There was an expensive day in court for one Northamptonshire driver just before Christmas after their refusal to pay a fixed penalty notice ended with being found guilty of driving without due care and attention, five points on her driving licence, a £440 fine, costs of £625 and a £44 victim surcharge.
It all began with a video caught on camera by a cyclist, recorded on a mobile phone fixed to the bicycle’s handlebars, of Lucy World nearly hitting the rider shortly before 8.50am at a roundabout in Northampton on January 7 last year.
The 32-year-old driver of the black Ford Fiesta cut across the cyclist, forcing him to swerve and brake to avoid a collision, and while he was not injured World drove off without acknowledging the incident.
Northamptonshire Police today revealed the footage was reported via the Operation Snap online portal and reviewed by officers who concluded the “video proved beyond doubt that World had shown no consideration for the other road user”.
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Pleading not guilty, the driver turned down the option to pay a fixed penalty notice and was, in her absence, found guilty of the single charge on Wednesday 14 December.
Yet despite the police and court’s unambiguous stance that the driver was the party in the wrong, the good people of Northamptonshire Police’s Facebook comments section are not so sure…
One suggested the cyclist “may as well have bunny-hopped over the roundabout if they don’t care what lane they’re supposed to be in”, another saying it looked like “the bike was on the right turning left anyway” and taking issue with the details being shared by the police force on social media.
“Is cyclist in the correct lane? Seems like there is free lane on left for turning,” another comment read.
“Cyclist in the wrong lane so both at fault.”
“If I was on a push bike I’d not be on the right hand side of a road if I intend to turn left.”
You get the picture. PC Mo Allsopp-Clarke of Northamptonshire Police’s Safer Roads Team contrasted the replies of the commenters, stressing the driver had “clearly showed no consideration for the cyclist who had right of way on the roundabout”.
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“Her driving fell below the standard of a competent and careful driver,” the PC said. “Which could have very easily ended in tragic consequences, and I’m pleased the courts have dealt with the driver positively.
“Hopefully this case demonstrates that we take all instances of poor driving very seriously and we will prosecute offenders accordingly, which can only be a good thing to help keep our roads safer.”
The force also added instructions to cyclists who may wish to upload footage of dangerous driving via the Operation Snap portal…
People can report driving offences by uploading video evidence via a simple online portal on the force website and completing a form, which automatically creates a witness statement to provide a full account of the incident.
Reports are then triaged by trained police staff, who check the footage to ensure it falls within the scheme’s remit and contains clear views of an offender’s number plates so they can be identified.
If it matches the Operation Snap criteria, police officers in the Safer Roads Team then examine the footage. If a driving offence is identified, legal proceedings will begin where required.
The team only has 14 days to investigate any offences and members of the public are asked to submit their videos as soon after the incident as possible to allow the maximum time for the footage to be reviewed.
Anyone who submits footage via Operation Snap can find out the outcome of their submission by following the link on their confirmation email which will take them to a monthly update.
For more information about Operation Snap or to submit video footage, visit the Northamptonshire Police website at northants.police.uk/OpSnap
23 thoughts on “Woman found guilty of driving without due care… but Facebook still blames cyclist”
I follow Northants SRT on
I follow Northants SRT on Twitter so had seen the story earlier and was waiting for the armchair legal eagles to wade in but not a bite yet.
I imagine give it a couple of days and the loons at TheABDs and Howard Cox will start crowing again about testing, registration and number plates for cyclists with someone setting up yet another parliamentary petition that’ll garner just a handful of supporters.
We can only dream of police
We can only dream of police action like this up here. Nobody has ever been fined or awarded licence points for close-passing here (I do realise this wasn’t simple close-passing)
I had to find the police
I had to find the police press release to double check that, indeed, they did issue a fixed penalty notice! That’s another force added to the list that are prepared to eschew the NPCC guidance. I do a fair bit of riding in Northants, so this is good news.
https://www.northants.police.uk/news/northants/news/in-court/2023/january/driver-found-guilty-of-driving-without-due-care-and-attention-thanks-to-operation-snap-video-submission/
Northants Police publish a
Northants Police publish a spreadsheet every month showing responses to all submitted footage. It gives feedback on unsuccessful submissions but only states ‘action taken’, not what action was taken, on successful ones. I always thought it was just letter so it’s good to know that some result in much more.
Since October they’ve added
Since October they’ve added an additional column to the spreadsheet called “Recommended disposal” which, where a road traffic offence has been identified, will say either Letter, Points or Course.
It’s a small improvement that goes some way to addressing people’s complaints about feedback and we can only hope that the recommendations are followed.
I hope this is the case.
I hope this is the case. Gloucestershire have nearly always given me feedback on my reports and it has been very useful. It has cut down the reports I make to only those which I think have a chance of action. I don’t always agree with the feedback but I think I have a better understanding of the constraints they are working under.
They have just moved over to using Operation Snap and, unusually, I haven’t had any cause to make a report since so I don’t know how the new system works. Any one used it yet?
It has cut down the reports I
It has cut down the reports I make to only those which I think have a chance of action
Well, that algorithm would reduce my reporting load in Lancashire to zero
Thanks, I didn’t know that,
Thanks, I didn’t know that, sounds like an improvement. No doubt I’ll check it out at some point.
Thickies on Facebook, who
Thickies on Facebook, who knew.
This is the epitome of the
This is the epitome of the road.cc formula: “aren’t people unreasonable, why don’t you get involved and berate the idiots criticising the cyclist?’
That may well be partly true here; and I understand that it’s hard to produce engaging content on a daily basis. But really, couldn’t you write something more interesting and/or positive for once?
Or at least some puns on the
Or at least some puns on the perps surname:
Whilst this conviction is welcome, the World is not enough.
HoarseMann wrote:
Given how hostile the world can be to cycling, I expect the cyclist will just Die Another Day.
Do you actually read anything
Do you actually read anything else on the road.cc website?
HarrogateSpa wrote:
What is not interesting and/or positive about a dangerous driver getting punished after nearly hitting a cyclist?
The short mention of the negative facebook comments just pads out the article a bit more but mostly it concentrates on the incident and the consequences for the driver.
More like this please Road.cc.
Here’s the roundabout in
Here’s the roundabout in question with the likely direction of the cyclist and the car coming out of the road to the left.
If you consider the full viewpoint rather than the small slit view of the released footage there is lots of visibility if you are aware and looking for other road users. Maybe less so if the driver was “distracted”.
Seems that the police thought that she was!
Looking at the streetview,
Looking at the streetview, all the pavements around the roundabout are shared use. Could this have been a ‘get on the cycle path’ punishment?
It would appear she was in
It would appear she was in the left of two lanes on approaching the roundabout and apparently intending to drive straight on. There are no lanes on the roundabut (as far as I can see from the Google Earth link), so no one can say the cyclist is ‘in the wrong lane’. It looks as if he took a line away from the curb to avoid left-turning drivers from left-hooking him (I’ve been undertaken similarly on a multi-lane junction).
I’d say her approach to the roundabout was too fast to assess what the cyclist in front was intending. She seems to have assumed he is intending to continue round the roundabout (if she even saw him).
Firstly, how many cars stay
Firstly, how many cars stay in lane on a roundabout? In my car I frequently have to take avoiding action when turning right at a roundabout because a driver going straight on cuts in on me.
On a bike I tend to take a central position on a roundabout because I would rather a driver looked at me and thought “where the f**k is he going?” than me having yet another SMIDSY moment.
And indeed how many cars
And indeed how many cars choose the correct lane at a roundabout? Plus, more and more, drivers going straight over at smaller roundabouts consider it as straight on and don’t slow down at all, let alone give priority to traffic on the roundabout or joining from the right.
I was overtaken on the
I was overtaken on the outside on a roundabout by another car while I was driving my car last Saturday. I was taking the third exit and had correctly indicated and positioned myself on the inside lane. The little Fiat shot past me in the outside lane and then cut in front at the thrid exit.
To be honest I was relieved as the driver had been tailgating me all the way down a steep hill and it was pouring with reain. The person then proceeded to tailgate the car in front, despite the fact it was chucking it down with rain. Some people simply haven’t a clue. I was fully prepared to act as a witness in case the Fiat slammed into the back of the car in front.
We can apply that to a lot of
We can apply that to a lot of driving. I took great pleasure in giving a car a couple of hard slaps as I crossed a zebra today and I had to pause for them. Car on my side had stopped as I approached, car on far side, in a 20 area, decided they could chance it and decided they didn’t fancy the effort of pressing the brake pedal. I bet they leapt out of their seat at the noise.
Then I had a word with the driver who had stopped entirely on the zig zags next crossing down as he discussed where he was going to unload. I simply asked “Don’t you know what that (points at road markings) means?” Got apology from business manager “We are trying to sort it out now ” and entirely baffled look from driver.
But cyclists…
The thing that annoys me
The thing that annoys me about comments like those quoted from Facebook is how irrelevant they are.
Even if a vulnerable road user is not riding where they should be or are in the wrong lane altogether, drivers should not be “punishing” them by cutting them off, close passing, blaring the horn or otherwise trying to intimidate them.
Those “offences” by the cyclist (even if true and accurate) are not the cause of the driver driving poorly/dangerously … that is all the driver’s doing. How hard is it just to hold back for a few secondss, wait until they have safely exited the roundabout and then proceed normally.
Less stressful for everyone that way too.
You only have a to watch a
You only have a to watch a few dashcam uk videos to see the submitter making things worse by carrying on into trouble or worse accelerating. All they had to do was lift off the pedal or slight brake to control the situation.