Near Miss of the Day 674: “The driver is going to have to inconvenience someone,” say police – that “someone” was a cyclist

Suggest you read the highway code, specifically 167.

For ease, 167 says this: "stay behind if you are following a cyclist approaching a roundabout or junction, and you intend to turn left."

In this video, the car was approaching a roundabout and it turned left. Game, Set & Match on that rule I'm afraid.

Garage at Large wrote:

This video camera's narrow lens implies that the driver was in the wrong, but it's difficult to tell without seeing the wider angle picture, so it's no wonder the police didn't follow up on this and put out what I consider to be a perfectly reasonable, albeit illiterate response.

It's amaxing how often - when it helps you blame the cyclist - you seem to be able to tell what happened before the shared clip, or what words were exchanged when they can't be heard; but here, when the evidence is clearly visible, you can't see it.  It's almost like you have an agenda.

Of course the fuckwad has an agenda. His pisspoor attempt at doing a Poophole type "evidence" shows it. Just a shame the site admins don't treat his so over the top posts as what they are and just get rid again. 

Especially as most of the victims are on here and have to put up with his direct blames. 

I am the OP.

I am afraid that is not true. I've had several submissions followed up by "words of advice" and this same officer has told me that they have sent a summons for two of my previous submissions, although I have heard nothing more about them since.

At least this officer takes the time to respond and justify the decisions made and even though I disagree with this one I suspect that they are thinking ahead to possible arguments that a defence lawyer would make if it came to a court case.

It is my belief that the law needs to change in order to deal with driving like this so that people are not put off cycling on our roads.

You were lucky then. I was punishment passed by a van in Cheltenham that then slammed on in front of us and swung his door open into my mate. We had other witnesses to this. Gloucestershire's finest then explained to my mate, as he as being treated by paramedics, that since we were riding two abreast he get we were breaking the law and therefore 'asking for it'. 
 

And so my faith in my local police force is zero. 

I have been submitting for over a year now. There was no system in place when I started but one was introduced shortly afterwards. Initially the submissions were dealt with by different officers and I didn't get any response from some of my early submissions and variable responses from others. Recently however nearly all my submissions have been dealt with by the same officer and I have been given feedback every time. I have to say that I am a lot more selective in what I submit now as a result of this feedback which, I hope, gives more time for officers to concentrate on incidents they can respond to.

From your description I suspect that action would have been taken had you submitted video evidence but I did think action would be taken for this one so no guarantees.

I think you have hit the nail on the head here though in that at present responses to poor driving around cyclists are very variable both within and across different forces from what we read on this site.

Jenova20 wrote:

This needs appealing, and these motorist appeasing police should be retrained or sacked.

Unfortunately if the policeman had spotted that this was less than stellar driving that would automatically put them in the "well above the standard of a careful and competent driver" bracket. Or at least it would appear from what passes muster in the courts. In which case it would be not just unfair of them to penalise this dozy chap but it could probably be challenged in court!

Why not both? I think in general cyclists are pretty aware of the dangers of the environment. Constructive criticism's good and yes - maybe here you could have spotted this coming, or been a bit sharper. However the rider was negociating the speed hump and I'm guessing also having an eye on the overtaking car.  From when the van actually turns into this road (they could have gone another way at the roundabout) until the cyclist starts braking is only 2 seconds. I believe the standard for "momentary lapse of concentration" in a car is between twice and five times that...

S13SFC wrote:

Whilst it's clearly a really shit bit of driving the rider should have been able to see it unfolding and braked/soft peddled so the risk of getting twatted/kerbed diminished.

now we are into the realms of guessing, because if the driver does slow and try to pull in behind (as they should) then that is the worst response.

Don't be silly - have they read The Highway Code?? Of course they haven't - very few will have picked it up since learning to drive. That's one of the reasons driving standards are so low.

German car.

I am also surprised that this is not in Lancashire, this is the standard response
I am outraged! BP is getting special treatment from Lancashire Constabulary- the standard response to me is no response at all no matter what the offence. However, the YouTube channel draws closer