[bikes]

I keep getting close passed on a section of my commute. It’s a two lane 30 mph road and the lanes are relatively wide. I ride primary but still get regularly close passed. I often catch up with them at the lights and a common reaction is they’re apologetic and have no idea that passing so close is an issue. I appreciate the generous distances most drivers give but then a lot either haven’t heard of the 1.5m rule, or they ignore it. If the police ran a close pass operation here it would be a busy day for them.

How will the active travel goals ever be reached if this is what it’s like to cycle? Who can I write to? The police, the council (for the road design), my MP? Is it a waste of time?

Topic

[ktache]

Those four foot high retro

Those four foot high retro reflective SLOW markings seem to encourage some really dangerous driving.

[wtjs]

I think that there are
I think that there are certain road layouts that encourage a close pass
There certainly are- many of mine are in the same place: the bus/ van/ car overtakes blithely at a blind hill crest followed by a 90° right when, who’d have thought it?, but there’s heavy incoming traffic so you put the foot down and squeeze the cyclist as much as you can get away with, which is everything in Lancashire

[wtjs]

That wasn’t the question/
That wasn’t the question/ point

[chrisonabike]

True.  In particular:

True.  In particular:

Roads with cycle lanes
Roads without cycle lanes
Wide roads
Narrow roads
“Fast” roads
“Quiet residential” roads.

To be fair it’s now pretty common to experience excellent passing behaviour around Edinburgh.  Difficult to gauge proportions as I don’t run cameras, and I probably specifically notice the poor ones!

[bensynnock]

I think that there are
I think that there are certain road layouts that encourage a close pass. I’m not sure exactly but it seems to be more common on wider roads or roads with multiple lanes.

So when I’ve been close passed more than once on a section of road I remember that as being a section where I need to ride in a position that makes it impossible to pass.

[Cycloid]

After the vids had been

After the vids had been passed around the county the sixweek limit had expired, so unfortunately the police were unable to prosecute ?

Here’s a screen shot

 

[wtjs]

Good! Presumably the worst
Good! Presumably the worst one, at least, was reported to the police, or the OPCC would immediately have sent you there without comment. Show us the link to *******!!!!, so we can see the offence which caused the PCC to stray from the standard “I can’t interfere with operational decisions of the police”!

[Cycloid]

I live in a large village and

I live in a large village and have the same problem doing utility riding around the locality.

I put together a video, six close passes in six days, ranging from “Ok it’s a close pass, over the double white line” to “*******!!!!” I then booked a slot at the local Parish Council meeting, showed them the video along with some explanations and basically said “What are you going to do about this then?”

The PC have very little power to actually do anything, they sent the video to the local Police Comissioner who passed it on to the County Police road safety group.

The upshot was that we got two close pass operations in the village, on the first one they pulled in 20 drivers for “education”. The operations were not well received on the village facebook pages.

All in all, made no difference to driver behaviour.

[David9694]

I suggest you write to the

I suggest you write to the driver direct and start your missive with

NOTICE OF INTENDED PROSECUTION

 

[wtjs]

There is now a development of

There is now a development of uncertain veracity on this Nissan, with a photo somebody has sent me suggesting it’s stolen.

WU59 UMH is well known to the police and to my fans on here having today achieved a landmark 7 full years without VED. Didn’t quite make the 7 years without MOT, but was driving around for 6 months after an MOT failed for several “dangerous” defects

This is a shot from some sort of ‘motor trade’ website which I don’t know, but to get the full report you have to pay £12, which I’m not interested in and wouldn’t be able to trust if I was. The police could still make up a claim that it wasn’t nicked and I wouldn’t be able to check. I began looking for MOT offenders around May 22, and the first time I reported it was August 22- I don’t know if I saw it previously so it couold be new to this area. I assumed that there was a trade in these ‘No MOT/ No VED so untraceable’ vehicles, and the importance for me was that the police were ignoring it as usual but on my second detection he’d had his phone numbers and Facebook page for his agricultural business signed on the back. I didn’t actually suspect it was nicked because you’d think even Lancashire officers could detect that. I’ll just mention the possibility to the PCC.

[wtjs]

Local papers never reply and

Local papers never reply and are only there for advertising. Lancashire Constabulary is only too keen to state firmly that VED evasion is nothing to do with them, and the previous Tory PCC was equally keen to state firmly that operational decisions of the police (which covers everything you want to complain about) was nothing do with him. Now that the local champion evader has returned after a 4 week absence and is now parked at the usual pub 150 yards from Filth Central, the new People’s Crime Commissioner is about to be informed of some of these LC operational decisions so that he can have the opportuniy of stating it’s nothing to do with him either.

[wtjs]

no one cares enough to fix it

no one cares enough to fix it

It’s even worse than that- the authorities (police mainly) are actively working against ‘active travel’, cyclists in general… No police vehicle has close passed me in the past 5 years, which is the time I’ve been looking out for the event, but they’re certainly not interested in dissuading anybody else from passing as closely as they like and reports are just binned without even declaring them ‘NFA’. Close Pass of the Day on here, which could be filled many times over, has made no difference – years of propaganda with no effect at all, which is largely down to our main enemy.

[stonojnr]

Yes it’s a waste of time, no
Yes it’s a waste of time, no one cares enough to fix it. So we have to put up with it unfortunately.

I ride with a pass pixi, past Suffolk Police HQ, I often see the traffic cops driving on the same road, yet I get close passed all the time on it. I had one the other week who did it with a police car coming towards them, made no difference. One with an ambulance on blues & twos coming towards us, still overtook & close passed and made the ambulance brake to avoid a collision.

[Oldfatgit]

Having cameras will make it
Having cameras will make it easier for you to provide evidence [although don’t be surprised if it gets ignored].

If you are getting close passes from commercial vehicles such as HGV, busses and coaches, upload the clip to YouTube [but keep it as Private – need to have a link to view], and send the link to the company transport manager. If they only have an online contact page, don’t send the link, and mark it as ‘complaint: for the attention of the Transport Manager.
Make sure your complaint lists the offenses [preferable to note legislation and index (Road Traffic Act, section 1.2.3 for example)] and keep clear and precise.
Make sure you copy yourself/ screen capture the contact form.

Print to PDF all communication between yourself and the company.

If you get no resolution, send it all to the Traffic Commissioner for your area, as they issue Operators Licence and the firm must have a robust complaint resolution process in place.
If there are enough complaints about a vehicle or company, the TC may not renew the licence.

You can do this in parallel with reporting to your local police force for them to ignore.

[bikes]

They also ask you to email
They also ask you to email footage. To get that email address you need to go through the back and forth of them turning up at your house with no appointment and leaving a card if you’re not in. The next hurdle is chopping and compressing your footage into tiny 25MB sections. Then you get the “email account does not exist” message.

[Author]

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