The National Police Chiefs’ Council has responded to last week’s shock revelation that police in Wales are to stop taking action on cyclists’ close pass videos and clarified that it simply is not the case that there is anything in its guidance to warrant the decision.
Cyclists were alarmed to hear last week that motorists who are caught on camera overtaking cyclists, pedestrians, and horse riders too closely in Wales will avoid punishment for the foreseeable future because GoSafe Wales, the country’s road casualty reduction partnership, has chosen to temporarily suspend taking action on close passes — a decision it said was based on “national guidance” advising forces to avoid “dealing with incidents involving distances”.
The “national guidance” in question was that which was issued by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the Forensic Science Regulator, GoSafe Wales interpreting some parts as a reason to suspend taking action against drivers who pass cyclists, pedestrians or horse riders too closely.
This is essentially, in GoSafe Wales’s interpretation, because it advises what the NPCC calls “journeycam units” that they “do not have the capability to measure speed and distance from digital media submissions” and, as GoSafe Wales suggested last week, that such measurements would need to be carried out by trained forensic specialists.
Consequently, GoSafe Wales concluded, it should temporarily suspend taking action on evidence submitted to Operation SNAP showing a driver passing a cyclist or pedestrian “too closely”.
In our reporting last week we explained that the Forensic Science Regulator, which regulates the application of scientific principles and methods in legal decision-making in England and Wales, had insisted that it has not issued any guidance “that would suggest forces suspend taking action on evidence submitted to Operation SNAP”.
And now, speaking with a spokesperson for the NPCC council for police chiefs, we’ve again had it confirmed that it is simply not the case that its guidance would mean that police forces cannot take action on the Operation SNAP submissions in question.
The spokesperson pointed out that while a “close pass itself isn’t an offence and hasn’t ever been” the “behaviour of driving too close could constitute careless/inconsiderate or dangerous driving – in the same way that driving at speed past a vulnerable road user, revving an engine and frightening a horse etc. could also constitute either of those offences.”
“Every force is operationally independent so they can make their own decisions around what they do with journeycam footage,” the spokesperson accepted, but the explanation above and guidance to forces is not intended to point them towards the GoSafe Wales approach of suspending taking action for ‘close pass’ submissions.
“We want to encourage the submission of footage as it’s a really valuable tool so wouldn’t want anything to put people off from doing so,” the NPCC spokesperson added.
So, with the knowledge that journeycam units “do not have the capability to measure speed and distance from digital media submissions”, what should Operation SNAP users be doing to ensure their reports have the best chance of being actioned?
“The impact statement is really important,” the NPCC spokesperson said. “The submitter needs to explain the circumstances and effect the road user’s behaviour had on them which is what significantly strengthens the evidential picture. Viewing and triaging journeycam is always going to be a little subjective because you cannot measure the speed or distance but the statement plays a big role in demonstrating the severity of what happened.
“Journeycam provides a real opportunity for partnership between the public and police to protect vulnerable road users and improve both the safety of our roads and road user behaviour. It’s estimated that upwards of 150,000 pieces of journeycam footage are submitted to police every year, proving how invested the public are in improving road safety. UK police are grateful for the public’s support and want to ensure that as many submissions of journeycam footage lead to a positive outcome as possible.
“Journeycam units will view and assess submitted footage but do not have the capability to measure speed and distance from digital media submissions. As such, an accompanying impact statement from the submitter will significantly strengthen the prosecution’s case, giving it the best chance of succeeding.
“This would apply to submissions such as those for close passes on vulnerable road users which form part of the offences of
careless/inconsiderate or dangerous driving. The impact statement should be detailed and explain the circumstances of the incident and its effect on the witness.
“Most online portals will either ask you to submit footage with a statement or you will be asked separately to provide a statement. Check the guidance on the police force website as acceptance criteria may differ from force to force. You will need to submit footage from either side of the incident itself and this will be specified between one to five minutes.
“A practitioner will then triage the footage, together with the rest of the evidence and decide what the best possible outcome is. This can include: no further action, a warning letter, referral to educational courses or whether it could be progressed for consideration of prosecution at court. You should retain your original footage for at least six months unless otherwise instructed.”
The double clarification from the Forensic Science Regulator and National Police Chiefs’ Council will likely quell the fears of last week that GoSafe Wales’s stance could be something of the end for third-party close pass reporting?
Earlier this month, South Wales Police too caused concern, with the force to no longer issue warning letters to motorists caught on helmet or bike cameras driving carelessly, due to the overwhelming amount of footage currently being submitted to its online reporting portal.
In response to our request for comment following the NPCC’s clarification, GoSafe Wales told road.cc: “Operation Snap remains in service for witnesses of driving offences and will evaluate each incident on a case-by-case basis taking into consideration aggravating factors present.
“Whilst we are unable to conduct speed and distance analysis, we do not discourage people from reporting offences. We will continue to assess them in order to ascertain if further action is applicable in the circumstances.
“Please note that any incident that causes harm to the submitter should be reported to their local police force directly.”
38 thoughts on “National Police Chiefs’ Council insists there’s no reason for police in Wales to stop taking action on cyclists’ close pass videos”
Oh, there is a reason. And we
Oh, there is a reason. And we all know what it is. The belief that (relatively minor) crimes by drivers against cyclists aren’t really crimes. It’s only a crime when bad drivers kill a cyclist And even, it might not be.
It is the second easiest crime to solve, after speeding – which is almost entirely automated. The person who submits the footage has to do all the hard work of identifying the reg number etc. It is just a case of watching a few seconds of footage, then putting the reg number into the national database, and then the semi-automated system does the rest.
Frankly, if the Police do not
Frankly, if the Police do not have the staff available to do this simple task, then why not bring in private companies to do so? I am sure most people would prefer our roads to be safer and for me: the owner of the company, to make a nice profit…
Privitisation? Maybe it’ll be
Privitisation? Maybe it’ll be the raging success that water, rail, energy and the Post Office have been
Not sure bringing in
Not sure bringing in contractors is necessarily privatisation. Keep control in house but have more resource available. I’ve always thought that using expensive police grades to do a relatively straightforward decision making process was an good example of inefficiency.
jaymack wrote:
The police have always used civilian staff for administrative tasks, some forensics etc. It’s simply wasteful to use highly trained police officers on simple administration such as checking video submissions; provided no privately employed personnel are given any police powers I can’t see a problem with it.
Rendel Harris wrote:
The police have always used civilian staff for administrative tasks, some forensics etc. It’s simply wasteful to use highly trained police officers on simple administration such as checking video submissions; provided no privately employed personnel are given any police powers I can’t see a problem with it.— jaymack
The (manufactured) problem is that the media, opinionated idiots and politicians alike like to talk about ‘front line staff’ and ‘bobbies on the beat’ and ‘pen pushers’, which means instead of employing staff that are sufficiently qualified to do a particular job, they concentrate their funding on actual police officers so they announce they have X number of officers. Then they get them to do jobs they are simultaneously over and under-qualified for, and in many cases simply not what they signed up to do when they applied to be a police officer.
The submission process could be vastly improved and made more consistent across the country, with most of the admin work done by people who applied to do a job in admin. The more tricky cases can be reviewed by staff with more specialist training. I’d see no harm in regular police officers, and especially traffic police doing a shift every now and then as part of their training.
There is a case for involving the private sector to support the IT, and possibly even trial some AI type reviewing of incidents to see if that might play a larger role in the future.
People want our roads to be
People want our roads to be safer but:
They don’t want to drive slower (I mean, who can even maintain 20mph, my car isn’t geared for that, I can’t be expected to concentrate like the hawk I am on the road and my spedo.)
They don’t want to be punished for breaking the rules because thats just another war on the motorist and they pay their road tax and those bloody cyclists don’t.
They hate cyclists and far too many people delight in cyclists getting scared, hurt or killed.
They don’t want to be inconvenienced or forced to change their behaviour in any way.
mctrials23 wrote:
Exactly this. And I’ve seen people (apparently) lobbying against their own children’s interests e.g. making a school street one-way only! *
Astonishing! So in this case their main argument was that they believed this a) wouldn’t reduce the numbers driving to drop off their children, and b) as people tried to turn / get in then out it would become a lot more congested and likely more dangerous.
BUT … as well as introspecting people are keen observers of the behaviour of other people. And they may be correct – at least as far as the short term / circumstances they are familiar with (people of course don’t know what they don’t know, and tend not to believe in what is not present). So while the “safety” part is certainly arguable without other changes to streets / transport options the first point (people keep driving anyway) is certainly likely.
(They didn’t highlight it but presumably they also cared keenly about their own ease of access, particularly around school start / end times and events…)
* Making arguments in favour of children’s safety and autonomy of movement is probably the one place where it’s possible to get a reasonable level of agreement for change which doesn’t favour motor traffic.
essexian wrote:
Some public-private things can work. The difficulties are always in keeping the goals of each side aligned AND making this work for the ultimate “users and customers” – us, the public at large.
In many cases the public side wants to save money (e.g. if they’re paying some or all of costs of the private side) and of course ultimately the private side is simply about profit.
So what happens? Both sides cooperate in the places which are in their own interests. So this can mean not looking too hard at what the private business is doing by the public sided (e.g. we save costs by having fewer “monitoring” roles and “allow the business flexibility in delivering”). And where there is flexibility companies naturally focus on the most profitable parts – which can mean avoiding things which the public may care about equally but which either don’t score so highly in the “deliverables” or cost more to deliver.
If Starmer is putting people
If Starmer is putting people away from saying naughty things on the net yet, it’s legal to kill a human in a car..
Bore off.
Bore off.
whosatthewheel wrote:
Could you explain why you disagree with “Whosatthrewheel” please.
Erm – they are them – I don’t
Erm – they are them (rogue ‘r’ aside) – I don’t think they disagreed with themself.
Another straw man parroted
Another straw man parroted post.
And it’s the cps and police that undertake prosecutions.
You can also legally kill people without a car.
leedorney wrote:
If you regard inciting people to burn down hostels full of human beings including women and children as merely “naughty things” then it’s you who is the problem, not the prime minister.
Indeed – although TBF the
Indeed – although TBF the government is also now “putting people away” (detaining thus far but I expect prosecutions) for “saying naughty things” when that is expressing sympathy with politically inconvenient (and militarily expensive!) direct action protestors.
(Looks like shouty protest may have crossed the line into racism / anti-semitism and indeed violence on some demos. Although given there are different groups around with those as their main goals it wouldn’t surprise me if some of those had happily joined in?)
NPCC can insist away, but
NPCC can insist away, but they reiterate rather than deny GoSafe’s claim. Camera evidence is according to them not straightforward, so subjective impact is required to determine careless or inconsiderate driving.
From the article
From the article
If they were serious about improving the quality of submissions, in order to make the process more efficient, they would give better feedback to each submission they reject. This has happened to me in Gloucestershire and while I disagree with the the feedback I accept it and this has resulted in very few of my recent reports being NFA. Getting them to take action on the incidents I feel warrant it, but no longer report, is a matter to be resolved by other means. What those means are I do not know but I do know the PCC won’t help and nor would my previous MP. Yet to try the new one.
It is very hard fighting the system on your own and I do wish CUK would collect examples of reports that have been NFA’d incorrectly, there are many in NMOTD and UPRIDE, and do something with them.
This is really weird: it
This is really weird: it almost sounds as if Gosafe Wales had made a (political?) decision to look the other way about cyclists’ submissions, then suddenly thought that might make them look a bit bad so had to come up with what they thought was an ironclad excuse to justify it…
Yes, I think you may correct
Yes, I think you may correct with this statement and Ken Skates, the Welsh Govt Transport minister is a car brain, which does not help the situation.
He unsuccessfully tried to overturn the 20mph implementation (backfired on him big time) and then suggested that money from the sustainable transport fund should be directed to improving public transport instead.
He is struggling with this one as well, as local authorities depend on the fund to be able to comply with their legal duties under the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and the Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013.
He may well lose his Clwyd north Wales seat to Plaid Cymru next year and I hope this is the case.
I would urge everyone who
I would urge everyone who cycles in Wales to air their concerns to as many relevent people as possible regarding this decision.
This is nothing short of victim blaming and treating cyclists, horse riders and those on foot, like they do not matter, which is simply not good enough.
So far I have sent e-mails to my local MP, my local AM (Welsh Assembly Member), the Gwent Police and Crime Commissioner, the Welsh Transport Minister and the local Plaid Cymru transport spokesperson.
I have received acknowledgements from all the above and the Gwent Police and crime commissioner has sent my e-mail of concerns to the Chief Constable’s office for a reply.
Airing our concerns to the above and other officials will raise the profile of the issue if nothing else.
Remember the above people most likely know nothing about the decision and OpSnap/Gosafe Wales were probably trying to sneak this in under the radar hoping no one of any importance (in their opinion) would notice or even care.
Keep in mind that this could be part of a bigger plan to bring this in all over the UK, so we need to show some resistance.
If you know any horse riders, try to get them on board as well.
Keep in mind that this could
Keep in mind that this could be part of a bigger plan to bring this in all over the UK
The companion topic shows what happens when the Dark Side of the Force is in the ascendancy, where it’s impossible for a close pass to be close enough as far as the police are concerned, and where pretty much any offence by drivers is encouraged by police tolerance:
Repair immediately (major defects):
Offside Front Integral body structure corroded to the extent that the rigidity of the assembly is significantly reduced cab floor anchorage (6.1.1 (c) (i))
Nearside Front Integral body structure corroded to the extent that the rigidity of the assembly is significantly reduced seat floor anchorage (6.1.1 (c) (i))
Badly failed MOT, no doubt still out delivering milk right now. They may be planning the nationwide deployment of the Lancashire System right now!
The issues raised about
The issues raised about “resource” merely boil down to staff funding.
With the ever increasing number of reports coming in with video evidence, the number of staff members on relevant teams are not being increased proportionally to be able to keep up.
So I guess they are simply being overwhelmed with reports, burning out leading to turnover of staff, and management are reducing the types of reports/offences they prioritise and ignoring the rest.
See CyclingMikey no longer doing Gandalf Corner due to island hopping being de-criminalised.
Phone use is prioritised as a slam dunk with decent evidence versus close passing which requires time consuming scrutiny to analyse the evidence which can be subjective.
Phone use is prioritised as a
Phone use is prioritised as a slam dunk with decent evidence
Not in Lancashire, it isn’t!
Ridiculous.
Ridiculous.
Ask them why, if the Met police can action this:
https://youtu.be/ECYCoZH8VXM
No point asking Lancashire
No point asking Lancashire Constabulary anything – they simply don’t respond, with the encouragement of the (sadly, Labour) PCC
You may have already seen on
You may have already seen on here the Porsche and Audi drivers equally convincingly proved guilty of the same offence, also ignored by Lancashire police. When the police go completely out of control and there’s a weak PCC, then cyclists in particular and the public interest are in trouble. There’s no trouble about proof – I have all the OpSnap reference numbers and the time of submission. The GPS time is accurate and tested against phone network and Rugby time, although I only get the minutes from the software so the time displayed could be up to a minute behind the real time.
A practitioner will then
A practitioner will then triage the footage, together with the rest of the evidence and decide what the best possible outcome is. This can include: no further action, a warning letter, referral to educational courses or whether it could be progressed for consideration of prosecution at court
Lancashire has NEVER prosecuted anybody for close passing a cyclist. They used to claim to have taken action, which was likely an advice letter at best, but have long since turned to simply binning all such reports
I think this might be the
I think this might be the report (pdf):
https://www.npcc.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/publications/publications-log/operations/2025/evidential-guidance-for-journeycam-units-v1.1.pdf
If so, GoSafe Wales have misinterpreted the guidance IMO. All it says is you need a forensic expert if you are to derive distance and speed information from the footage. It doesn’t say this information must be derived for a prosecution to succeed.
Agreed – but in the world of
Agreed – but in the world of law often “if it can be done with more legal certainty via some more elaborate process, we will eventually make it a requirement – because otherwise we will have to counter ‘but that is just your opinion’ ”
Always a temptation when it’s your career but someone else’s money!
(TBF “ever increasing standards” is the norm in many professions / life).
Update – I Gosafe Wales have
Update – I Gosafe Wales have now advised me that they will take action against drivers in some circumstances but that GoSafe personnel do not hold the specialist forensic accreditation to judge distances.
And gave the following explanation for their criteria going forward:
‘The GoSafe operation Snap teams across Wales have a threshold or criteria of evidence that will be applied nationally to provide a level of consistency in its review of offences; ensuring it considers all the footage that is presented on a case by case basis.
For example, if a horse/cycle/motorbike were to swerve to avoid that vehicle or take any other evasive action as a result of it being too close, then that would assist in arriving at a decision to prosecute. This is purely by way of example and decision makers will ensure they evaluate the evidence that they see before them. The teams will continue to give feedback to ensure it is clear if a submission was not identified as an offence.’
So just make sure to wiggle your handlebars back and fore when close passed so that you can claim you had to take evasive action!
Obvious this is a cost saving move, coupled with pressure from the car/anti cycling lobby.
There are a number of us in Wales campaigning against this but unfortunately the Labour Govt in Wales is not the party it used to be, just like Labour in Westminster so we get policies like this, usually expected from Reform or the Tories.
It is time to stop being so timid and start taking our own action against vehicles, if the law will not assist to ensure our safety on the road. (only joking).
yupiteru wrote:
Which can end in one of two ways, either with getting the crap kicked out of you by an irate motorist and their passengers or with you being charged with criminal damage and getting a record that will severely impact many areas of your life. It wouldn’t do anything to assist with cyclist safety either, once you open the door to damaging vehicles because you’re pissed off with their behaviour why shouldn’t motorists start damaging bicycles for the same reason? Not a good idea on any level.
Rendel Harris wrote:
You are entitled to your opinion old chap, have a great day.
Do you live in Wales? Will
Do you live in Wales? Will you be affected by these ridiculous changes that make things more dangerous on the roads in Wales for cyclists and horse riders?
Will you be making the effort to campaign to get the situation resolved to a satisfactory situation once again?
Mikey_Dread wrote:
There’s plenty of ridiculousness in the rest of the country that makes things more dangerous for cyclists and horseriders as well, I don’t have to live in Wales to know that “taking our own action against vehicles” is not going to end well for anybody.
yupiteru wrote:
I have been taking my own action for a while now. I am riding (very) primary nearly all of the time. This has lead to a few drivers overtaking in stupid places and forcing oncoming cars to slow or stop to avoid them instead of getting too close to me. Gloucestershire police will only send an advisory letter for a close pass but inconveniencing another driver is taken much more seriously.
https://upride.cc/incident/overtake-on-blind-bend-points-and-fine/
It also means that I have to brake or swerve (an alternative requirement for futher action) when a driver passes parked cars on their side of the road because they are then driving straight at me. Almost all now stop and let me through.
https://road.cc/content/news/nmotd-833-oncoming-driver-forces-cyclist-swerve-297295
I always put “as advised in the highway code” in my reports to justify my riding position.
Just to add that I do move in to the kerb when I think it’s safe to overtake, basically I’m doing the the decision making, not the driver.
GoSafe personnel do not hold
GoSafe personnel do not hold the specialist forensic accreditation to
judge distancesuse those tricky measuring tapesAnd see this
And who among us has the skills to judge if this is too close