A Leicester cycling group has backed a call to introduce new offences after a woman was fined £80 when a cyclist died after she knocked him into the path of a van.
The Leicester Cycling Campaign Group is supporting Cycling UK in a bid to get tougher penalties introduced for 'dooring'.
The call comes after Mandy Chapple was fined after she opened a door into the path of cyclist Sam Boulton outside Leicester railway station on July 27 last year.
He died in the incident on that day - his 26th birthday.
The door knocked Sam, a well-loved teacher at Castle Rock High School in Coalville, into the path of a van.
Eric Ludlow, a spokesman for Leicester Cycling Campaign Group, said: "The court ruling handed down a £80 fine for an offence that cost Sam Boulton his life.
"While no sentence could compensate for that loss, it is literally incredible that the powers available to the court in a case such as this are so limited.
"Leicester Cycling Campaign Group wholeheartedly supports Cycling UK in calling for 'dooring' to be made a specific offence, with tougher penalties.
"In the meantime we would call on all drivers and passengers to remember Sam when exiting vehicles, and to look before they act."
Read more: Drivers banned from stopping outside Leicester rail station after cyclist Sam Boulton's death
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At Leicester Magistrates' Court on Friday, Mandy Chapple (56), of Speers Road, Leicester, appeared to answer a charge of opening a vehicle door so as to injure or endanger another person – known as car-dooring.
She pleaded guilty and was fined £80. Magistrates also ordered her to pay a £40 victim surcharge and £30 court costs.
Duncan Dollimore, senior road safety and legal campaigns officer for Cycling UK, said: "As the courts' powers are limited to a maximum £1,000, whatever the consequences of car dooring, it is too often trivialised or dismissed as a minor offence.
"This possibly explains the reluctance to prosecute in many of the nearly 500 cases each year where a cyclist is seriously injured, or sometimes, as in Sam's case, killed.
"The biggest problem is this offence is not taken seriously because of the limited penalties.
"Cycling UK has repeatedly pressed the Government to introduce offences of causing serious injury or death by car-dooring, with tougher penalties.
"It is not right or just tragic cases such as Sam's see derisory penalties handed down.
"Tougher penalties, including the option of custodial sentencing, should be an option for the court, which in turn would hopefully encourage the police and CPS to prosecute."
Taxi driver Farook Bhikhu (56), of Wicklow Drive, Leicester, pleaded not guilty to a charge of permitting the opening of a vehicle door so as to injure or endanger a person.
He will now face a trial at Loughborough Magistrates' Court in June.
Read more: Sam Boulton's family 'hope something good can come from his death'
'Four cyclists killed after hitting vehicle doors'
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Mr Dollimore said to his knowledge four cyclists have been killed in this country as a result of collisions with vehicle doors in the last five years.
These were - Robert Hamilton, a retired lecturer in his 70s, who died after hitting his head on the ground after a car door caused him to fall of his bike in Southport, in January 2014.
Sam Harding, 25, was crushed by a bus in 2011 after a motorist opened his car door in front of him in north London.
In 2015, David Thomson died in Glasgow after suffering severe head injuries after he hit a black hack driver's door.
Mr Dollimore said there have also been prosecutions where cyclists have been injured by car doors being opened.
The 'car-dooring' charges are offences under section 42 of the Road Traffic Act 1988.