Late Wednesday night, Matt Briggs opened a bottle of ice-cold champagne and raised a glass to toast a framed photo of his late wife Kim.
It was the end of a stormy day spent sitting in the House of Commons watching parliamentary history being made.
An amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill was passed unanimously by MPs, meaning cyclists who ride dangerously and kill or maim will face tougher new laws and longer prison sentences.
It was a legal parity that Briggs, 53, had been fighting for for seven years.
Now he has revealed that one of the biggest hurdles he had to overcome were 'forces' within the government who seemed determined to ensure cyclists were not held legally to account in the same way as motorists are.
His long-running campaign faced a powerful cycling lobby and faceless bureaucrats - often described as the 'blob'.
In 2016, Kim Briggs, just 44 years old, was hit by a cyclist on a fixed-gear bike without front brakes. She suffered catastrophic head injuries and died a week later.
Mr Briggs, who took his two children to intensive care to say goodbye to their mother, soon discovered that despite Charlie Alliston illegally riding a racing bike on public roads, police struggled to find a law to prosecute him.
Ultimately, 20-year-old Alliston was charged and convicted of 'willful and furious driving', a Victorian law designed to target horse-drawn carriages.
Alliston was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2017. While motorists face a life sentence for dangerous or reckless driving, the 1861 law carries a maximum sentence of just two years.
In the years that followed, Mr. Briggs, an executive coach, joined other families who had lost loved ones to cyclists riding on sidewalks, going over the speed limit or running red lights.
The baton in this battle has been passed to many grieving families.
In 2007, Mick and Diana Bennett campaigned for tougher laws after their daughter, Rhiannon, 17, died after being hit by a cyclist in Buckingham.
That cyclist was fined a "laughable" £2,200 for dangerous cycling (a charge that carries no jail time), despite shouting "Go away because I'm not stopping" before crashing into her.
In 2011, Andrea Leadsom, a Tory MP, tried unsuccessfully to introduce a bill so that cyclists who commit murder would face the same legal penalties as motorists.
Peter Walker has collected correspondence files from the Department for Transport (DfT) after his wife, Diana, 76, was killed in 2016 when a cyclist hit her.
His letters, calling on police to treat collisions between pedestrians and cyclists as serious crime scenes, were invariably met with the DfT mantra that a consultation on the issue would take place soon and new laws would be published.
"Somehow, somewhere, someone wanted to stop this."
In 2021, Mr Briggs had met four separate Tory Transport Ministers and politely gave his reasoned arguments for the change in the law. He is convinced that those ministers wanted to take action. "Somehow, someone somewhere wanted to prevent this from happening," he said.
When the government poured billions of pounds into cycling infrastructure during the pandemic to promote cycling as a healthy form of transport, Briggs began to despair that he would never succeed.
"At times I felt like giving up," he said, citing the fact that Grant Shapps, the then transport secretary, had twice declared that new laws would be introduced but they would never be realised.
"I was raised to believe that when people in authority say something is going to happen, it happens," he said. "The fact that someone could promise legal changes to grieving family members and then fail to deliver was unfathomable. There were forces working against me that I seemingly could not defeat.
"I decided to take a more assertive approach and expose this shabby behavior. This year I started hitting people on the head."
The Telegraph revealed in April how he accused Rishi Sunak of being the 'enemy of the pedestrian' amid rumors that No 10 was blocking the law change.
Chris Boardman, the champion of the pro-cycling lobby and the Active Travel Commissioner who owns a bicycle brand, fought back, insisting that lightning and cows kill more people than cyclists, citing DfT data showing that around three people a year die from collisions with bicycles.
Pointing out that cars kill around five people a day, he expressed "disappointment" at the "focus" on cycling, but made no objection to "everyone having to obey the traffic rules".
This year The Telegraph revealed how many pensioners killed by cyclists were not included in the official DfT statistics because the so-called Stats19 data excludes those who die 30 days after a collision.
Polly Friedhoff, 82, was hit and killed by a cyclist on a canal towpath, but because it is not a public road her death is not counted.
Jim Blackwood, 91, was hit by an e-bike riding on the sidewalk and it took him three months to succumb to his injuries. He is not counted among Mr Boardman's trio of annual cycling deaths.
John Douglas, 75, suffered 15 broken ribs and two broken collarbones after being hit by an e-bike on the sidewalk, but it took six weeks for him to die, so again doesn't count.
The debate changed when The Telegraph revealed how a speeding cyclist who hit Hilda Griffiths, 81, in Regent's Park could not be prosecuted because speed limits do not apply to pedal bikes.
It took 59 days for her to die and again it is not in the official statistics.
If her son Gerard, 52, had not invited De Telegraaf to the inquest, many people would never have known that the Road Traffic Act does not apply to cyclists.
It turned out that Paolo Dos Santos had been seriously injured by a cyclist riding on the wrong side of the road at the exact same location where Mrs Griffiths was hit. Mr Boardman's lightning had bizarrely struck the same spot twice without a cow in sight.
Mr Griffiths, Ms Dos Santos and Mr Blackwood's daughter, Christine White, all joined Mr Briggs for a series of powerful radio and television interviews.
Then a Tory heavyweight walked in, having heard Mr Briggs on the Today programme.
"I got a call from Sir Iain Duncan Smith who said, 'Mr Briggs, I have a plan'.
"He was a tour de force. He got me a seat on the floor of the House of Commons for the debate, where the roar of 'yes' in support of the amendment was raucous. IDS just turned around and gave a double thumbs up."
Mr Briggs then met Mark Harper, the Transport Minister, who backed the bill and pledged to ensure it was on the law books.
"I'm really proud that citizens in this country can raise their hands, say something is wrong and ultimately create change," he said.
"When I was at my most despondent, The Telegraph was a constant and listened to our cause, recognizing that the cycling debate is often too feverish."
Mr Briggs has received numerous personal attacks on social media for tackling the cycling lobby.
"I just turn off my phone - it doesn't bother me," he said, explaining that he's more concerned about his children, Emily, 18, and Isaac, 20, who tease him every time he swallows his stomach. sucks after noticing him. himself on a television monitor during interviews.
"The night after the vote and after raising a glass to Kim, someone I loved so much, I slept well knowing that we had all achieved something; not just for Kim, but for all the families who have campaigned all these years."
