure to proceed slowly on a footway (¥3,000): riding too fast on a footway where bicycles are permitted.
• Failure to use a cycle track (¥3,000): ignoring a dedicated cycle track alongside you.

Two notes on the table’s provenance. The widely repeated claim that 113 offence types apply to cyclists has no traceable source in the police’s own documents; a line-by-line reading of the official schedule for this guide counted 65 named offences (the table splits rows by statutory provision, so row count exceeds name count, and 113 may well be a row or sub-item total). Unsourced numbers do not go in. Separately, the two pages carrying that schedule are scanned images with no text layer, and the amounts above were read off at triple resolution — anyone citing a single obscure line item should open the original PDF and check it again.

One more misconception worth retiring here: holding a driving licence does not expose you to demerit points for cycling offences. The FAQ states it directly. Serious cases still bite, though — for hit-and-run, fatal collisions or drink-riding, the public safety commission can suspend a licence for up to six months, and three men in their forties and fifties had licences suspended in November 2024 for cycling under the influence.

The three habits visitors bring with them

Wrong side, footway, phone in hand — the first two normally get a warning first, the third does not.

One: ride on the left

Japan drives on the left, and a bicycle is legally a light vehicle, so bicycles belong on the left side of the carriageway. Anyone arriving from North America, continental Europe, Taiwan, Korea or mainland China has the opposite instinct, and it is muscle memory rather than knowledge — the drift back to the right happens at junctions, when attention is elsewhere.

The reassuring part is that this offence has a warning buffer built in. The police file wrong-side riding under category ⑤, described as continuing to ride on the right after an officer has given guidance and a warning. So the correct response to being stopped is exactly one thing: move to the left, immediately, without arguing. Comply and that is normally the end of it; carry on and it becomes ¥6,000.

That is not permission, though. Wrong-side riding simultaneously satisfies category ④ — if your riding creates real danger, such as forcing an oncoming vehicle to brake hard, the ticket needs no prior warning. And it is the first of the sixteen violation types feeding the mandatory cyclist course. Three layers, all live at once: possibly just a warning, possibly an immediate ticket, and a course order if it happens twice.

Two: footways, and reading the sign

Footways in Japan are closed to bicycles by default, with an exception where a sign permits it (blue, showing a pedestrian and a bicycle together). Riders under 13, riders over 70, riders with disabilities, and situations where the carriageway is clearly dangerous also fall within the exceptions.

Enforcement reality, though, suggests this offence is heavily over-weighted in visitor advice: five citations nationwide in a month. What actually creates risk is not getting onto the footway, it is the speed you carry once there. Where cycling is permitted, the law requires you to keep to the carriageway side and ride slowly enough to stop at any moment, and making a pedestrian halt already crosses the line. The workable version: on a footway, ride at walking pace or get off and push.

Three: the phone, which has no buffer

The first two habits share a warning stage. Holding a phone does not. It sits in category ②, among the three examples of fixed-penalty offences with high potential for serious collisions, and it is the most expensive line on the schedule. It was also the second most common violation in the first month — together with failing to stop at stop lines, the two accounted for over 70% of the total.

The fix is cheap: use a mount. The FAQ is explicit that staring at a mounted screen is prohibited under the Act but attracts no enforcement where no actual danger results — the offence is defined by holding, and a mounted phone does not meet it. Pull over to change your route. There is no grey area to economise in here.

When and where you are most likely to be stopped

Around eight in the morning and five in the evening, on routes each police station publishes itself.

Enforcement locations and times are not arbitrary, and the police publish both. On timing, the stated focus is the morning commuting and school-run period and the dim hours around sunset. That matches the collision data: across 2020–2024, the 36,299 bicycle-related fatal and serious-injury collisions peak twice, at 8am (3,458) and 5pm (2,878).

On location, each police station designates bicycle guidance priority districts and routes, published on the prefectural police website, in the local police box bulletin, and in municipal newsletters, and revised in response to collision patterns and residents’ requests. That term is worth recognising, since it is the wording that appears on the signage.

Two practical conclusions for a visitor. The evening window carries doubled risk — it is simultaneously an enforcement focus and the time people forget to switch on lights, and riding without lights costs ¥5,000. Check that the lights actually work before you leave the rental shop, not after dark. And avoid the 8am commuter flow. Japanese urban cycling density at that hour is remarkable, and for someone still adjusting to riding on the left, it is the worst possible hour to be learning.

What to do when you are stopped

Give your name and address. Do not hand anyone money at the roadside.

This is the section that matters most to a visitor, and both halves come straight from official text.

One: refusing to identify yourself skips straight to criminal procedure

The wording leaves no room: where a person cited for a fixed-penalty offence does not make their address and name known at the scene, or flees the scene, the case is processed under criminal procedure as it was before (Article 126, paragraph 1, items 1 and 2).

Not speaking Japanese is not an exemption. Gesturing, translation apps, phoning your hotel or the rental shop to interpret — all perfectly workable. Walking away is not. It is the only step in the entire process that converts a payable fine into a criminal matter, and it is entirely within your control.

On identification: the FAQ says that without a driving licence, verification uses other documents such as a My Number card or student ID, and failing those, self-declaration plus steps such as contacting family. That answer is written for residents, and whether a passport serves as identification here has never been stated officially. This guide will not tell you a passport is the answer. It is realistically the only official document you will have on you, and carrying it does not hurt — but do not treat it as officially endorsed.

Two: anyone taking cash at the roadside is committing fraud

The police FAQ puts two sentences side by side. The fine is paid using the payment slip issued with the citation, at a bank, post office or similar financial institution, and officers do not collect fine money at the roadside during enforcement. If someone impersonating an officer attempts to take a fine from you, call 110.

That the police thought this worth putting in an FAQ tells you it has happened. For a visitor who does not speak the language and has just been stopped by someone in uniform, it is the single most valuable sentence here.

How the fine is actually paid

Payment slip, bank or post office counter, cash, within about seven days.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police set out the sequence more plainly in their Chinese-language material than the Japanese pages manage: the officer hands over the traffic violation notice (the blue ticket) and a payment slip on the spot; you take the payment slip to the counter of any bank or post office, present it, pay in cash, and receive a receipt.

Translated into travel logistics:

• No cards, no convenience stores, no online payment. This runs against the grain of nearly every other payment in Japan, and the convenience store — which solves most things — cannot help.
• It has to happen on a weekday during banking hours. Ticketed on a Saturday, you are effectively waiting for Monday.
• Around seven days from the day after the citation for provisional payment.

And now the honest part. What happens if you have left Japan before those seven days are up has never been addressed officially. The police FAQ, the rulebook, and the Tokyo force’s trilingual material all pass over the scenario of a violator leaving the country. The only documented rule is the system’s own: where the fixed penalty is not paid, the case moves into criminal procedure. Whether that is enforceable against a departed visitor, or has any bearing on a future entry, is not something the authorities have stated — so this guide does not guess.

Official translations exist, but only Tokyo made them

Worth knowing before you go. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police produced dedicated Chinese, English and Korean pages and PDFs (updated February 16, 2026), covering the system diagram, a translated fine schedule, and the payment sequence quoted above. The National Police Agency’s English pages carry no blue-ticket material at all — only the older cycling safety rules and helmet guidance.

The system is national. The explanations are not. Stopped in Kyoto, Onomichi or Biei, the officer in front of you has no translated document to show you. Saving the Tokyo force’s English PDF to your phone before the trip is therefore genuinely useful even if you never set foot in Tokyo, because the underlying rules are identical. One caveat on attribution: that material is the Tokyo Metropolitan Police’s, not the National Police Agency’s, and the Chinese version is simplified.

Do you need a helmet

Not wearing one is not a fine.

The official sentence is unusually clean: not wearing a helmet does not make you subject to a fixed penalty as a traffic offence — but to protect yourself, make the effort to wear one when riding. It is a duty of effort, not a penalty, extended to all age groups in April 2023, and it does not appear in any bracket of the fixed-penalty schedule. Folding it into a fine table is a common and consequential error.

With the penalty question settled, the numbers published alongside it deserve a look. In 2024, roughly half of cyclists killed suffered head injuries (161 people, 49%). Across 2020–2024, among cyclists who sustained head injuries, the fatality rate for those not wearing helmets was about 1.4 times that of those who were (2.6% against 1.9%).

So the accurate framing is that this is the one rule that costs you nothing and might save your life. Most rental operations supply helmets on request; on long-distance routes, take one.

The rule that protects riders

Cars overtaking you now owe about a metre.

Almost no English coverage mentions this, yet it took effect on the same day as the ticketing regime and points the opposite way — it protects the rider.

The amended Act adds a lateral passing rule: when a car overtakes a bicycle and there is insufficient clearance between them, the car must proceed at a speed appropriate to that gap; correspondingly, cyclists must keep as far to the left of the road as practicable.

The police guidance figures are specific:

• When passing to the right of a bicycle, leave as much room as possible.
• At least about one metre of clearance is the safe target.
• Where about a metre cannot be maintained, drive at roughly 20 to 30 km/h.

This matters in two ways. It gives the left-side rule a fresh legal footing — the same amendment obliges riders to keep as far left as practicable, so it is not merely convention. And it completes the picture of what the 2026 amendment actually did. The same statute that made cyclists ticketable also told drivers to leave a metre; describing only the first half turns a two-sided reform into a one-sided crackdown.

If your itinerary involves a long-distance route — the seventy-kilometre island-hopping ride across the Shimanami Kaido, or the loop around Lake Biwa — this rule is worth knowing, since substantial stretches of both share tarmac with traffic.

Three closing points

One: ride on the left, and treat everything else as secondary. It is the likeliest mistake for most visitors and it is a matter of reflex rather than knowledge. The good news is the built-in warning buffer — switch sides when told and that is normally the end of it; ¥6,000 is what continuing costs. The bad news is that it can also trigger category ④ directly, the moment your riding forces someone else to brake hard.

Two: remember 63 to 1, and remember the phone is the exception. The first month produced 2,147 blue tickets against 135,855 warning slips, and five footway citations nationwide. Ordinary lapses overwhelmingly stop at the warning tier. The one everyday habit to treat as having no buffer is holding your phone — ¥12,000, the top of the schedule, and the second most common violation recorded in month one. A mount costs a fraction of that.

Three: when stopped, do two things and avoid one. Do: give your name and address, and take the payment slip. Avoid: handing cash to anyone at the roadside — the police state in writing that officers do not collect fines on the spot, and tell you to call 110 if someone tries. As for helmets, they appear in no bracket of the penalty schedule, but the fatality rate among head-injured riders without one runs about 1.4 times higher, and rental shops hand them out for the asking. For the other half of the same Road Traffic Act, driving in Japan and the international permit rules covers the motorised side; for general trip preparation, the first-time Japan checklist is the place to start.

A closing note on shelf life. Every enforcement figure here covers a single month, April 2026, and all of it is provisional; monthly data from May onward could not be located. The system is barely months old, its first month naturally leaned toward publicity over penalties, and nobody can currently say whether enforcement tightens. Everything in this guide was verified on August 28, 2026, with a re-check scheduled for April 2027, when a full year of official data should exist.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1：Is riding on the wrong side of the road an instant fine in Japan?

Usually not. You get one chance. The National Police Agency files wrong-side riding under the fifth of its five enforcement categories, and the official wording describes the trigger as continuing to ride on the right after a police officer has already given you guidance and a warning. In other words: an officer stops you, tells you to switch sides, you switch, and that is normally the end of it. What turns it into ¥6,000 is carrying on after being told. This ordering matters more than the number, because most English guides compress it into "wrong-side riding is a ¥6,000 fine" — which tells you nothing about what to actually do when you are stopped. The answer is: move to the left immediately and do not argue. But do not read this as permission. Wrong-side riding also satisfies the fourth category, which needs no warning at all: if your riding creates real danger — forcing an oncoming vehicle to brake hard, for instance — the ticket can be written on the spot. It is also the first of the sixteen violation types that trigger Japan’s mandatory cyclist re-education course.

Q2：Can I use my phone for navigation while cycling?

Mounted on the handlebars, yes. Held in your hand, that is ¥12,000. Japanese law splits phone use into two entirely separate offences, and the split is worth understanding because the amounts are nothing alike. The fixed-penalty offence is defined by holding — holding the phone to talk, or holding it while staring at the screen. That carries ¥12,000, the highest figure on the entire bicycle penalty schedule, and it sits in the police’s second category, meaning it is one of the few everyday actions with no warning stage at all. A phone fixed to a mount is treated differently: the police FAQ confirms that staring at a mounted screen is prohibited under the Road Traffic Act, but adds that where no actual traffic danger results, no enforcement action is taken. Cause genuine danger and it escalates into the criminal-procedure version of the offence, punishable by up to one year of confinement or a ¥300,000 fine. The practical rule: buy a mount, and pull over before you touch the screen. This is not an obscure clause — phone use and failing to stop at stop lines together accounted for over 70% of all violations in the system’s first month.

Q3：Will I be fined for cycling without a helmet in Japan?

No. The official wording is explicit that not wearing a helmet does not make you subject to a fixed penalty. Helmets are a duty of effort in Japan, extended to all ages in April 2023, and they appear nowhere on the fixed-penalty schedule — not in any bracket. Keeping this separate from the penalty rules matters, because merging the two is one of the most common errors in English-language coverage of the 2026 changes. That said, the figures the police publish alongside that sentence are worth a moment: in 2024, roughly half of all cyclists killed in Japan suffered head injuries (161 people, 49%), and across the 2020–2024 period, the fatality rate among head-injured cyclists not wearing helmets was about 1.4 times that of those wearing them (2.6% against 1.9%). So the accurate framing is that this is the one rule that will not cost you money and might save your life. Most rental shops in Japan hand out helmets free — you generally just have to ask.

Q4：How do I pay a Japanese cycling fine? Can I use a card?

No card, no convenience store, no online payment. Cash, at a bank or post office counter, within seven days as a rule. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police describe the sequence plainly in their own multilingual material: the officer hands you a traffic violation notice (the blue ticket) and a payment slip on the spot; you take that payment slip to the counter of any bank or post office, present it, pay the amount in cash, and receive a receipt. For a visitor this has real scheduling consequences — you need a weekday during banking hours, and the convenience store, which solves most payment problems in Japan, cannot help here. The more important half is the fraud warning, which the police put in their own FAQ: the fine is paid at a financial institution using that slip, and officers never collect fine money at the roadside. If someone claiming to be a police officer tries to take a fine from you in person, the official instruction is to call 110. As for what happens if you leave Japan before paying — there is no official statement on that at all, and this guide will not invent one. The only documented rule is the system’s own: non-payment moves the case into criminal procedure.

Q5：I have no Japanese ID. How do the police verify who I am?

The examples the police give are all Japanese documents. A passport is not among them. The official FAQ states that where a person has no driving licence, identity is confirmed using other identification such as a My Number card or a student ID; and where the person carries none of these, verification proceeds by self-declaration combined with steps such as contacting family members. That answer is plainly written for residents, and whether a passport works as identification here has never been stated officially — so this guide will not tell you a passport is sufficient. It is realistically the only official document you will be carrying, and having it certainly does not hurt. What matters far more is the rule that sits next to it, and this one is unambiguous: if you are stopped for a violation and fail to state your address and name, or leave the scene, the case is handled under criminal procedure exactly as before (Article 126, paragraph 1, items 1 and 2). A language barrier is not an exemption. Gesture, use a translation app, phone your hotel or the rental shop for help — all fine. Just do not walk away. That single decision is the only thing in the whole process that reliably makes your situation worse.

Q6：Who does the blue ticket system apply to? What about children?

Riders aged 16 and over. Under Article 125, paragraph 2, item 4, the bicycle fixed-penalty system applies to riders of 16 or above; violations by under-16s are, as a rule, met with guidance and a warning, and some prefectural forces (Kyoto and Nara among them) issue a separate "bicycle safety guidance card" in a format that varies by prefecture. There is a second age threshold that is easy to confuse with this one: the mandatory cyclist course applies from 14. That is a different mechanism entirely — being cited twice within three years for any of sixteen specified violations (or causing an accident through one) results in a public safety commission order to attend. The course runs three hours, carries a fee, and failing to attend within three months without good reason is punishable by a fine of up to ¥50,000. Sixteen is the ticket threshold; fourteen is the re-education threshold. Do not merge them. One more frequently garbled point: holding a driving licence does not expose you to licence demerit points for cycling offences — the FAQ says so directly. Serious cases are different: for hit-and-run, fatal accidents or drink-riding, the public safety commission can still suspend a licence for up to six months, and in November 2024 three men in their forties and fifties had licences suspended for cycling under the influence.

Q7：Do earphones, umbrella holders or bags on the handlebars get you stopped?

Doing them is not the offence. What happens next is. The police FAQ answers a whole run of these questions using one repeated sentence pattern, and that pattern is really the operating logic of the entire system. Riding with earphones does not in itself immediately constitute a traffic violation, and you will not be cited merely for being in that state — enforcement becomes possible when the behaviour actually produces traffic danger or materially raises the risk of a collision. Umbrella holders get the identical answer. Bags on the handlebars get a more concrete one: simply riding with a bag hung on the handlebars will not get you cited, but losing control of the steering as a result and causing an accident will. Note how low the threshold for "what happens next" actually is. The example the police use for their fourth category is riding along a footway fast enough to make a pedestrian stop walking — no contact, no injury, just a pedestrian who had to halt. So the correct reading is not "anything goes"; it is that these habits carry no dedicated penalty of their own while making it considerably easier to cross the line that does.

Q8：What actually changed in April 2026? Cycling offences were already illegal.

What changed is not the rules. It is what happens to you after you are caught. From April 1, 2026, Japan’s traffic violation notification system — the blue ticket — was extended to bicycles, under the 2024 amendment to the Road Traffic Act (Act No. 34 of 2024). Before that date, an officer had exactly two options: a verbal warning, or the red ticket, which sends the case straight into criminal procedure with a prosecutor, an interview and a potential record. The red ticket was heavy enough that officers were reluctant to use it for a red light, so in practice almost everything stopped at the verbal warning, which carried no consequence at all. The blue ticket fills in the missing middle rung: pay the fixed penalty and the case never enters criminal procedure and leaves no record. The real effect of the amendment, then, is that issuing a penalty became a workable option for the first time — not that previously legal behaviour became illegal. And a second change took effect the same day, pointing the opposite way: when a car overtakes a cyclist without sufficient lateral clearance, it must now slow to a speed appropriate to that gap. The police guidance figure is at least about one metre, and where a metre is not available, drivers are told to travel at roughly 20–30 km/h.

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