“How to go from clean licence to six points in under a minute”: Cyclist tells drivers to put their phone away when driving, after motorist ordered to pay £1,727 because of rider’s camera footage + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
"How to go from clean licence to six points in under a minute": Cyclist tells drivers to put their phone away when driving, after motorist ordered to pay £1,727 because of rider's camera footage
This was a very expensive minute for the motorist who almost hit a couple of cyclists before the second rider’s camera footage clearly showed them using a mobile phone. The result? Six penalty points on their licence (it could have been significantly worse) and being ordered to pay £1,727 in court having faced charges of careless driving and mobile phone use behind the wheel.
“Please don’t use a mobile phone while driving, and do check properly before moving” the cyclist who uploaded the footage to YouTube after the culmination of the court case wrote.
“I understand the driver was trying to clear the junction so he wasn’t blocking vehicles from the left side. Unfortunately he didn’t appear to see the first cyclist and started to drive toward them, Then [he] definitely didn’t see me. Luckily I rang the bell and he heard that. Also holding a phone in his hand with lit up screen while driving.
“Attended Magistrates court as a witness. Due to both charges he was at risk of 12 points and possible disqualification on a clean licence. I am glad he wasn’t disqualified because this was careless, not malicious. The Magistrates took a while deciding on the careless driving charge, then again on the fine, costs and points. I feel six points is a fair judgement and feel he will be much more careful in future.”
In total, the driver was ordered to pay £1,727 which included a chunky £769 fine and other costs. All for the sake of not waiting a few minutes to go on a mobile phone.
Jonas Vingegaard to return to racing at Paris-Nice
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Jonas Vingegaard will be back racing again in a couple of weeks, Visma-Lease a Bike announcing that the Dane will begin his Giro d’Italia prep with an appearance at Paris-Nice.
The two-time Tour de France winner is looking to complete his Grand Tour set having won the Vuelta last season, but saw his early-season disrupted by a high-profile training crash last month.
That incident plus a bout of illness saw Vingegaard pull out of a mouth-watering clash with Remco Evenepoel and Isaac del Toro at the UAE Tour, his 2026 campaign instead now kicking off in France.
“I am excited to be at the start of Paris-Nice once again,” Vingegaard said. “It is a prestigious race with a lot of history. As a team, we have a title to defend here. After crashing and falling ill, I took the necessary time to recover. Now I feel ready to start racing again and am looking forward to it after a long winter of training.”
His programme is expected to see him race Volta a Catalunya, potentially against Evenepoel, Florian Lipowitz and João Almeida before lining up at the start of the Giro in Bulgaria.
“Watch out for those doors, they’re quite sturdy”: World champion breaks hip after “getting smoked by car door” in training, ruling him out of Cape Epic mountain bike race
White bar tape? For a ride starting in Manchester? Good luck... (that's a lovely-looking bike)
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"It will be a sprinters' World Championship": Man-made climb now not expected to impact 2028 UCI World Championship road race in UAE
There had been plenty of speculation about the fact an artificial, man-made climb was being built in the UAE, the completely new berg rumoured to be being lined up for the 2028 UCI World Championships road race. Considering UAE Team Emirates’ star rider and the host nation, it didn’t take too much mental arithmetic to see why some reckoned they knew exactly why such a hill was being ‘developed’, but apparently the sprinters can breathe easy.
Belgian UCI director Peter Van den Abeele appeared to dispel the man-made climb rumours and told Sporza it will “definitely be a sprinters’ World Championships”.
“It was President David Lappartient’s request to make it a sprinters’ festival. It’s been a while since there’s been a World Championship for sprinters,” he said.
Tim Merlier had raised concerns about the climb’s possible inclusion. He said such an ascent — currently 1.4km with a nine per cent ramp, but expected to be built longer before 2028 — would end his hopes of winning a rainbow jersey. Apparently Merlier and Co. have nothing to fear and things will be decided by one gigantic, adrenaline-packed bunch kick. After a few years of more testing courses, I’m quite down for that.
“A very sad moment”: Two killed and six injured as driver of race vehicle veers off road into crowd at Tour of Rwanda
But what if I need to carry a dining table? Can't do that by bike, can you?
Tom Pidcock opens account for 2026, concern as Met Police disbands specialist cycle and motorcycle safety units... and indicators for cyclists are back (again)
The weekend began with the news that the Metropolitan Police has disbanded its specialist cycle and motorcycle safety units, prompting fears about a potential impact on vulnerable road users’ safety. The commercial vehicle unit and dedicated cycle and motorcycle teams will be merged into a new “road danger reduction” unit. Megan had the full story here…
Meanwhile, I had the dubious honour of taking a look at this Kickstarter campaign…
Elsewhere on the tech front, Stu’s been riding the BMC Roadmachine 01 Three, here are his thoughts on that. And finally, the weekend brought Tom Pidcock his first win of 2026, the Brit taking the final stage of Vuelta a Andalucía.
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Over in the UAE, Isaac Del Toro overhauled Antonio Tiberi’s advantage with a stage win on the second summit finish of the week, a stage and GC win that’ll keep the sponsors happy. There was also enough time for a third win of the race for undisputed sprint king Jonathan Milan too.
Oscar Onley’s first race for the Ineos Grenadiers ended with a fourth place finish on GC at the Volta ao Algarve, Juan Ayuso topping a stacked top 10 and beating Paul Seixas, João Almeida, Onley, fellow Ineos debutant Kévin Vauquelin, and Florian Lipowitz to the win. Things are quieter this week after the three-a-day racing of the past few days, but there is the small matter of Opening Weekend to look forward to…
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Just turn your head Ed. Perhaps you've gone so far to the right turning left is the problem?
If the man can't turn his head to check his blind spot he shouldn't be on the road
Follow the road rules. Why is this even a discussion? Because the road rules are not adequately policed. …Solution: how about £100 fines for everyone flouting the road rules / risking cyclists lives on social media and in council chambers, as well as on the roads? That should stop this ongoing waste of time.
@Rendel Harris you've painted a rather alluring picture of social harmony there, but unfortunately you've got my name wrong. I'm Jack, not Nigel. However, to return the compliment, I must think of a story for you. I imagine you sat outside a pub, real ale and pipe propped on the adjacent table, in a similar fashion to Nigel Farage at his populist best. You turn to your wife. "You know what dear? I think I've been a bit harsh in my time. I've shunned the politeness and wisdom of others for too long and want to change my ways.* "There there Rendel", says Mrs Harris. "You're not a bad old stick, it's just living in London that's emptied your soul of kindness and compassion. I've found a lovely new place where we can settle down in our later years. It's on a leafy cul de sac, surrounded by friendly neighbours and smiling faces. There's a guy a couple of doors down, a remarkable man. As well as his towering intellect and rapier wit, he's also a keen cyclist, holding severa local KOMs. Don't be perturbed dear - he'll ride with anyone provided they show other road users the kindness and courtesy they deserve." Rendel turned emotionally, voice shaking. "Oh my dear, thank you for this second chance", and with that the rest of the pub goers turned and applauded the couple, throwing garlands of petals in their wake. The end.
As a Councillor, Edward needs to be paying some attention to all that parking obstructing visibility and manoeuvres at the junction, and sorting out those radii.
Ed Hill was chucked out by Reform in 2025, though TBF to him it was about how to run it rather than ideology I think. He is now reportedly closer to Advance UK, which is distinctly more extreme than Reform. I'd call this Alan Amos style attention seeking.
Emily, thank you for such an insightful piece. I’m a man, but I enjoy watching the women’s races, possibly more than the men’s. The racing is so much closer, we rarely know who’s going to win. You painted a wonderful picture of how a true champion is able to ‘rise above’ setbacks and distractions, and focus their energy on the task in hand. ‘All’s fair in live and war -and sport, but always good to hear riders expressing their admiration for their competitors
@Nigel Garage ...and then everyone applauded my courtesy and I waved courteously to all the people who were courteously throwing flowers and cheering and courteously waving flags that said "Nigel is the best!"
The picture from street view clearly shows give way lines from the roads to the green painted cycle/pedestrian lane. The road user should give way (or must...) to the user of the green lane. This would of course apply to any cyclist on the roadway.
If I recall there is a cave or two along the route - perhaps they were sheltering from the heat in one of those having taken it for a Golf bunker?
23 thoughts on ““How to go from clean licence to six points in under a minute”: Cyclist tells drivers to put their phone away when driving, after motorist ordered to pay £1,727 because of rider’s camera footage + more on the live blog”
Good to see the Mini driver got nearly £1000 of costs on top of the fine and points, maybe they will think twice in future about wasting court time and taxpayer’s money when they are so clearly bang to rights. This smacks of the usual defence lawyer stratagem of taking it to court in the hope that the witness won’t show up.
Apologies for the misplaced apostrophe in taxpayers’, voice recognition software does its thing once again. PLEASE can we have the edit function back?
Well in a sense, it ended up being their own money they wasted, and presumably they are a tax payer, so maybe the software knew what it was doing to start with.
It’s not really even taxpayers money. Calling it that is part of the continued attempt by the right to frame public finances in the same way as personal finances in order to persuade people to support spending cuts.
Of course its not taxpayers money, its employers money and they give it to the taxpayers!
They don’t _give_ it to the taxpayers – they _loan_ it to them, on the understanding that they give it right back, by purchasing, or better still subscribing to, a bunch of stuff they don’t need.
Not anymore it isn’t. The people who earned it were obliged to hand it over to the government to do things with it for the collective good.
Well I’m pretty sure I’m not on the right… I know the point you’re making and indeed have often pointed out to people that they should look at their take-home pay and if they’re happy with that stop worrying about what their employer gives to the government. However when I’m paying for my shopping it’s not anybody else’s money going on the VAT and duty, is it? If you frame Government expenditure as not taxpayers’ money then you run into another problem which is if it’s not our money then why should we have a right to have an input in telling the government how it should be spent?
You don’t get to tell the government how to spend their money, you just have an option to try to kick them out every few years if you don’t like what they did.
In a sense you can’t kick the government out. At best you can kick all its members out, to be replaced by others … but very often it turns out they’re a lot like the last, and not more effective…
Still the fact that we get to spin the wheel if most of us are unhappy and maybe even *try* to get it to stop in a better place puts us in a better place than the Irans, Chinas etc.
Apologies – apparently I can’t reply to Blackladder’s post, so going for the nearest point…
* Despite what they promised… and they were probably sincere! Directing the country is just far harder than they thought.
Oh – I thought the “Despite what they promised” bit was in reference to fixing the comment system. ;o)
“4like”
In other news, I found this on the BBC website:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn71xyjpdl2o
I was especially taken with Emily’s comments …
“Emily McGuire from Essex told the BBC: “I am in my 30s and sometimes I can’t tell if [other vehicles’] main beam is on or off and once they have passed, I can’t see properly for a good few minutes, it’s terrible … I suffer with migraines when a car approaches me with extremely bright lights, I have to look down or in the other direction… ”
Good on you Emily, you keep on driving in the dark when you can’t see properly and actively looking away from the road to avoid the problem …
But but *she has to drive* though!
She has to drive so much that it doesn’t matter she’s getting migraines – SHE HAS TO DRIVE.
We all *have to drive* it seems. I don’t even own a car currently, and occasionally I still have to drive. Though I do a bit of legwork – aha – to try to reduce that.
Yes I read that and had the same reaction. Frightening really.
If Emily thinks that a migraine is instantly triggered by a bright light, and if she thinks that people with migraines are capable of continuing to drive whilst in the grip of one, then Emily doesn’t really know what a migraine is.
then Emily doesn’t really know what a migraine is
I suspect she doesn’t – the best guess from the information we have is that her migraines are headaches which may or may not be triggered by oncoming headlights. It’s similar to people who claim they have ‘flu when it’s really some form of ‘cold’- such false claims led to the frequent assertion by nutters during the active pandemic that Covid was ‘just like ‘flu’, meaning nothing at all to worry about. I think we’re now at the stage where ‘flu is presently a greater public health hazard than Covid.
Clearly.
That said, I have had the pre-migraine aura before (I don’t get the actual migraine, or at least if there’s something going wrong in my brain it doesn’t generate any horrible symptoms). It’s triggered by bright light – sunlight reflecting off something – and I definitely wouldn’t drive whilst it’s happening. I don’t know whether an LED headlight would do it.
Don’t you just hate it when you put something up for sale online and timewasters ignore your ‘for collection only’ tag? :o)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c795eexrv34o
Excellent story, well done all concerned. You do get some muppets though, a couple of years ago I was selling a bike and got a message from a guy in Ulster who said he knew I said collection only from London but did I by any chance ever visit Ulster and if so could I bring the bike with me; the real clincher was he wasn’t even committing to buy it, he wanted me to take it over so he could see if it was a good fit for him…
A sprinters’ festival makes for low TV ratings until 15 minutes before the end of the race. Unless crosswinds blow, then everything can happen.
I wouldn’t mind watching live coverage of construction of the artificial hill. As long as it isn’t on a TNT subscription channel.
(And I hope the event organisers don’t employ the pillock in the earlier article from Notts who flattened a cycle path embankment to create a flat area for caravans).
How to go from clean licence to six points in under a minute
One of the comments on the video is that in Belgium, phone-driving results in immediate confiscation of the car for fifteen days. I bet that works a lot better than our points system, but since we live in a car obsessed society, it ain’t gonna happen here.