Near Miss of the Day 841: Impatient drivers squeeze past cyclists on dark country lane

What!  Surely the new HC rules have changed everyone's behaviour?

eburtthebike wrote:

What!  Surely the new HC rules have changed everyone's behaviour?

Not so much. What it has done is provided more clarity on what is due care and attention when passing cyclists, specifically the 1.5metre minimum and more above 30mph, i.e. use the other lane, just like you would passing another tin box.

What this enables is Avoidance not just Outrage and Evidence reports. Collecting actionable evidence is both expensive and risky, with no certainty that any action will be taken. Avoidance is cheap and easy, just a couple of pounds for 1.5m of 2cm plastic pipe and some gaffer tape to hold it on provides a clear visual aid to the spacially challenged road users. While it remains an unusual thing, it gets the attention needed to ensure that close passes do not happen. Simples!

The only negative feedback I've had using this has been from the very stupid or most irresponsible road users, whom I do intend to frustrate in their bad behaviour...

Everyone else seems to accept and give space as HWC suggests that they should. My local Police are supportive and see the public good in keeping their time for more serious traffic crime. On the very rare occasion that someone does hit the pipe, I have excellent video and physical evidence. Nobody can say: can't tell how close that was..

Ride safe and far

Why are our driving standards and attitudes to cycling SO bad in the UK?

Because the attitudes of the police in the UK to cycling are SO bad

I had exactly the same experience in Malaga 30 years ago, brilliant. At one point a lorry driver gave me a gentle toot. I was getting ready my third favourite hand signal when I realised it was just to let me know they were there. A few minutes later when the road was clear and safe they passed giving me far more space that I needed, there was a smiling face and a wave from the driver and I reciprocated.
Living in London at the time this was not an experience I'd had before.

eburtthebike wrote:

I don't understand why people do not report dangerous driving.  It has to be a public and personal good to get dangerous drivers off the road, and if nobody reports them, they just keep doing it until someone is killed.

There can be a variety of reasons.

Maybe the cyclist fears retaliation, or possibly the footage may include some rule breaking of their own. Also, the cyclist may have lost faith in their police force acting on it, and so doesn't feel like there's any point to submitting it (which may be understandable, but it is still worth racking up their number of complaints for not doing their job).

well Id probably not have reported that one or two, Ive partly lost faith in the process anyway, but it was also creating within me more stress and anxiety than if I just let it go, as it ends up feeling like youre the one being punished by being made to relive it all the time because you cant stop thinking about it.

Id still report the really really dangerous ones, or if I got hit, but Im done with reporting ones like that.

Quote:

to help others with the process we are this week putting together a guide for how to report your video footage of dangerous driving and what to do if you capture a near miss (or worse) on camera.

I'm interested to see the guide too.

eburtthebike wrote:

I don't understand why people do not report dangerous driving.

For me in Sussex I think I need to submit via https://reports.operationcrackdown.org/asdprs/. They say they had 1165 reports in December from which 65 NIPs were issued - with only 7 of those not being dealt with via a training course. They also say that...

Quote:

Please note that due to optimising the admin time spent on processing reports we will not be able to offer an update on reports that are submitted.

So to me it seems pointless sending in footage if I'm not going to get any feedback on whether anything was done with it; and the average stats show that nothing much is done in 99% of submissions.

Long time lurker, first time commenter.

I reported a very close pass (max 50cm) to North Yorks police late December which they rejected so i complained and this was part of their email response;

"The changes in the Highway code which came in at the beginning of the year are not legislation. They are guidance. There is no offence of “close pass”. The offence would fall under Driving without due care and attention. Distances can not be measured, cameras can give distorted views as we do not know if they are fisheye, wide angled lenses etc.

In August this year a case of a vehicle passing the cyclist without due care was put to the Court and the Court dismissed it for lack of evidence.  The Magistrates considered the camera could be deceptive and cannot be relied upon as proof of distance of the size of the gap.  I’m sure you might be disappointed with that result but it is the role of ourselves and the dedicated decision makers to decide what is put before the Courts and they have to believe there is sufficient evidence to prove it. "

So, as someone else has said, why bother?

This is where we need a national standard. Inspector Kev of this parish said his force ask for a still from the camera with distance markings on it. Also that they have a mat that can be used (possibly via bike shops) to set up the still.

This provides a way to give a good measurement of the distance from the bike.

cononleylad wrote:

Long time lurker, first time commenter.

I reported a very close pass (max 50cm) to North Yorks police late December which they rejected so i complained and this was part of their email response;

"The changes in the Highway code which came in at the beginning of the year are not legislation. They are guidance. There is no offence of “close pass”. The offence would fall under Driving without due care and attention. Distances can not be measured, cameras can give distorted views as we do not know if they are fisheye, wide angled lenses etc.

In August this year a case of a vehicle passing the cyclist without due care was put to the Court and the Court dismissed it for lack of evidence.  The Magistrates considered the camera could be deceptive and cannot be relied upon as proof of distance of the size of the gap.  I’m sure you might be disappointed with that result but it is the role of ourselves and the dedicated decision makers to decide what is put before the Courts and they have to believe there is sufficient evidence to prove it. "

So, as someone else has said, why bother?

That sounds like a load of bollocks from the police.

If they're pursuing "driving without due care and attention", then they don't need a calibrated camera to work out the distance. If a simple overtake can cause fear of injury to a cyclist, then obviously the driving is not careful. It's blatantly obvious when looking at cam footage that you have sensible overtakes and then you have the obviously close passes that make you wince when watching. There can be a gray area where you're not too sure from the footage, but it'd be unusual for a cyclist to post that kind of footage unless they felt in danger at the time.

Most crimes have far less evidence than actual camera footage of the incident, so it's a cop-out by the police and courts (assuming the police aren't just lying).

Magistrates considered the camera could be deceptive and cannot be relied upon as proof of distance of the size of the gap

Sure they do! What they mean is 'for passing anyone who is not a police officer there is no such thing as photographic evidence of close passing'. This is Sainsbury's 44 tonner YN67 MVJ. Lancashire Constabulary did not, of course, respond to this

Sorry to hear that, what a nonsense excuse. You only have to look at the NMOTD videos on here to see that with most of them the only argument can be whether the car passed at 20cm or 30cm. In addition, if the police/prosecutors put some effort in it's almost always possible to calculate the distance, e.g. if you know the width of the lane to the centre line and the width of the motor vehicle it's not difficult to calculate the size of the gap the driver left for the cyclist; cyclists are roughly the same width so you can make a pretty good estimate of how close the car was. I wonder if we're going to see more of that as an excuse.

Entirely up to you but if you still have the video it would be interesting to see!

Exactly, there's almost always enough other stuff in frame to work out roughly how far the vehicle was from you.

Or you could always reach over and demonstrate how close the car is to the cyclist, but then other commentators state it is ok to be threatened/punched by drivers in circumstances and the Police decide the cyclist provoked the driver. 

I hadn't realised that the decision of a magistrate was binding on all other courts, and the police force to boot.

If any of these people actually cycled they'd realise that close passes are actually a lot closer than they appear on camera.

AidanR wrote:

I hadn't realised that the decision of a magistrate was binding on all other courts, and the police force to boot.

It isn't of course, but once a loophole of this sort is introduced and becomes accepted in one force it won't be long before it's added to the standard repertoire of excuses for NFA from others.  

AidanR wrote:

I hadn't realised that the decision of a magistrate was binding on all other courts, and the police force to boot. If any of these people actually cycled they'd realise that close passes are actually a lot closer than they appear on camera.

not sure as to whether it is binding, or if the police just give up after failing to prosecute on this basis.

CPS prosecute a case, magistrate toad of toad hall dismisses the case, or jury of bad drivers consider it is too close to their own driving to convict, repeat, repat, repeat - eventually they stop trying,, and then so do the police.

Then when someone die on the roads, there is a big investigation - what caused this? and a significant factor is that the entire legal system is rigged to tolerate bad driving.

They probably think it was the high court and the argument over the "use" of a mobile phone.

Although the other option is this was local to the Police, and they know this Magistrate is car-centric and is full time so that is what made the decision for them.

It is frightening that Police forces who will contain officers with children and.or know people who cycle and/or will have cleared up the mess following incidents feel this way.

'Investigation' often doesn't need to be tricky based on the width of the lane and position of the car relative to the position of the cyclist. I recently had a driver claim he did nothing wrong as he hadn't broken the double white line, I asked him what he thought the width of the lane was then googled for him the width of his car plus my handlebars to demonstrate that there was no possible way he could have left 1.5m.

At which point he called me an 'arrogant f*cker' presumably by way of apology

alansmurphy wrote:

At which point he called me an 'arrogant f*cker' presumably by way of apology

It is an interesting phenomenon that people who are corrected in their mistakes are not happy about having their ignorance removed, they just get angry at whoever has proved them wrong.

"You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday“ — Jonathan Swift
 

alansmurphy wrote:

I recently had a driver claim he did nothing wrong as he hadn't broken the double white line,

exactly the problem, breaching those white lines is more concerning to some drivers than endangering the life of another human.

cononleylad wrote:

... Distances can not be measured, cameras can give distorted views as we do not know if they are fisheye, wide angled lenses etc.

...

Solution? - bang on every car that you film close passing you, because you know what can be measured, constable enabler? The length of my f***ing arm.

And I know for a fact it is far below the recomended 1.5m  (0.6m)

No whatabaoutery or obfuscation about fish eye lenses can change the fact that i can only rech a car with 0.6m of me. Know if they can see that passing with less than half the recomeneded distance is driving with due care and attention, then they are really saying - anything goes on the roads, look out for yourself.

wycombewheeler wrote:

"Prove that it was my arm, officer.