Jokingly I said to my mate that if anyone tries to nick this bike I’ll take my lid off and beat them to a pulp. He reckons that if I did do that I’d get banged up. What say you?
Answer
I say that I detest thieving scum. That’s the first thing. Just this month I’ve had a call from a chap who had a van pull alongside him at a junction, the sliding side door open and three men jumped out and pushed him off his Ducati. That was the last he saw of his bike. I was gutted for him.
From a legal perspective, whether you get banged-up or not would depend as to whether you used ‘reasonable force’. Legally you can use ‘reasonable force’ for the purposes self-defence; defence of another; defence of property; prevention of crime; or for lawful arrest.
So in the example I gave, if the biker had got up and fought the three thieves smacking them with his lid and breaking a few bones to keep his bike, I reckon he would be unlikely to get banged-up.
However, if two of the thieves ran off, but he knocked one out and kept repeatedly beating his head in for a further 15 minutes and killed him, I reckon he would struggle to prove he acted with ‘reasonable force’ in those circumstances.
Andrew ‘Chef’ Prendergast
On 2 Wheels November 2018
