When I introduced myself as road.cc’s community editor a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that one of the things the role involves is writing regular articles about broader issues related to cycling that go beyond a typical news story – and the first of those, sparked by a recent discussion thread, asks whether all cyclists should use action cameras? It’s an issue that from a personal point of view came into sharper focus a couple of weekends ago when a friend was knocked off his bike twice by the same driver in a matter of minutes – but with no video proof of what the motorist had done, landed himself with a caution for criminal damage.
We’d had a pleasant afternoon at the football, and after a swift pint following the match went our separate ways, me on foot, he on his bike. The following morning, he phoned me to tell me what had happened.
He was moving off from traffic lights to cross the South Circular Road in London, and since he was going straight on, had positioned himself in the middle of the three lanes, when his rear wheel was clipped by an Uber driver, sending him flying. The driver then berated him, insisting – incorrectly, of course – that he should have been riding in the gutter to the left.
With the driver continuing to insist he’d done nothing wrong, my friend, who pointed out that since he was going straight on he was in the correct lane, was unsurprisingly getting a bit steamed up and in his frustration kicked out at the car, knocking off the front number plate, before getting back on his bike and heading off.
A short time later, the same driver, who presumably had called the police in the meantime, pulled across my friend and knocked him off his bike again, before getting out of his car and putting him – still on the ground and somewhat dazed – in a chokehold. Moments later, a load of police turned up.
Despite my friend telling them what happened, the officers sided with the driver, and gave my friend – who had no witnesses to the first incident, and no evidence of the driver knocking him from his bike – a caution.
While I’m not condoning kicking out at the vehicle, it’s an understandable reaction in the circumstances, but it struck me as a clear example of one of those cases where video footage would have made all the difference – and could well have resulted in action being taken not against the cyclist, but against the motorist.
And it resonated with the piece I’d already been planning to write on the subject, based on readers’ comments to a news article that I posted last month in which Detective Chief Superintendent Andy Cox of Lincolnshire Police urged cyclists to use cameras to catch law-breaking drivers, saying that “the police can’t be everywhere all the time, but the public can be.”
That article reported how police had seen a rise in submissions of video evidence of poor driving following the changes to the Highway Code earlier this year.
One comment to the article in particular caught our eye, from road.cc reader Fignon’s Ghost, who argued that all cyclists have a moral obligation to use cameras and help make the roads safer for their follow riders. They wrote:
It should be read that ALL road cyclists have a responsibility to bring those rule breakers to account.
By doing so, you could be saving the life of a fellow cyclist.
If we cannot hold motorists to account for the terrible consequences their illegal driving has then we may as well stay on our paddleboards.
Your camera footage could mean the difference:
In a guilty verdict.
A criminal conviction.
The payment of personal injury compensation.
The mindset change of ALL those drivers out there who will have to face the fact their actions will no longer only have consequences for OTHER road users.It’s essential that we help our underfunded road traffic police and put forward evidence to arrest irresponsible driving.
If it’s not today. It could be you on that future ride that succumbs to that moment of breathtaking motoring ignorance. It could be you…
Road cyclist. It’s not about weight, cost or tedium.
That’s why YOU always wear a camera. Front and back!
Unsurprisingly, the comment sparked a debate, with hawkinspeter, for example, saying it would be better if motorists were encouraged to use dashcams.
It’d be better if the onus was on drivers to run dashcams and submit evidence. Car dashcams are cheaper as they don’t need a big internal battery, they don’t need to be waterproof and weight is much less of an issue.
In reply to that comments, AlsoSomniloquism wrote:
I do wonder how many drivers submit dashcam footage and what level of driving they submit them for. Forgetting actual collisions, there are several YouTube channels who release weekly videos filled with many examples of bad driving (both from Cammer and subject) and not one indicates whether it was submitted.
However WMP [West Midlands Police] sent me an email on Wednesday asking me for a resubmission over a mistake on my original form and it was above 1,850 submissions this year. I can’t believe that is all from cyclists (although 15 of those would be mine).
And jh2727 pointed out that it appears it is cyclists who are more likely than drivers to submit actual examples of offences being committed (we suspect in part that may be because, being unprotected by a vehicle’s body, cyclists’ perception of the danger they have been subjected to is higher). He write:
There was a story about this not so long ago. I think the upshot of it was that the police agreed that an offence was committed more often on the videos submitted by cyclists than videos by motorists.
It’s not impossible to envision a future in which all motor vehicles will be equipped with dashcams and other TV systems – many are already standard on fleets of commercial vehicles and those providing transportation services such as buses and coaches, of course (and such footage can and has been used to help convict law-breaking drivers.
But what do you think of the suggestion that all cyclists have a duty – albeit a moral rather than legal one – to use cameras?
One potential effect of that, of course, would be that just through sheer weight of numbers, many more examples of dangerous, as opposed to careless, driving would inevitably be captured – but that could risk overloading the system, with the result that many less serious crimes might go unpunished.
And as a number of readers pointed out, there’s also the issue of consistency in the approach taken by different police forces, some of which are much more proactive than others in enforcing the law and ensuring that drivers who break it are punished – although as IanMSpencer wrote, one potential solution to that might be to take the matter out of the hands of individual forces, and act upon such footage centrally.
I don’t see why there can’t be a national department for dealing with these, with a clear set of standards, which could be published so we know not to waste our or their time (or get to argue about the criteria). A specialist team could rattle through them, filtering out exceptions like likely repeat offenders for special local police treatment.
Certainly it’s an interesting idea, and as the articles published in our Near Miss of the Day series, now approaching 800 submissions, show, the issue of drivers putting cyclists in danger is an ever-present problem.
Let us know your thoughts on the issue in the comments below.
119 thoughts on “Should all cyclists use action cameras? Have your say”
There are 2 pieces of safety
There are 2 pieces of cycle safety equipment that I would turn back for if I got to the end of my road and realised I had forgotten. My gloves and my camera(s).
I have not had anything worth posting cycle wise for at least 6 months https://youtu.be/QLN8n9sP1G8 but I certainly have some footage from before including a hit and run https://youtu.be/cLF93a5w7ko and some malign driving https://youtu.be/nS1Rnwjzdl4 that got reported and actioned.
I am aware of the criticism that having a camera might make you go looking for trouble but I also run cameras in my cars and in 10 years of driving I really have nothing worthy of comment.
Mungecrundle wrote:
Which is completely perverse, since a cyclist will always come off worst in any collision; it’s not at all in our interest to go looking for it.
I run front and rear cameras
I run front and rear cameras in my car and I run front and rear cameras on my bike.
If someone hits you and it was their fault, they are likely to lie and blame you.
Regrettable but true.
YES, YES, YES!
YES, YES, YES!
In the very worst case it will inform the Police what happened after they scrape your dead body off the tarmac and give your loved ones some information on the cause of your demise.
On a day to day basis it will make ‘some’ drivers a little more careful around cyclists and other vulnerable road users, possibly save one or more of them from injury or death in the future and also provide evidence for any insurance claim.
Obviously cyclists shouldn’t be in such a bad situation that we have to spend a lot of money on camera equipment and waste hours watching/reporting/charging etc. but until driver training improves, dangerous driving becomes as socially unacceptable as drink driving and the justice system takes it seriously then that’s where we are.
Yes. Sad as it is, I tend to
Yes. Sad as it is, I tend to always ride with cameras now and I would recommend that everyone does.
I also think a national department for dealing with camera submissions is a great idea. FPN’s for inconsiderate and careless driving ought to be issued by civil enforcement officers, rather than police, in the same way littering penalties are dealt with.
Not possible, as they are a
Not possible, as they are a criminal offence. You would have to decriminalise them, at that point you lose the endorsement
Not possible at the moment,
Not possible at the moment, but it would only take a small change in legislation. Councils can issue FPN’s for parking, or driving in a bus lane, it’s not a massive leap to extend this to other traffic law violations. It wouldn’t need to be decriminalised and points could still be accrued.
I always run a camera when
I always run a camera when riding by myself (although less likely to when riding with other people). But asvthis article focuses on the moral duty in order to protect others and detect and report driving offences, then I don’t see why the moral duty should fall solely on the shoulders of vulnerable road users – as hawkinspeter points out it’s much easier to integrate a dashcam with a motor vehicle, and given that motor vehicles remain far more prevalent than bicycles, if every motor vehicle was fitted with a dashcam (and every driver submitted any offences witnesses) then that would seem to be a much more comprehensive system.
I would add one further note of caution, and that is that it doesn’t always end with submitting a video: the accused has the right to reject an FPN and argue their case in court, in which case the person who submitted the video might be required to attend. I mention this because I have already had to attend court once this year and have two more court dates already in the diary, and it is frankly a right PITA. Especially given the whole ordeal seemed entirely redundant – the incidents all happened well over a year ago, and so the video footage and statement I made to the Police at the time are most certainly the most reliable evidence compared to my memories of the incidents. But my point is that any moral duty to have a dashcam must be backed up by a willingness to see it through and attend court of required.
Another benefit of fitting
Another benefit of fitting dashcams to motor vehicles is that insurance claims can be more quickly resolved if there’s decent footage, so it makes a good incentive for insurance companies to encourage their use through lower premiums.
Indeed. In my case, I have an
Indeed. In my case, I have an incident going straight through a no-fault process without even touching my own insurer or excess thanks to my dashcam.
OnYerBike wrote:
Absolutely, I have never attended court and been asked to do anything but describe what happened in the video, which a) is right there in the video and b) was fully described in my statement which, as you say, being written directly after the event is likely far more accurate than my ageing memory eighteen months later. Unfortunately a substantial number of court challenges are simply vexatious, entered in the hope that the witness won’t appear and so the case will be dismissed, these people often change their plea to guilty once they discover that the witness is present and there seems to be no sanction for thus deliberately wasting the time of the witness and the court and imposing significant cost on the legal system.
Yes. A couple of years ago my
Yes. A couple of years ago my brother was hit by a turning car and ended up with a crushed vertebrae. It just so happened that the driver was an off duty policeman, who said he can’t believe he’d done the very thing he’d attended many times in his job.
Guess what – when the police report on the accident came through it described how my brother had turned into the path of the driver and was his fault. This made no sense because he was cycling in a bus lane on a long straight road, but that is what the report said. Thanks to that report a long battle with the insurance company followed.
Had my brother been riding with a camera it wouldn’t have prevented the accident, but the whole insurance process would have been far easier and much less stressful.
Given the large number of accidents that are now hit and runs I think a camera is sadly necessary. I certainly always use one, even when my journey is ten minutes or less.
TBH it is insurance purposes
TBH it is insurance purposes that most people run dashcams, due to one word against another in most cases, AND the rise in bogus insurance claims.
QUESTION: front or back?
QUESTION: front or back?
You can choose only one…
Does a 360 degree camera
Does a 360 degree camera count, like Vine? (Well, a 4π steradian camera, but marketing)
I’ve personally thought about
I’ve personally thought about getting a 360 camera after reading a case years ago where a driver was NFA’d after a road rage incident because the driver claimed, in a his-word-against-mine-type thing, that a cyclist was making hand gestures which ‘provoked’ and somehow excused the subsequent red mist and their driving into said cyclist…
With a well-positioned 360 you get (mostly) everything: View from the front, rear and sides. It also helps track arm movements, for cases where a driver might falsely claim that you weren’t indicating, as well as head movements for cases where a driver might falsely claim that you ‘pulled out without even looking’.
EddyBerckx wrote:
Tricky… I’d choose front as that seems to provide the most salient footage for most of my submissions, but the rear is more convenient and cheaper.
Although with the rear, you
Although with the rear, you would be able to see how close some of those drivers have been to you which might be more off-putting for cyclists. But I do front and been more using Helmet Cam recently.
AlsoSomniloquism wrote:
I’ve had close passes that looked a lot worse from the rear than the front, so I prefer front and rear cameras fitted to the bike. Sometimes the rear will get a better view of the number plate, especially if the driver has been behind you for a while.
I had a close pass from a
I had a close pass from a twat in a van recently, where I was headed into the sun and the front camera entirely failed to pick up the rear numberplate, due to it being in the shade. Rear camera picked it up a treat and police action taken. Run both, if you can.
I’m just answering a “one of
I’m just answering a “one or the other” question. The main point I was making was you know when you need to review for the front camera ones, you would have to sit and review the rear ones to see if a submission was needed* in most cases and being made aware of how close to death you unknowingly had become might be more off-putting in the long run.
*Also Martin73 would frown on that.
I would say it depends on
I would say it depends on where you ride.
Rear if you are doing lots of country road miles and being hit from behind is the main concern.
Front if you are mainly city riding and vehicles pulling out on you is the biggest risk.
Could we have a drone that
Could we have a drone that follows you like the luggage in Terry Pratchett’s Diskworld series?
chrisonatrike wrote:
Already available, there are numerous “follow me” drones that pursue a sensor in your pocket – great for filming skiing or MTB action but with a battery life of around twenty minutes not much use for the commute (and entirely illegal of course).
The main problem for me
The main problem for me regarding running cameras is that they are all either expensive or rubbish (or both)! I’d run a go pro if they did one with 4+ hr battery life – as it is, I run a chillitech bullet cam but the footage is awful ☹️.
ashen wrote:
I run Drift Ghost XL’s front and rear. The quality is good if not as good as a GoPro but the batteries last 9 hours, they are waterproof, they are linked by wifi so the front one controls both and the quick release mounts are miles better than GoPro types. Unfortunately they cost me £130 each but it was money well spent.
ashen wrote:
My GoPro Hero 7 White has a fairly poor battery life of two hours, but that covers my 80-odd minute commute, for longer rides I either carry the charger cable if I’m visiting someone and can plug it in at theirs or connect it to a £30 powerbank that fits in my frame bag and at least trebles the recording time (that’s on the commuter, on my road or mountain bikes I slip the powerbank, which is no bigger and not much heavier than a mobile phone, into my jersey pocket and charge up at coffee stops).
I bought a cheap camera from
I bought a cheap camera from Aldi last year, maybe the year before, and it’s been sitting in it’s box ever since. Given the brutal left hook I saw a few weeks ago – which was a 6-12 inches from doing something very nasty to the rider in front of me – I’m minded to read the damn instructions, fit it to the handlebars and give it a go. I’ve held off on it so far on the grounds that it might incline me to be a bit of an asshat, but it contributes to getting MrLeftHook off the road – Fignon’s Ghost’s comments being very relevant here – it’s worthwhile.
But the primary use would be for putting everything down on some dodgy singletrack, and reviewing the footage for [cough] posterity.
Problem for me is cost. My
Problem for me is cost. My bike was expensive enough as it is and I was earning a good wage when I bought it, a wage I’m no longer earning.
However, it wouldn’t be too difficult to introduce legislation that all new cars must have in built dashcams that must retain data for a minimum of 21 or 28 days with said data being required to be submitted to the police within 7 days of receiving an NIP. It also wouldn’t be too difficult to make that legislation retrospective on older vehicles after a certain period of time. No footage? Automatically guilty. I think something like that would do wonders for the standard of driving. Like the officer says, the Police can’t be everywhere and that shows in the standard of driving. But every car having a camera with a legal requirement to submit footage, people would drive like the Police are behind them all the time.
A lot of new cars already
A lot of new cars already have the cameras built in. I have a reversing camera and there is also a camera at the top of the windscreen that is used for lane keeping etc. As more new cars have these safety features included they will also have the cameras. They then just need to be attached to a recording device which is surely not massively costly in this day and age – most of the circuitry / software should already exist.
Since a road rage incident
Since a road rage incident five years ago, with no witnesses, that still haunts me to this day, I won’t ride on UK roads without cameras (both front and rear).
It only takes one psychopathic cunt (and all the evidence shows that there are plenty of them driving cars) to kill or seriously injure you. I firmly believe that more cyclists running cameras is the ONLY thing that will improve safety for cyclists.
This #ToryScum government has zero interest in improving policing – unsurprisingly, given that most of them appear to be criminals themselves.
It is sad that it has come to this but I really see no other option. I’m happy to be persuaded otherwise.
.
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Calm down. Grow up. Get a life.
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Oh, and ha a read of ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’. Sorely needed in your case.
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.
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Surprising being as you have
Surprising being as you have used similar language about drivers in the past. Is your problem down to him using “grown-up” swearing and not the fake “ooer, if I say For Coffee, it sound like I’m swearing but mum can’t tell me off” when you post?
Shouldn’t there simply be a
Shouldn’t there simply be a law requiring all commercial vehicles, like Uber, be outfitted with dashcams since these vehicles spend far more time than any others on the roads, and since they are in the business of taking advantage of public infrastructure for commerce?
Yes, absolutely
Yes, absolutely
No.
No.
I’m torn. I think
I’m torn. I think Hawkinspeter’s suggestion they become mandatory for vehicles is a simpler and more logical solution. Also one which will increasingly happen “anyway” because “driving assistance”. However without some serious design thought and probably a bunch more law that’s like leaving it to the police to investigate themselves. (“Camera wasn’t working” / “dog ate my wifi connection”).
Equally cyclists doing this for themselves is clearly not an open goal at the moment. It requires substantial resource and time commitment, it’s not “protective” and event of collision may prove entirely useless due to footage issues / simply being ignored by the law.
So probably my best hope is Batesian mimicry – that a large number of cyclists do, and motorists start getting nicked. Even if “after the fact” for some unlucky cyclists. Then hopefully I can benefit from motorists avoiding me without me having to pay.
But really I’d rather the cash and effort go on “better than most of the UK” infra to avoid conflict in the first place / have more cyclists to back me up / reduce the number of car trips.
There’s no moral obligation
There’s no moral obligation but I highly recommend it. I used a cheap GoPro knock-off on my winter bike for a couple of years after my wife bought it and then decided she couldn’t really be bothered with it. Terrible battery life meant it needed changing every hour and picture quality wasn’t great. I deliberated over buying something better for a couple of years but always decided against because of the cost.
Eventually, after a driver aimed their car at me and tried to push me off a narrow road and someone else close passed me on a rural road and then threatened to kill me when I protested, I went for a Cycliq Fly 12 and Fly 6. Two weeks later while competing in a TT I was struck by a van from behind. They didn’t stop but unfortunately for them, I caught the whole collision on video (amazingly I only lightly injured). Without it, I would have had no proof whatsoever. It has also helped immensely with my insurance claim.
In my view, every cyclist should consider getting something like a Cycliq camera.
Looking at it from the EU
Looking at it from the EU side, I can’t help but be amazed at the extent to which public life in the UK has become ‘weaponized’, with cyclists installing camera’s seemingly with the sole objective of being able to send footage of (real or perceived) infractions by vehicle users to the police. Do you guys alsways feel like if you’re going to war when walking out the door?
About the incident: regardless of what happened the cyclist was a fool for kicking out at the car. That’s like bare handedly attacking a robber holding a sawn-off shotgun telling you to hand over the tenner in your wallet. It escalated an already very tense situation. By the time the inhabitant of the small metal box comes to his senses he could very well have run over, then parked ON the cyclist.
Also, those cameras are just another new wave of gadgets being pushed.
Forestalling some comments: I don’t own a car and a bicycle is my main means of transport.
Xenophon2 wrote:
It can feel like that sometimes commuting in a big city, because there is a tiny but significant proportion of motorists – I’d say about 0.3% – who take pleasure in deliberately driving dangerously around cyclists, harrassing and intimidating them. The alternative to carrying a camera is what, to just shrug and say that’s life and let them carry on with their reckless and dangerous behaviours until they inevitably kill or seriously injure someone? I don’t carry a camera with the sole, or even main, objective of reporting people, I started using one to protect myself after that guy lost virtually everything he had paying compensation to the woman (yoga teacher?) who walked in front of him whilst looking at her ‘phone as he rode through a green light. I only report drivers who either deliberately risk causing accidents or who drive so recklessly that they represent a severe danger to themselves and the public. Your comment reveals just how much there is a perception that somehow the roads are different to the rest of society: if thugs were roaming the streets and pushing people off the pavement because they were in their way and breaking numerous laws, you’d probably intervene or inform the police, put the thugs in a car and suddenly reporting them is, for some unfathomable reason, unreasonable and wrong.
His incident had two elements
His incident had two elements. He failed to get proper representation to make a counter claim which would have limited costs to 30k. He also did not take care at the lights – green does not mean go regardless and he could have and should have done more to avoid the collision not just shout for people to get out the way. It was 50/50 liability in the end, but he got sunk on the costs element.
I got a camera after the final straw of a close pass by a small van driver who then about 50m further on managed to go off the road on to verge (no kerbs). I felt I had a a very lucky escape there.
Yes, I didn’t mean
Yes, I didn’t mean particularly that he was entirely innocent, just that it was that incident and the outcome that made me more aware of the consequences one might suffer and so the utility of having camera evidence to show what one had or hadn’t done. I joined British Cycling for the third party liability insurance at the same time and for the same reason.
By all means film and report
By all means film and report dangerous driving infractions but engaging in road rage, including yelling ‘I’ve got you on camera’, etc., is highly inadvisable.
Do you guys alsways feel like
Do you guys alsways feel like if you’re going to war when walking out the door?
No, only when we cycle.
Cycling in France was a revelation to me, it is actually possible for motorists to drive without endangering cyclists.
If I go back to Paris after a
If I go back to Paris after a long time away, on the first few rides I keep looking around to see where the police car is because I’m thinking surely they can’t all be being this polite without somebody watching them?
For a start, the dash cam
For a start, the dash cam came first and is used by far more drivers than cyclists use cameras.
Then you have police portals aimed at acepting submissions.
I got a camera because drivers ‘weaponized’ their vehicle to put me at risk of injury. There are so few traffic officers around that unless there are real consequences for drivers, there is no incentive to drive with the level of care required.
Xenophon2 wrote:
No – it’s a war on the motorist. Or “yes” because the government / road organisations / the motoring lobby / much public opinion thinks we should put on uniform (hi-vis) and helmet for our safety whenever we go out.
Because they’d already been hit I’d say it’s more like someone carelessly dropped something on your head from a window and then given a half-hearted explanation in their defence and you’ve then kicked their fence. Yes, they could throw something at you again but a) you’re alert now and b) mostly we don’t assume others are psychos. Unfortunately this guy was.
I wouldnt say it feels like
I wouldnt say it feels like going to war, I just want to be left alone and ride my bike in peace, even with a camera. But it does feel like every time I ride I’m putting my life at risk on the roads, in a way no other activity i do does.
I got a camera after 2 nasty incidents where people drove their vehicles with actual intent to harm me, to knock me off my bike, they missed fortunately else I’d I’d probably not be here to discuss it anymore, but without video evidence and I was so shook up by it I couldnt even recall details of the vehicles let alone registration plates, the police could do nothing.
Now I dont ride at all without a camera, even though I dont think it actually has any effect, drivers arent driving thinking I’m carrying a camera, and it’s even less impactful because the police no longer take any action from the footage, so what’s the point, other than it will be a record if the inevitable happens and I’m not around to provide that evidence verbally anymore.
And I dont submit perceived infractions, I submit stuff that are things where I fear imminent collision or must take action to avoid it.
I’m in London so might be
I’m in London so might be different but professional drivers are definitely better behaved when the rear camera is on the bike…
If there is a moral duty to
If there is a moral duty to maximise the reporting of poor / dangerous driving, one would have to conclude that that extends to anyone who might be in a position to capture it – in other words, all road users. So there would be a moral duty on pedestrians, horse riders, etc. to wear bodycams front and back, or a 360, if they prefer (as well as on drivers to run dash- and tailcams). I can’t see anyone seriously trying to push that claim, though, so a moral duty on cyclists doesn’t really stand up either.
Reading through the comments
Reading through the comments on here. Are front facing and rear facing cameras different beasts, then? Are they in some way set up differently (other than “which way is it facing”)? Can anyone (road.cc?) recommend good ‘starter’ cameras?
I resent – really resent – having to even consider carrying a camera, and I have never felt threatened on the road, but I’m wondering if I ought to just bite the bullet…
brooksby wrote:
Leaving aside the integrated light type, which are obviously specific, they’ll sometimes be specifically designed to mount either front (bars or computer mount) or rear (seatpost). Not all though.
A chilli bullet?
Intrinsically there is no a
Intrinsically there is no a difference between forward and reverse facing cameras, other than you are capturing different angles and it’s a judgement call about which is best, but it’s also down to camera make & model, a GoPro will happily swap between front and rear positions, but the Cycliq 6 only fits rear facing and has substantially less battery power than the Cycliq 12 which could be made to sit rear with the right mountings.
My Fy12 (2nd Gen) has their
My Fy12 (2nd Gen) has their poxy 4-lug mounting system on it.
You can get a 4-lug to action cam mount – the one from Cycliq is alright, but not brilliant. There’s a bit of a design flaw where the collar mets the action cam mount; the material is too thin and after a while suffers from stress fractures (I had two go like it).
I brought a load of Garmin 1/4 turn 2-lug self adhesive male fittings and glued one to the other side of the Fly12 – so I have two mounting options on the same camera.
The 1/4 turn 2-lug mount has a wider range of female connectors, including brackets that mount under the seat on the seat rails (like the Garmin Varia mount); the Garmin mount also makes it easier to use on the handlebars.
If you stick a Garmin mount to the Fly12, and use it on a seat rails mount, you could easily have enough room for a rear light on the stem; if you us a rack you could place it directly on the rack using an action cam mount.
The only thing about using the ’12 rearwards it to remember to turn off the light in the software, that way you are not showing a white light to the rear (unless you put a red filter over the light bit of the facing).
Just comes down to the mount
Just comes down to the mount really for rear or front. If you have a rack, then you have more options about where you can put it.
Plus for the back, as the seat post is typically used, it can be a light/camera combo.
Some discussions in the forums – I’ll have a look later.
edit – stuggling a bit with the search facility (!) but there are a few references here
https://road.cc/content/forum/perfect-front-and-rear-cycle-camera-can-you-help-288729
The cheapest one to try out is the chilli bullet
When I actually submitted
When I actually submitted footage, I discovered that the important bit of the close pass happens in between the handlebar and the seat post – no video of how close to my legs the guy was, the police went with “well judged 6″ off your back wheel” until I pointed out that 1.5metres was mentioned somewhere recently.
Some even have 3 camera’s..
Some even have 3 camera’s.. front, rear and side view; and if they get a lot of good ‘events’, some set up a utube channel and shame the miscreants.
I have over ten years of
I have over ten years of inner city commuting experience to draw upon when I observe that when it comes to cycle cameras, the bark is more effective than the bite.
Over the years I’ve filmed every kind of bad driving imaginable, including road rage incidents, for which to their credit, police have investigated and charged drivers.
There was however one unfortunate recording I made which changed my mind about footage. I found some particularly poor driving from a marked police van which then sped off when I asked why they’d driven so badly. Unfortunately, the police then ‘lost’ the footage then ‘lost’ the complaint altogether! Cycle cameras catch bent coppers just as effectively as bad drivers, see? I’ll put that aside though.
Here’s a hint: wear a cheap bike cam, learn NATO phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Beta, Charlie etc) and make a show of reading out number plates within the field of vision of the poor driver. If they challenge you, tell them it’s a police evidence camera and the footage will be submitted for a fixed penalty notice (probably RTA S.36). The driver will squirm, they might get angry. Ignore them and keep going about your commute.
But here’s the showstopper. You never need to switch the camera on. After all, your time on this planet is limited and mostly, submitting footage to the police is a bit of a waste of time and effort.
Deterrence is a powerful thing and we can all use it.
UrbanCommuter wrote:
Mrs H doesn’t run a camera, she does however have a PassPixi sign I gave her on the back of her jacket which is just as effective (and the effect is considerable in our experience) as mine, running a camera. The only time a driver did ask her where her camera was she pointed to her Garmin and said “in here” and he believed her.
I would always recommend
I would always recommend pointing at whatever light, Garmin or snack bag you have on the handlebar and shouting “On camera”.
They should then have several days of slight uncertainty as to whether there is something coming in the post. It does generally get them thinking that an argument on camera isn’t the best thing.
UrbanCommuter wrote:
Perhaps learn it better than a fail at 3/26ths of the way through?
It’s ‘Bravo’ instead of ‘Beta
It’s ‘Bravo’ instead of ‘Beta’, so I failed at 2/26ths there.
Sorry, was that unnecessarily pedantic?
2/26ths can be simplified to
2/26ths can be simplified to 1/13th
Now that was unnecessarily pedantic! ?
I prefer 7.692% of the way
I prefer 7.692% of the way through myself…
UrbanCommuter wrote:
Not pedantic enough – it’s ‘Alfa’, not ‘Alpha’.
A as in Aye
A as in Aye
B as in Bee
C as in Cue
D as in Djinn
E as in Eye
…
I have a very obvious but
I have a very obvious but defective camera attached to the rear of my bike rack; I’m thinking of a rear mount radar triggered white light that would ‘gatso’ flash at drivers going faster than a set speed..
Strobe lighting can be very
Strobe lighting can be very dangerous, plus you would also need a bigger battery.
I cycle mostly for
I cycle mostly for convenience, cost and leisure, “Oh I need some milk”, jump on the bike a swiftly cycle to the Coop or into town. Faffing about with cameras destroys that convenience. My bike cost (for me) a fairly considerable £670 once I had bought new wheels and tyres and a bigger back block and better front brake, most people cycle on bikes that cost considerably less; an effective action cam is not an inconsiderable additional cost and becomes yet another item to be stolen the moment you forget about it and leave it on the bike when chaining it up.
So no I don’t see it as my duty to use one and oppose the idea it should become a cycling necessity.
Robert Hardy wrote:
I’ve got to be honest, that’s my attitude too.
I just wonder…
Camera’s are unnecessary for
Camera’s are unnecessary for local journeys but for those cyclists commuting on busy roads, especially peak hours, they are highly recommended.
I ran cameras for a while,
I ran cameras for a while, never looked at footage. Then a motorist broke my Fly12 by drowning me going through flooding at high speed so I didn’t bother.
Recently I got attacked by a roofer who objected to me complaining about his close pass – tried to trap me against the kerb, leapt out and ran after me trying to push me off the bike. As I was expecting it I got away with it thanks to no oncoming traffic and adrenaline. Then a driver pulled out and I ran into the back of him as he immediately emergency stopped which I think was retaliation for me waving at him. His reasoning was that I should have seen him pulling out and given way to him.
I reckon, riding generally on quiet country roads, that I catch about 5 potentially reportable incidents a ride. I’ve concluded that it is not worth the grief of reporting them when you consider how poorly resources the police are and if rather they were doing something more useful, so it is more for moral support in my hospital bed.
When I have a rainy day, I’m going to stick together a couple of punishment passes for riding two abreast followed by a sequence of 3 near miss head ons on the same ride, two of which were clearly because the driver could see the oncoming car but thought that they could squeeze between cycles and car, the other seemed simply to be that cycles are so slow that they did not consider the need to think about oncoming traffic.
I’ve got another one from yesterday where a plumber comes up behind, passes half the group, issues some inaudible words of advice and drives on – they were behind for about 30 seconds checking the video – all because of oncoming traffic, so being single file would not have helped given the road width. If you’ve got time to pass, slow, talk, accelerate and perform an otherwise clean pass, what could the advice have been?
IanMSpencer wrote:
Well I was once overtaken by a car and a woman leaned out and shouted “nice legs”
“shame about the face”
“shame about the face”
hirsute wrote:
nice beaver..
nice beaver..
grOg wrote:
Nope, just an ugly squirrel.
Here’s a comparison pic for future use (ignore banjo for purposes of classification)
I took a long way in on a
I took a long way in on a commute once. Once I had showered and changed I came up to my floor. A woman in the department came over and said “I saw you today, it was just at the bottom of the hill”. I replied I didn’t realise it was her. She then stated “I didn’t realise it was you either, I was admiring your arse in the shorts and then realised it was you and almost threw up!”
IanMSpencer wrote:
Serves you right for riding over people’s rooves in the first place.
Not this one – sound like he
Not this one – sound like he was quite roofless.
I had/have a go-pro which has
I had/have a go-pro which has gathered dust in the garage for about three years.. I found it clunky to use, slow to do anything with, the software frankly awful and the battery life very poor. That put me off cameras to be honest.
Communiting to work now through the ‘mean streets’ of Coventry, Kenilworth and Warwick, probably 50% of journeys there’ll be an incident which gives me a fright, some worse than others. I do ‘wonder’ about getting another camera, but I also figure that it might be a major faff and investment and for what ‘end’? Would it stop me getting knocked off or close passed? Will it help my anxiety when riding? Will it require ‘attention’ every day and become a chore.. Will I feel obliged to submit every instance of bad driving to the local portal?
peted76 wrote:
Firstly, I don’t believe that it’s a cyclist’s duty to run a camera, though I would encourage their use if you’ve got the spare money etc.
Something like a Cycliq is much better designed for commuting than the go-pros (not that I have experience with a go-pro). They fill up the sd card and then overwrite the oldest video, so you don’t have to worry too much about maintenance, though they do “lock” a video file if your bike falls over, so sometimes they need to be deleted manually. 99% of the time, I just take it off my bike after a ride and stick it on charge and the other 1% being when I want to check the footage due to a close pass etc.
I don’t think they stop close-passes (except in the long-term after prosecution) and it probably won’t help much with anxiety either. I do find it helps keep me calm after an incident as it provides peace of mind that I can do something later to get justice etc. I don’t feel obliged to submit every instance of bad driving – if something happens, I have a look at the footage and see how bad it looks from the video and often think that it’s not worth submitting.
It does take time and effort to submit footage, so it very much depends on how angry you feel about bad driving as to whether you want to get involved (also don’t bother if you’re in Lancs).
Thanks for that insight
Thanks for that insight 🙂
Have to agree about reviewing
Have to agree about reviewing the footage as what att he time seems close can be very different on camera and thats what a court will see. it does come with experience over time as to what will be used or not.
Would it stop me getting
Would it stop me getting knocked off or close passed?
Probably not but if the camera is noticeable they might think twice. But get a passpixi sign as a cheap alterantive for that aspect anyway.
Will it help my anxiety when riding?
Again. Probably not as you are not anxious about having a camera or not. Although if the items mentioned above happen, then it might.
Will it require ‘attention’ every day and become a chore?
Well the battery / SD card would need to be charged / emptied but is that any different then lights and other things you check / do at the start/end of a ride?
Will I feel obliged to submit every instance of bad driving to the local portal?
Depends on you. I have decided not to send stuff after I have reviewed it and only note down really bad ones when I cycle which are normally ones to cause me to swear or shout out. I have also sent in bad driving that hasn’t caused me immediate harm (car driving 200 yards down the wrong side of a dual carriageway because they wouldn’t make the cycle of lights due to the queues in front). Obviously more civic minded people might report everything as the bad driving for me might be a killer for someone else if they are not pulled up and at least warned about it.
I changed the settings on
I changed the settings on mine so that it fills up a 2 minute buffer and only saves it as a file when I press record, that way I only have one or two files to look at.
Mind you if I do get badly knocked off, I won’t be able to press record !
Thank you very much
Thank you very much 🙂
a go-pro which has gathered
a go-pro which has gathered dust in the garage for about three years.. I found it clunky to use, slow to do anything with, the software frankly awful
As I have said before about GoPro: hardware good, software dire. However, the software has been working well for the last month except that the sound goes off after a couple of minutes. Sometimes (probably depends on something happening in Windows 11, and the GoPro PC software has been unmaintained for several years) the app won’t start at all for several days despite all the tricks. One day it will stop for good.
Because of the software, I
Because of the software, I genuinley don’t understand why the things are so popular.
I suspect it was because they
I suspect it was because they were the first widespread “action” camera that they almost became a verb (he go-pro’d his descent). But they are only really initially designed to film the 10-15 minutes of a ski / mountain bike descent or parachute jump and then insta or Tiktok it.
I do wonder what the cameras some bikes use in the pro tours are like. Do they continously record or are they turned on remotely by someone? You would think they would be quite tiny and lightweight,
‘Communiting’.. is that
‘Communiting’.. is that something to do with communes or communism?
Presumably, the police gave
Presumably, the police gave the cyclist a caution because he admitted kicking the plate off the car, while the uber driver likely denied doing anything wrong; point is, never admit to anything.. deny, deny, deny; of course, having bike cams are good for evidence but make sure your own camera doesn’t film you doing the wrong thing and above all, don’t be a vigilante like a certain well known white African.. just provide the evidence to the proper authorities, refrain from road rage and especially attempting to enforce road laws (unless you are an actual policeman).
Quote:
Elon Musk? I suppose as a billionaire he probably does go out with gadgets to fight crime.
Has Prue Leith been taking
Has Prue Leith been taking matters into her own hands again? Maybe overcome by deliveroo rage?
I assumed we were talking
I assumed we were talking about Camus – “the only moral value is courage” and all that.
AlsoSomniloquism wrote:
Fight crime? I’m pretty sure that he’s a super-villain/cult leader
hawkinspeter wrote:
He only set up The Boring Company because he needed to do something else with all the digging equipment he’d bought to make his secret volcano base.
brooksby wrote:
Oh yes, the brilliant idea that putting cars underground will completely solve congestion problems…..
https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7n74d/traffic-jams-are-possible-in-elon-musks-tunnels-apparently
But we know his real reason..
But we know his real reason…
grOg wrote:
What a peculiar thing to write, in what way is his colour relevant? Would you describe Nelson Mandela as “a certain well-known black African”?
Is that what Froomey’s doing
Is that what Froomey’s doing now?
I record all my rides, and I
I record all my rides, and I upload them to YouTube too.
At some stage* in my life, I will be no longer able to ride a bike and I want something to remind me of when I could ride – it’s a scrap book, but with moving pictures rather than stills.
I’ve also found it very useful when people ask me about routes I’ve ridden – especially if they have not ridden it before – and they have found it useful.
I don’t go out of my way to publish poor driving – even out here in the sticks there’s plenty of that; although I have had a couple of incidents used on NMOTD. I’ll report dangerous driving where I know an offence had been committed (Police Scotland have been really quite canny by only accepting video by email – means you *really* are serious about the incident), and to be honest, incidents that stand a chance of being prosecuted are few and far between.
“The memories of a man in his old age, are the deeds of a man in his prime” … I know that I have memory problems following a TBI, and they are likely to get worse.*
* I was hit by a poorly driven car back in 2018 that was life-threatening, and has left me with life changing injuries. I ride an e-bike as I am no longer physically able to ride a normal bike. Some of the injuries I’ve received will only degenerate over time, both physically and mentally. Due to the brain injury I received, I have memory problems … So I’m just trying to make sure that I don’t lose more of my life in the future.
Here’s one from this morning
Here’s one from this morning for Martin73 and any other “camera vigilante” critics: approaching a three-way junction with broken traffic lights, I take primary position and carefully signal that I am turning right. The white car drives at speed up the opposing lane into the face of oncoming traffic and cuts straight over the top of me, forcing me to brake, and turns left. In response to my startled “Oi!” the driver stops illegally in the middle of the junction and shouts, “Go and suck your mother you fucking poof.” I’d love to hear how this was due to the way I ride and how it represents me going looking for incidents to report?
Rendel Harris wrote:
Well, obviously you shouldn’t be getting in your dad’s way.
As the cyclist to be the
As the cyclist to be the first ever to go to court in the country for being close passed I agree that the police can’t be everywhere which is why when West Midlands Police started operation close pass members of the public were only to happy to help bolster the catch rate by chipping in making the operation seem much bigger than it actually was, sending a message that you never know when and where you might be caught. Clearly now most, not all by any means, have adjusted their driving but there are still many to catch. The driving laws in the UK are stil very antiquated and its easy to see why the police get frustrated, but likewise when forces demonstrate a lack of action when given perfectly good evidence so do members of the public. I have had some horrendous events if Staffordshire only to be told a warning letter has been sent..no prosecution when clearly it should have been so.
As for cameras being fitted to cars just as in buses and trucks etc that only works if the driver is honest, here in the West Midlands our largest bus operator National Express West Midlands is notorious for claiming the onboard system wasn’t working if their vehicle is involved in an incident to which their driver is at fault. They actually tell all their drivers, and have done for decades, if you’re involved in collision say nothing – wait for the inspector to arrive. The process then is that the driver is whisked away and will only be interviewed by the police if warrented at a prearranged appointment, unless there has been a fatality and even then the driver is told to wait for the company solicitor. Bus companies have the fastest vehicle recovery rates in the country to protect their image. When our first ward wide 20 mph zone was introduced you should have heard the bus companies crying because their drivers were getting caught by the police who were out in force to make the point about the zone, West Mids police responded by telling them the amnesty for bus companies was over – sadly self policing 20 zones do not work as tiem has proven. Teh only way to address poor driving is with tougher laws and sentencing. What does our system do to the driver, as a first offence, of vehicle taken without consent, who fails to stop when police get behind them, and who has a bladed article on the m when finally stopped? probably a fine and maybe probabtion. Try doing that in Thailand, a poor but very respectful of law country, your sentence for those offences if its your first time is 30 years no plea barganing no time off for good behaviour either, as sadi the Thai people are very respectful of the law.
Mark? Is that you?
Mark? Is that you?
ghostrider64 wrote:
I wouldn’t want to start copying Thailand’s approach to road safety – they’ve got the worst record outside of Africa. I don’t have a huge amount of faith in the Thai police either as they are well known for targetting tourists with scams.
I don’t agree so much with increasing the fines and penalties as it makes no difference if the driver thinks there’s no chance that they will get caught. What we need to do is to get more police and cameras on the roads and consistently catch drivers. I don’t mind if we give drivers a slap on the wrist for non-injuring poor driving (e.g. using a phone or a close-pass) as long as the drivers get the message that poor driving will be responded to.
I think we can usually learn
Agree – what’s most important is prompt feedback so people don’t have a feeling of impunity / “it’s normal” / “it doesn’t matter, everyone’s doing it”.
Also agree that while I think we can usually learn something from other cultures importing ideas from the Thai police and criminal justice system isn’t something I’d recommend.
Although if they put road.cc’s John Stevenson in charge of roads policing I bet you’d notice a change pretty quick.
Since about 2013 I’ve been
Since about 2013 I’ve been recording every ride running the matchbox sized Mobius cameras front and rear using 1080 30 fps video images. I’ve been fortunate to have only involved plod in about one case per annum with about 40% success in getting them to get up off their arses and do something. Recently, to make them understand the closeness of passes, when I get home after a bad pass, I take a video from both of my cameras showing the line of my road space and then a line of the legal distance the vehicle should be away from me. Then I superimpose these lines over the still images of the incident to show the extent of the breach. I use pieces of timber on my loungeroom floor with its 4″ boards as markers in the post ride video. In conjunction with the video it’s fairly compelling info that can be hard for plod to find an excuse to ignore. Remember that the exclusion zone is from your extremity, not the centre of the bike.
I’m an avid cyclist & former
I’m an avid cyclist & former Police Officer who was almost killed recently by an aggressive driver. Rather than share the video with Twitter, I shared it with the POLICE who are enforcing the motorist. I documented the UK process for submitting cycle cam video evidence to the Police. If you’re tired of aggressive drivers threatening your lives DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!: https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/q/84148/52565
PennyFarthingGuy wrote:
I agree, but luckily I’m covered by Avon & Somerset who are good at dealing with cam footage. Unfortunately, different police forces have vastly different standards and some appear to find any excuse to avoid dealing with close-passes.
Which area are you in?
Suspicious! 3 posts and ‘I’m
Suspicious! 3 posts and ‘I’m a cyclist myself’ variant. The police are almost certainly not ‘enforcing the motorist’ because mostly they don’t bother. They do a lot of pretending, but when they won’t tell you what they’ve done (citing entirely false interpretations of GDPR regulations) it means they’ve done essentially nothing- they’re waiting until you’re killed or seriously injured when there won’t be any witnesses and the cameras are broken: Win-Win as far as they’re concerned. The Stackexchange item mentioned is rubbish, and restates the nonsense that you are obliged to provide evidence against yourself- if the driver wishes to blame you for causing the close-passing assault they carried out, they need to provide the evidence- like we have to.
Not every new poster is a
Not every new poster is a troll and not every Police force is terrible, although i agree the evidence we see regularly indicates the good one’s are few and far between (Police forces, not new posters).
I’m just guessing but a cycle hating driver troll is unlikely to be encouraging us to report drivers to the police. It would be a shame if they were put off ever posting again, why not give it some more time to make sure before posting comments like that?
I think he might be a cyclist
I think he might be a cyclist and that he might ride a penny-farthing.
It’s a step beyond “also rides a bike…”
Which police force – how many
Which police force – how many of them actually do anything other than write a letter ?
I can’t speak for PFG but I’m
I can’t speak for PFG but I’m in court soon over a close pass or red light jumper and that’s West Midlands Police. It could be either as they both happened at the same set of lights and i only know the date but neither of them hit me or anyone else.
Hertfordshire, theres even a
Hertfordshire, theres even a link to an edited clip of the close pass the force are enforcing…via that bicycles.stackexchange guide they put together.
only points Id quibble on
only points Id quibble on your guide is dont quote the time frame for reporting incidents as just a, “I believe”, it only takes a few secs to double check the standard legal limit, and to add something like some forces in the country like to use quicker turnarounds on letter notifications so always check with your local force what their rules are.
also I dont believe intent is a factor at all in prosecuting careless driving charges for close passes, it is often by its very nature an unintentional act that is simply an inadvertant error through carelessness.