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news
Is submitting close pass footage to the police a postcode lottery?
When we published an article earlier this week about a cyclist who had submitted 25 videos of poor driving to Derbyshire Constabulary, resulting in just one motorist receiving a warning letter, we said that we suspected there was a postcode lottery going on with regards to whether certain police forces took action on such footage.
It’s clear to anyone who follows discussion on Twitter relating to the safety of cyclists that certain forces stand out – in particular the road safety teams of West Midlands and Surrey Police.
Our article on Monday, however, prompted road.cc reader Paul to get in touch about his experience with Norfolk Constabulary.
He put together a video (above) showing 11 incidents, eight of which resulted in the motorist concerned receiving a Notice of Intended Prosecution (NIP).
Paul told us: “I thought I'd send these clips in to try and balance out Pompey Cyclist’s experience of the police not acting on footage of close passes.
“My clip shows 11 incidents, eight of which resulted in the police sending the owner of the vehicle a notice of intended prosecution, one of which I ended up going to court for (the black Range Rover) and the final two were sent warning letters.
“I don't know the final result for the letters of intended prosecution, the policeman I was in contact with talked about ‘due care’,” he continued.
“The court visit resulted in three points plus a fine and costs.”
Paul added: “In total over the past 18 months since Norfolk Constabulary launched their dashcam webpage I've sent them footage of 94 incidents.
“In 42 of them I haven't been informed of the result, 42 have resulted in notices of intended prosecution being sent to the vehicle owners, seven have been sent warning letters, I've been to court once and two resulted in no further action.”
It’s not a bad hit rate, and as we said earlier, there does appear to be something of a postcode lottery at work … in other words, the success you get from the footage you submit depends on the police force it is given to.
If you send footage of close passes and other incidents to the police, we’d be very interested to hear your own experience in the comments below; be sure to tell us which police force is involved, and feel free to add links to any footage.
Meanwhile, one senior police officer is taking an interest in Pompey Cyclist’s submissions … Detective Superintendent Andy Cox, the road safety lead at the Metropolitan Police.
Unfortunately, since the incidents didn’t happen on his patch, there’s not much that he can do on them other than perhaps having a word with colleagues in Derbyshire and get them to take such evidence more seriously.
Yay. @SuptAndyCox is gonna look at some footage when I email it over. @metpoliceuk already care more than @DerbysPolice and this isn’t even their problem.
— Pompey Cyclist (@PompeyCyclist) November 20, 2019
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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29 comments
Superpython / BTBS certainly kept the forum interesting. I'm sure that Beast Mode has been warned about mentioning conspiracy theories concerning the followers of one of the great monotheistic religions...
CIBM refers to Hull. Isn't that where BHBS comes from?
It could be that mild mannered janitor...
Maybe this poster might want to keep it a little calmer and so continue to give us their views for longer this time.
Though Xena was an arse...
Good to have them back if so...
Conspiracy nutter
Kevin,
Your video does not play, well not for me at least.
Jboss is right when it comes to Surrey - don't hold them up as a good example Road CC. I submitted a video of a close pass by a public bus to them and nothing was done (I tried to updload it here but encountered problems). Admittedly it wasn't the worst - I've been hit on the hand by a wing mirror - but the attitude towards cyclists of someone behind the wheel of public transport was clearly really poor.
I've reported 150+ close passes to Surrey Police - mostly related to my commute to/from Woking Train Station.
A few years ago, I thought they were doing a reasonable job - as I'd get a hit-rate (warning letter or driving awareness course) around 30-40% of the time.
They mistakenly sent me one of their warning letters - it certainly wasn't a "warning" of anything and I realised that their warnings were worth nothing other than reminding the motorist that someone is watching...
Then the hit-rate went down to something like 5-10% - and I ended up having a meeting with the Surrey TPU - who told me that basically, as there's no safe/minimum overtaking distance prescribed in law - then they just wouldn't consider a close pass in itself as careless/dangerous.
Even when I showed them videos of motorists overtaking me with their nearside front wheel approx 40cm from my front wheel - ie. the *middle* of my bike!
Surrey RPU/TPU really do nothing to *prevent* poor/dangerous driving and only seem to be concerned if the poor driving inconvenienced other motorists, turned into road rage or there was an injury.
Well, it had to happen eventually, I was knocked down by a motorist driving over my foot whilst I was walking along the pavement! Surrey TPU have certainly been no more sympathetic - they've got the details of the CCTV (at the petrol station which should have videoed this) and contact details of witnesses. The police asked me to secure the CCTV - the petrol station manager said only via a police request...I contacted the TPU to let them know that they had to request the CCTV footage - they said they'd get round to it in a couple of weeks...
I would have thought that you have a right to CCTV footage that features yourself under GDPR. You could try that with the petrol station manager and see whether he needs a formal GDPR request (which would include any footage that they have of you).
Lancashire Police are completely shite. They claim that they are short staffed, (True), but use it as an excuse because they can't be arsed to take action, even when all the donkey work has been done for them. (HD footage with sound).
But when they are chaseing a white van, which then crashes near where I live, all we see is twenty minutes of police car after police car, racing past, totalling well over a dozen, possibly even twenty. BMW X5s, panda cars, unmarked cars, armed response, (really) and dog patrols. Even the helicopter was scrambled. So LanCon can really put on a show if they really want to.
Hey, I don't know if anyone else has noticed a certain familiarity in the posting style, language and content of CyclingInBeastMode that doesn't quite tally with their 181 comments?
Yeah, I've noticed a certain similarity.
Welcome back (if applicable).
I'm glad it's not just me. I had thought I was just imagining certain stylistic similarities...
It's btbs surely ?
I'd bet my best bike on it.
In my experience, police don't really give a sheet. People put them on a pedestal but why? The article showing them being racist towards black cyclists says it all. Too uneducated in general is probably why.
Spent a weekend cycling in Norfolk with women from my club and we were all so pleasantly surprised at how respectful the drivers were! In 3 days of cycling I think we encountered one close pass. Comparing this to Essex and it was postively lovely! Well done Norfolk
it always seems that way in low density areas and certain roads that seem to be the same are in fact totally different with the number and indeed type of vehicles so it's hard to make direct comparisons in many parts of the country. i ride a lot in the East Riding of Yorkshire when I visit my folks and the roads are very empty and everything feels relaxed, a few miles back into the city of Hull and it's just like other big connurbations despite the fairly high % cycling for work/utility.
my feeling is in Norfolk & parts of Suffolk too, fwiw the Norfolk roads unit is combined with Suffolk so they cover both counties, that there are enough roads off the beaten track that you can cycle around quite happily on and probably never meet another living soul, but when you get nearer pockets of population or tourist hotspots like the broads, things can be just as bad as Essex.
I would never ride on the Acle straight for instance,I dont even much like driving it, and ok maybe its because there was a whole bunch of us riding all strung out on the A143 from St Olaves through Haddiscoe so drivers were getting fed up of us (like thats enough excuse anyway) but there was some god awful driving around us,really dangerous self intitled MGIFs & overtakes, we had a car as we were waiting to turn left out of a Tjunction pull alongside us, and then left hook us as we tried to join the road, that was definitely a road I wanted to get off very quickly.
To what extent are people tempted to 'block' an overtake? So as in the video clip (e.g. 0:06+), you have an oncoming vehicle and see (shoulder check/mirror) another approaching from behind, then take the lane to 'encourage' the driver to hang back, possibly indicating as you do so...
These clips are all over a year old and I do tend to ride further out in the road now to try and prevent these overtakes happening. Problem is, cars still try and squeeze by even when you're 50cm-75cm away from the curb. When I'm turning right I no longer move over to the right hand side of the lane, I move over, but stay in primary so cars can't squeeze by on the left. I've been hooted at for doing that and even had a van drive up on the pavement a squeel away aftwards yelling abuse at me.
The last report I sent to Avon&Somerset didn't get any response, but it appears that they've changed their policy. Unfortunately, this means that we don't get feedback as to what the police are interested in and which ones they aren't (e.g. should I send them videos of poor but not immediately dangerous driving such as crossing double solid white lines to overtake?).
For some reason I haven't had many close passes recently and for the couple that I did get, the footage wasn't great so I didn't bother submitting them.
I've sent Road.cc two London compilations recently. Of those, two incidents I think I should have reall have submitted to the Met, but for one reason or another I didn't - mostly because they were just close as opposed to me reallly fearing for my safety. My acid test these days is if I have to 'take a few minutes for myself' afterwards. In these cases, the police seem to agree. The Met issued a NIP on Tuesday for an incident likey to grace these pages in due course.
So a bit like if plod ignore being only milfly sexually assaulted but because it happens so freuwntly there's little point in reporting to plod because they don't think in their opinion a sexual assault actually took place because it wasn't all that bad. Yup, plod are a effing disgrace.
If they want their jobs to be easier, if they want to go to fewer KSI incidents and fewer knocks on the door because some poor sod has been killed or maimed for life by yet another moton then cracking down on every single close pass with an NIP at the very least (warning letters are a total fail) would have a huge impact on people's driving, at the least it would ensure more police jobs that are paid for by the billions in fines and about 15 million fewer motorists because in one day you can guarantee that a large swathe of motons endanger others be it pedestrians, cyclists or even other motorists. it should take about 6 months to get all these cretins up before the eak and 12 points means a ban of 6 months.
Just think how many other crimes that police could attend to because they actually gave a shit about the most frequently occuring and one of the most devastating and financially costly crimes in the country!
I've submitted 3 near-miss incidents to Hampshire Police. The first 2 were about 3 months ago to their general "Report a road traffic incident" page (https://www.hampshire.police.uk/ro/report/rti/rti-b/report-a-road-traffic-incident/). I haven't heard anything back about these, I have reference numbers for these, although I'm not sure who to contact to try and follow these up.
The 3rd one was on Sunday, via the new Hants SNAP page (https://hants-snap-police.egressforms.com/). Haven't heard back on that either, probably too early. I didn't get any kind of reference number for that, which surprised me.
I won't link to any of the videos until I'm sure it's not going to court.
Has anyone got anywhere with Durham Constabulary? They used to get you to report it and then send the footage to a specific footage email address. Now when you ring the non emergency police number, they direct you to submit details on line, but then because no contact was made with a ‘close-pass’ it tells you to deal with it through your own insurance company! Also I’ve emailed the old address a few times and got no answer.
So basically now Durham don’t consider close passes to be a crime worth reporting, unless I’ve missed something?
I have submitted over 80 to Avon & Somerset in the last 12 months. Phone users, close passes & suchlike. Since September though, A&S have been following a policy of telling you zilch about the reports.
Even after a nasty close pass they will say that in their "professional judgment" you are not a "victim" so they don't have to tell you what they decide, in their great & unmatched wisdom, to do with your report.
Before then, 90% of the footage I submitted resulted in either an advisory warning letter or "seeking to prosecute". Bristol Cycling Campaign is taking issue with the new "don't tell 'em" policy and I hope it will change.
I see a driver most days who I reported a long time ago for overtaking me on a blind bend. She's now a much better driver & always takes care. I hope (naively perhaps) the 54 or so drivers who have been contacted this year because of my submissions will have changed their ways - or at least moaned to their friends who might take more care if they know they're likely to be reported with footage.
Cambs. came back with the same response after I asked for an update 3months+ after submitting footage of an incident and hearing nothing back in that time. After challenging that assertion the most they were willing to share was: "I can say that the driver has been dealt with regarding this incident and is now well aware that their behaviour whilst driving was not up to the standard of driving expected."
Well done mate, keep it up, you're making headway there. Sooner or later these dimwits will get the message.
Well done Paul.
Most of those were shocking in their pointlessness.
And congratulations to Norfolk Constabulary, at least trying to keep cyclists safer.