TfL succeeds in Court of Appeal challenge over Farringdon Road cycle superhighway kerb collisions

The Court of Appeal has overturned a County Court decision that found Transport for London liable for two cycling accidents on Cycle Superhighway 6 (CS6) at Farringdon Road, ruling that the trial judge failed to carry out a proper evaluative assessment of breach of duty before finding TfL negligent.

In Transport for London v Cairn Young & Anor [2026] EWCA Civ 1095, Lady Justice Yip, with whom Lord Justice Stuart-Smith and Lord Justice Bean agreed, allowed TfL's appeal and remitted both claims to be reheard by a different Circuit Judge, with all issues, including contributory negligence, left open.

The case concerned two experienced cyclists, Cairn Young and Egon Upitis, who were injured in separate incidents in 2019 and 2020 after colliding with a raised kerb separating the carriageway from a stepped cycle track on CS6. Both mistook the kerb, which had a similar surface and colour to the adjoining road, for a painted white line and did not realise the track sat above carriageway level. His Honour Judge Hellman, sitting at the Central London County Court, had found TfL primarily liable, subject to findings of contributory negligence of 65 and 70 per cent respectively.

At first instance, the judge concluded that TfL owed a duty of care because it had positively constructed the feature, and that reasonable care required additional measures, principally the installation of protective wands along the kerb, to prevent cyclists mistakenly entering the track.

On appeal, TfL argued that the judge had misdirected himself on the applicable duty, wrongly treated foreseeability of harm as equivalent to breach, and reached his conclusion on wands without a fair procedural basis or adequate evidential foundation.

Lady Justice Yip rejected the suggestion of any tension between Yetkin v Mahmood and Gorringe v Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council, holding that the two lines of authority address distinct scenarios. Where a highway authority has, through a positive act, created or materially contributed to a hazard, as with the design of the SCT, ordinary negligence principles apply and the resulting duty is not confined to careful road users. Where a claim instead concerns a failure to improve the highway or exercise a statutory power, no equivalent common law duty arises. She found no procedural unfairness in the judge relying on evidence about wands, since TfL's own witness had been cross-examined on the point without objection.

However, the court found that the judge had improperly elided the concepts of foreseeability, duty and breach, repeatedly returning to whether a risk remained "reasonably foreseeable" when he ought to have been assessing whether reasonable care demanded further precautions. The judgement below, she said, did not adequately weigh the scale of the risk against the volume of cyclists using the route, the design rationale for the stepped track, prior safety audit responses, or the practical consequences of installing wands.

Because the necessary evaluative assessment engages closely interrelated questions of risk, design, causation and contributory fault, the Court of Appeal declined to remake the decision itself. Lady Justice Yip indicated the parties should consider alternative dispute resolution, noting the case turns on the application of settled principles to the specific location rather than raising any novel point of law.