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Jeremy Vine at London Cycling Campaign awards screenshot from Ross Lydall video.pngVideo: Jeremy Vine - having a camera is safer than wearing a helmet in London
• Vine says a camera is safer than a wearing helmet in London
• Radio Two presenter says police told him to "keep the footage coming, we'll bust 'em all"
• Condemns "farcical lack of safety" at Bank Junction where newlywed Ying Tao was killed last week
• Said if London's roads were a hospital they would be shut down and an inquiry launched
Jeremy Vine has said he feels a video camera is safer than a helmet cycling in London, and expressed outrage at the deaths on London's roads, and a "farcical" lack of safety at Bank Station where hundreds joined a die-in last night.
The Radio Two presenter, who cycles daily in London, said at the London Cycling Awards last night, if a hospital had the safety record of London's roads there would be a five year inquiry. Though he lamented having to dress like a "Navy Seal on his way to kill Bin Laden", he said wearing a camera "is the way to go".
Vine said had he not been billed as MC for the London Cycling Campaign's annual event awarding contributions to cycling in the capital, he would probably have attended his first die-in, for Ying Tao, a 26 year old woman killed at Bank last week after a collision with a lorry.
Vine said: "If this event were not taking place tonight I might have, for the first time, gone to one of these die ins, because I feel very strongly about this."
He said he is "increasingly outraged" at the deaths on London's roads whose scenarios, he says, are sadly predictable.
"As soon as I say 'a cyclist has died' you can almost fill in the blanks, ladies and gentlemen: it's going to be a smart, professional woman in her mid-20s killed by a tipper truck turning left.
"It's going to be at a junction like Bank where there is a farcical lack of safety. Bank is a seven way junction, what is a tipper truck doing there at rush hour for God's sake? If a hospital had a death rate that London's roads are hitting with cyclists, the hospital would be shut down, the health secretary would resign, and there would be a five year inquiry."
Cameras "the way to go"
Vine described why he wears a camera when cycling and that, after a pang of guilt about sending films to police when they could be dealing with other crimes, he called them up, at which point, he says, he was told to "keep 'em coming".
"I was hit about 18 months ago by a guy who just decides that I can't be important or matter because I'm on a bicycle. I filmed him and we went to court, and he was fined £3,200.
"I thought: 'OK this is the way to go'"
"I thought the police are here to solve crimes, not to sort me out on my bike, and so I was thinking I'd call them, I said 'sorry if I'm submerging you in films', and she said 'keep em coming'...'that guy's got busted as well, and we'll bust them all'
"So I think a camera is safer than a cycle helmet, and the woman said to me 'we've got a guy who's going 20 miles each way every day and he's sending us six films a day and we're processing all of those as well', so they are actually quite interested in the footage."
Last year Vine filmed himself being caught in Hyde Park in a police speed trap for doing 15mph in a bike lane with a 5mph speed limit which, it turns out, isn't applicable.
Women disproportionately vulnerable on London's roads
In the last 24 hours two more women were hit by tipper trucks in London, on Blackfriars Bridge, and Old Street.
Of eight cyclists killed on London's roads this year, seven were hit by lorries, six of those were women, and recent analysis by the Evening Standard shows in the last six and a half years, of 33 female cycling deaths in London 27, or 82% were hit by lorries. Where women make only a quarter of London's bike journeys, they are 39% of its adult fatalities.
Laura Laker is a freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience covering cycling, walking and wheeling (and other means of transport). Beginning her career with road.cc, Laura has also written for national and specialist titles of all stripes. One part of the popular Streets Ahead podcast, she sometimes appears as a talking head on TV and radio, and in real life at conferences and festivals. She is also the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network.
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19 comments
Jeremy Vine has a powerful and excellent speaking/debating voice. He should be making use of it more often and for the wider public-good.
If Jeremy Clarkson had directed some of his energies and his bullish voice and attitude into publicising the cause for cyclists and the horrors that are everyday occurrences on our roads instead of castigating and taking the piss out of caravanner's - - then perhaps we would have seen something more positively been done and the offenders having their names and images displayed for all to see.
Yes - sadly some of those offenders were/are cyclists that displayed/display the cavalier attitude that we so often see and hear of - The Traffic-light suicide jockeys and the tear-arse up the inside of moving traffic idiots.
"Bank is a seven way junction, what is a tipper truck doing there at rush hour for God's sake? "
If it is such an obviously dangerous junction why would you try and ride a bike across it during rush hour either?
The truck has as much reason for being there as the cyclist. This isn't the 50's, people don't generally go out and drive round for the fun of it. Certainly they don't do that through traffic jams! He has a job to do, stop trying to blame lorry drivers for simply doing their job.
Strikes me that what he says has merit - drivers don't like getting caught doing naughties.
Could the wearing of a jacket/jersey bearing a 'speed camera' symbol be a useful tool to remind drivers that their behaviour could be being recorded by the cyclist and thus modify their behaviour accordingly.
Had a quick look to see if such a sticker/vest/jersey was available - didn't see one but plenty of places offering to sell you a hi-vis vest with "your choice of design" printed on it...
You want to dress like Dave Sherry?
Don't do that.
Usual story then, police attitudes vary massively depending where you live. What happens if we all start using the Met's roads safe thing regardless of location? Surely police forces hand cases to each other when appropriate?
To answer your question the quick answer is yes. The route it takes is complicated depending on forces but they do get forwarded on to the relevant force.
However for a another force to deal with an incident a statement from the IP needs to be taken so if you email the Met and your from outside the Met force area it wont go anywhere as they wont come upto say Lancashire to get the statement.
Cheers Stumps, good to have an insight into how these things work.
It has got me thinking though. How would it work if you wanted to report something you had witnessed (along with the video evidence) when out on a longer journey that spans multiple Police Force jurisdictions? I know this seems unusual in the context of helmet-cams but it's very relevant if we consider dash-cams in cars. You may not know which Force to approach and even if you did the issue of obtaining a statement would still apply.
I suppose he is right in that cameras are the way forward, but i would never not wear a helmet just because i have a camera on my bike.
In all honesty a camera fitted to a helmet is much better evidentially wise as you film where you look rather than just straight ahead and you'll get facial shots, reg numbers as they pass etc plus if the driver gobs off you will have that as well rather than just backing speech if the camera is on the bike.
As much as i would rather not see it but it needs someone either high up in politics or in tv / film to get killed before anything will be done about the roads.
I'm lucky in that the north east is not london and the roads are significantly quieter.
Jeremy Vine ……………..
Don't bother in Bristol, despite video footage of car running red lights and willing to go to court, they say not enough evidence.
Avon and Somerset police are improving, from a very low base it has to be said, but not exactly quickly.
A year ago, I driver overtook me on the inside by driving onto the pavement, on a blind left hand bend, and if there had been any pedestrians, he would have killed them as he was doing at least 20mph. I took the video to the police and the response was zero. In contrast, the driver's employer was very interested and after they'd seen the vid issued a formal warning.
Cambridgeshire plod DGAF so don't waste your time.
And what do you do if you're not in London?
I don't know of a Roadsafe equivalent for Manchester.
You need to ask your own regional Police force, each has its own policy. Dig through their website or try their twitter account, though they may simply not provide such a service.
In Texas people are (mostly) very polite to strangers, because it's highly likely they are armed.
We are 20 years from London being Amsterdam. In the meantime, if we can very quickly get to the point of people driving seeing a person on a bike and thinking 'If I cut them up/pass too close it'll cost me a grand and 6 points' that would be no bad thing.
Cyclists should be licensed to carry sidearms--it would level the field a little.
It's a bit of a drudge to upload, cut down, and upload footage plus fill in the Roadsafe form.
I keep doing it because I know that for each warning letter going out, there's at a minimum one more person highly aware that they're noticed when driving like wa***rs.
In fact, I'm assuming that most who receive these the first time end up showing the letter to their partner, talk about it with friends, fume about it in the pub, etc... which is good.
Not a great fan of Mr Vine, but he is a good voice to highlight the dangerous situation that alot of riders face each day. Cameras are the way to go until behaviour changes
Jeremy Vine has gone up in my estimation.