Here's what to do if you capture a near miss, close pass or collision on camera while cycling

It's also a lot easier to prove mobile phone use than careless driving

True, but it's not difficult to prove 'No MOT' on SD68 YTO, which is why I have moved onto this offence. Lancashire Constabulary doesn't, of course, do anything about any of those either, which is why I have collected 100 such reports and am going through the complaints process with the laughable fiction that is LC Professional Standards as Ben Wallace MP asked me to do. You have all seen MV57 GXO from me many times- it still has no MOT/ insurance for over 2 years and no VED for over 19 months and used to be seen around Garstang all the time since I first reported it in May 22. I haven't seen it since 20th December- the complaint was issued with photos etc. on 21st December. We shall see- my guess is that LC will find itself completely correct because offences 'have to be personally witnessed by an officer'- this principle would declare the various OpSnaps to be the fictions they obviously are

wtjs wrote:

We shall see- my guess is that LC will find itself completely correct because offences 'have to be personally witnessed by an officer'- this principle would declare the various OpSnaps to be the fictions they obviously are

Not sure about MOT's, but the careless driving guidelines only prevent the police issuing Careless Driving FPN's for 3rd party submitted video footage, they can still issue a court summons (with or without an offer of a driver training course).

So you tend to find there are a lot of warning letters, quite a few courses, but very few court cases resulting in points and a fine for close passing a cyclist.

I think some of this comes from a viewpoint that FPN's might somehow lessen the severity of the offence, so that is why, if there is a victim or a member of the public has made a complaint, the preference is a court summons; as the court can impose more points and a harsher fine than a FPN. That was certainly the case in the incident I reported, where 5 points and a £300 fine were handed out.

If they would be prepared to be more liberal with FPN's, that would be a good thing in my book. I'd see a £100 fine and 3 points a valid deterrent for being close passed. I'm a firm believer that it is the chance of being caught, rather than the ultimate penalty, that changes behaviour.

IanMSpencer wrote:

3. As a helpful citizen trying to help make the country a safer place, I have to accept that drowning the police in minor infractions when they are understaffed and failing in dealing with far more serious crimes is unhelpful. I therefore think we have to set a high bar for submissions.

Absolutely agree with this; it would be rather helpful if the police would let us know where the bar is by making a quick response to unsuccessful submissions. At present it really does feel like a lottery and it's very hard to know what is worth submitting and what is not, when in the same week one can submit identical close passes to the same police force and one will get an NIP and the other NFA. I tend to err on the high side, i.e., I generally won't submit unless I feel that the driving put me or someone else in physical danger, but even so there seems to be massive variation between what is regarded as prosecutable one week and not the next, a simple email response, even if just a tick box form, would help submitters to cut down on NFA submissions.

Essex are poor at feedback and I have had basically the same incident progressed and given NFA, so there is a problem of consistency as to who gets the incident.

The local cycle campaign group have tried very hard and did get one meeting with the team but are left frustrated too at inaction and inconsistency. This all is despite Essex Police and Safer Roads banging on about vision zero.

Essex are incredibly frustrating.  had two near identical incidents of being passed at a pinch point and being forced to swerve, one ended with a warning letter the other a course or coniditional offer.  When you raise this inconsistency they just refuse to engage, provide any explanations.

In theory both your incidents were treated as the same, ie they passed the threshold for prosecution that Essex use.

it's only the resolution that differs and that maybe to do with all manner of things Essex dont want to discuss as it gives you more detail on the offender than they're happy to share with you. Like maybe 1st offenders get the letter and only a course if they repeat the offence, or the letter is used to alleviate the risk of court backlogs because the course/pts might be more likely challenged etc etc.

If only there was kind of logic but it clearly isn't. 

Through my reporting to them I've started to suspect that there's one officer that takes these incidents more seriously than others, if they review it they are more likely to progress it to course/conditional offer whereas others will issue warning letters.

You can't use the "Online Reporting Form" for Police Scotland to report motoring offences. If you select "Other" incident type, a message should  appear saying "For any other reports which do not need an urgent Police response, please dial 101 or report using our online Contact Us form."

I use the online contact form, primarily because it saves you holding on 101. You can't submit videos/photos at that point, but you can put a brief description of the incident in the form. What happens next seems to be a bit variable - sometimes they have texted me and asked me to call 101, sometimes they have simply called me, and sometimes they have asked me to email videos to them. In all cases, to progress further the subsequent step is for two officers to visit you and take a formal statement. If you haven't previously sent the video/photos, then one of the officers attending will normally give you their direct email address for you to send it to (this does mean the file size needs to be small enough to be sent/received via email - I think emails bounce if attachments are >25mb which can be an issue for video files!)

(This is my experience living in Edinburgh - it might be different in other parts of Scotland).

Police Scotland have been talking about an online reporting portal but the latest is this is under threat from budget cuts... https://www.cyclinguk.org/blog/dont-let-police-scotland-scrap-new-dashca...

So the link in the article is incorrect.

How do we get Road.cc to correct it?

Thanks for your help, much appreciated

well theyre nice words/sentiment, and I know thats probably harsh to say as from his podcast appearance he passionately and sincerely believes in it, but ultimately they are just words, not action, and I want to see the all of the police truly demonstrate they believe in it as sincerely and passionately as he does.

Its interesting he mentioned the ratio of 2/3rds are enforced, last time I checked the numbers across Norfolk/Suffolk, which never seem to be updated thesedays, roughly 2/3rds were being rejected for unspecified reasons.

I think it is a long term thing. At least we have mark hodson, Andy Cox, inspector Kevin and now dame Sarah storey taking up the cause and positioned to be able to do something.
I think it will come down to money to persuade.
It costs the country X when there is a crash.
It costs Y for the crash investigation team and other emergency services.
It costs Z to train the team
If we are proactive, we can save on Z and Y (and X).

Dashcams have been available for cars for at least a decade. 

Other than providing youtube revenue, they seem to have little or no imact on the way some people choose to operate their vehicle. 

Many choose to drive like cocksockets because they know that unless they are caught by plod committing the offence, nothing is going to happen.

Oldfatgit wrote:

Dashcams have been available for cars for at least a decade. 

Other than providing youtube revenue, they seem to have little or no imact on the way some people choose to operate their vehicle. 

I dont think thats entirely fair.  Dashcams on their own do very little - only giving you some notional usage for insurance companies.   For true change you need the full extent of change in people (drivers, cammers, policemen, magistrates), process (laws, police and court guidance) and technology (cams, radars).

To say there's been no impact is completely premature and I dont believe the high volume cammers like Mikey & co would agree with you.

Cultural change takes at least a decade, but it quite often snowballs.   Dry January is a good example of this.

I dont know, do high volume cammers who submit 1000s of these things a year feel they have any impact at all when they probably know theyll be submitting just as many again this year ?

I dont think dashcams have had any impact on drivers behaviour.

I'm not sure what the link to Dry January is either, other than its massively over hyped as a concept.

should be called the Absolve-ability Matrix

Either a typo or a change in the typical request. Essex police only ask for 1 min either side now as opposed to the previous 2 either side.

Surrey don't seem to insist on it at all now.  Had successful reports that occurred in the first 30s of a block of video (I mean I've got 2 mins before if they need it but was only able to upload one file).   They also do seem to be responding positively more often too since they changed the upload service to Nextbase.

It varies with each force.

Police Scotland initially require video by email... so your lucky if you can even get the event in, let alone anything either side

well personally I wouldnt have put any numbers like that in the article at all as theres no set standard across the UK police forces and its just going to be confusing for alot of people.

I dont recall ever being asked for a specific timed length of clip by Suffolk, merely a clip that shows the incident with its context, whilst reminding you they can request for more even upto the whole journey.

My camera is set to 5min clips, they get which ever 5min clip it happens in.

As i understand it, Because they want to preserve the evidence.
If the driver elects to go to court, then there is an infantisimal chance that a jury member could have seen it before the trial and formed an opinion based entirely on the video ... and not on the performance that is the legal system.

Don't forget, you can be guilty as hell, but if the prosecution fails to prove it *beyond reasonable doubt* then you'll walk.

Up here in Scotland with have a 'Not Proven' verdict... basically means you're guilty but the prosecution couldn't prove it to the jury

I take your point, but I don't understand how seeing the evidence will taint a juror. If that were the case, surely they should not be exposed to the evidence during the trial either, for the same reason.

And like you say, what are the chances anyway? It strikes me that this is just another layer in some Force's triage - reasons not to prosecute, 1, 2, 3.

its a CYA clause I think, its never been to my knowledge been tested in court either way, ie challenged or prevented a prosecution, and I will always repeatedly highlight the many viral social media and news clips of major incidents and crimes that never seem to harm the necessary prosecutions of people involved in those.

The police are guided by the CPS. The CPS have to consider whether there can be a fair trial. A trial can be derailed by excessive pre-publicity and comment.

Unfortunately, the likes of Mr Loophole play on these things and are able to derail fair trials to their clients' benefit, so probably best to go along with the police.