“How to go from clean licence to six points in under a minute”: Cyclist tells drivers to put their phone away when driving, after motorist ordered to pay £1,727 because of rider’s camera footage + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
"How to go from clean licence to six points in under a minute": Cyclist tells drivers to put their phone away when driving, after motorist ordered to pay £1,727 because of rider's camera footage
This was a very expensive minute for the motorist who almost hit a couple of cyclists before the second rider’s camera footage clearly showed them using a mobile phone. The result? Six penalty points on their licence (it could have been significantly worse) and being ordered to pay £1,727 in court having faced charges of careless driving and mobile phone use behind the wheel.
“Please don’t use a mobile phone while driving, and do check properly before moving” the cyclist who uploaded the footage to YouTube after the culmination of the court case wrote.
“I understand the driver was trying to clear the junction so he wasn’t blocking vehicles from the left side. Unfortunately he didn’t appear to see the first cyclist and started to drive toward them, Then [he] definitely didn’t see me. Luckily I rang the bell and he heard that. Also holding a phone in his hand with lit up screen while driving.
“Attended Magistrates court as a witness. Due to both charges he was at risk of 12 points and possible disqualification on a clean licence. I am glad he wasn’t disqualified because this was careless, not malicious. The Magistrates took a while deciding on the careless driving charge, then again on the fine, costs and points. I feel six points is a fair judgement and feel he will be much more careful in future.”
In total, the driver was ordered to pay £1,727 which included a chunky £769 fine and other costs. All for the sake of not waiting a few minutes to go on a mobile phone.
Jonas Vingegaard to return to racing at Paris-Nice
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Jonas Vingegaard will be back racing again in a couple of weeks, Visma-Lease a Bike announcing that the Dane will begin his Giro d’Italia prep with an appearance at Paris-Nice.
The two-time Tour de France winner is looking to complete his Grand Tour set having won the Vuelta last season, but saw his early-season disrupted by a high-profile training crash last month.
That incident plus a bout of illness saw Vingegaard pull out of a mouth-watering clash with Remco Evenepoel and Isaac del Toro at the UAE Tour, his 2026 campaign instead now kicking off in France.
“I am excited to be at the start of Paris-Nice once again,” Vingegaard said. “It is a prestigious race with a lot of history. As a team, we have a title to defend here. After crashing and falling ill, I took the necessary time to recover. Now I feel ready to start racing again and am looking forward to it after a long winter of training.”
His programme is expected to see him race Volta a Catalunya, potentially against Evenepoel, Florian Lipowitz and João Almeida before lining up at the start of the Giro in Bulgaria.
“Watch out for those doors, they’re quite sturdy”: World champion breaks hip after “getting smoked by car door” in training, ruling him out of Cape Epic mountain bike race
White bar tape? For a ride starting in Manchester? Good luck... (that's a lovely-looking bike)
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"It will be a sprinters' World Championship": Man-made climb now not expected to impact 2028 UCI World Championship road race in UAE
There had been plenty of speculation about the fact an artificial, man-made climb was being built in the UAE, the completely new berg rumoured to be being lined up for the 2028 UCI World Championships road race. Considering UAE Team Emirates’ star rider and the host nation, it didn’t take too much mental arithmetic to see why some reckoned they knew exactly why such a hill was being ‘developed’, but apparently the sprinters can breathe easy.
Belgian UCI director Peter Van den Abeele appeared to dispel the man-made climb rumours and told Sporza it will “definitely be a sprinters’ World Championships”.
“It was President David Lappartient’s request to make it a sprinters’ festival. It’s been a while since there’s been a World Championship for sprinters,” he said.
Tim Merlier had raised concerns about the climb’s possible inclusion. He said such an ascent — currently 1.4km with a nine per cent ramp, but expected to be built longer before 2028 — would end his hopes of winning a rainbow jersey. Apparently Merlier and Co. have nothing to fear and things will be decided by one gigantic, adrenaline-packed bunch kick. After a few years of more testing courses, I’m quite down for that.
“A very sad moment”: Two killed and six injured as driver of race vehicle veers off road into crowd at Tour of Rwanda
But what if I need to carry a dining table? Can't do that by bike, can you?
Tom Pidcock opens account for 2026, concern as Met Police disbands specialist cycle and motorcycle safety units... and indicators for cyclists are back (again)
The weekend began with the news that the Metropolitan Police has disbanded its specialist cycle and motorcycle safety units, prompting fears about a potential impact on vulnerable road users’ safety. The commercial vehicle unit and dedicated cycle and motorcycle teams will be merged into a new “road danger reduction” unit. Megan had the full story here…
Meanwhile, I had the dubious honour of taking a look at this Kickstarter campaign…
Elsewhere on the tech front, Stu’s been riding the BMC Roadmachine 01 Three, here are his thoughts on that. And finally, the weekend brought Tom Pidcock his first win of 2026, the Brit taking the final stage of Vuelta a Andalucía.
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Over in the UAE, Isaac Del Toro overhauled Antonio Tiberi’s advantage with a stage win on the second summit finish of the week, a stage and GC win that’ll keep the sponsors happy. There was also enough time for a third win of the race for undisputed sprint king Jonathan Milan too.
Oscar Onley’s first race for the Ineos Grenadiers ended with a fourth place finish on GC at the Volta ao Algarve, Juan Ayuso topping a stacked top 10 and beating Paul Seixas, João Almeida, Onley, fellow Ineos debutant Kévin Vauquelin, and Florian Lipowitz to the win. Things are quieter this week after the three-a-day racing of the past few days, but there is the small matter of Opening Weekend to look forward to…
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@Mr Blackbird where can I find photos of this study? Asking for a friend.
@Gd29 I was waiting for the classic "why don't we just ban driving completely by reducing the speed limit to 5mph or 0!" argument and here it is. The statistics are very clear on the benefits of reducing the speed limit from 30-20mph. It doesn't remove bad driving but it mitigates the damage. It also makes fuck all difference to journey times. Everything with driving is risk vs reward. Sure, dropping it to 10mph would save a lot more people but it would make travel by car ridiculous and have minimal benefit vs 20mph. The reward wouldn't be worth the cost.
@Gd29 "Speed limits are an ineffective tool when the problem is drivers not driving in an appropriate manner for the conditions and environment. Those drivers weren’t following the speed limit and/or paying sufficient attention anyway!" That is a question, not an assertion. What are the relative numbers of drivers who are eg. "don't care" criminals who may never have taken a test or are happy to take life, how many are "criminally negligent" eg. may have a licence and not intend to break the law regardless, but just aren't fussed about basic safe driving (maybe regularly drive while tired, never slow down when conditions require), how many are just normal humans (who occasionally make unfathomable mistakes)? What are the relative rates of collisions? What are the casualty outcomes? What effect does simply changing a number on a sign have? If any, why? (There's the psychological "anchoring effect", if 70% of people *are* below the limit does that slow down others, do the "don't cares" maybe just overtake dangerously (but would they anyway? ) ) etc. Reduced speed is a mitigation in that it leads to better outcomes in collisions, that's a known I believe. IIRC there's also agreement that it can mean that fewer collisions happen as there's more time to react. "If that is the problem and you don’t deal with it, but you want to keep reducing injuries/fatalities, you have to keep dropping speed limits until you prohibit road use entirely" "If" (plus as noted other safety measures are available)
@Rendel Harris - I think that driver must live near me.
@Gd29 it's good to "point out potential abuse of stats - and for "keeping it concise for the public" no doubt some measure of "lies, damn lies and statistics" applies. But unless you have your own analysis / evidence, this may sound like a "just asking questions!" rhetorical tactic.
@Gd29 exactly what variables / controlled experiments would suffice to convince you, and then how would you believe that would still hold in "real world" situations? We all know there are excellent ways to stop motoring-related KSIs - one being stop humans operating vehicles) but that isn't normally seen as realistic. Then there's another "remove the hazard" approach eg. completely isolate motorists from vulnerable road users (and "footways" alone might not be sufficient, as more people are killed there most years by drivers than eg. by cyclists in total, although that fact doesn't say much ). Though that by itself doesn't address motorists killing themselves / other motorists. Currently the UK - like many countries - is mostly doing a "remove the vulnerable road users" approach, partly by design but mostly indirectly by prioritising convenience for motoring (including journey time, which is seen to involve higher speeds).
Do you really need an AI tool to tell you that 80% of a cyclist's drag is the rider or that getting in a more streamlined position you'll reduce drag etc.? Fabulous for the professional riders who use this site but for the rest of us our money would be better spent on yoga or pilates classes to help you hold a more streamlined position in the first place.
Of course drivers need to be responsible and take care but we are in danger of getting a bit high and mighty when police raise issues like this. Since the clocks went back last weekend, I have been commuting home this week in the dark for the first time this year. I am gobsmacked by the number of cyclists I see who have no lights and no reflective gear, often with no helmets either. It's common sense to take precautions and we've got our head in the sand if we pretend all cyclists are taking appropriate steps to protect themselves and others.
@mdavidford was about to ask them if they thought the law should also been changed to ban the LAs from doing that, so as to save money...
@Rendel Harris sentencing is Monday. 15 yrs minimum (not premeditated) but multiple aggravating factors. 20+ feels appropriate
23 thoughts on ““How to go from clean licence to six points in under a minute”: Cyclist tells drivers to put their phone away when driving, after motorist ordered to pay £1,727 because of rider’s camera footage + more on the live blog”
Good to see the Mini driver got nearly £1000 of costs on top of the fine and points, maybe they will think twice in future about wasting court time and taxpayer’s money when they are so clearly bang to rights. This smacks of the usual defence lawyer stratagem of taking it to court in the hope that the witness won’t show up.
Apologies for the misplaced apostrophe in taxpayers’, voice recognition software does its thing once again. PLEASE can we have the edit function back?
Well in a sense, it ended up being their own money they wasted, and presumably they are a tax payer, so maybe the software knew what it was doing to start with.
It’s not really even taxpayers money. Calling it that is part of the continued attempt by the right to frame public finances in the same way as personal finances in order to persuade people to support spending cuts.
Of course its not taxpayers money, its employers money and they give it to the taxpayers!
They don’t _give_ it to the taxpayers – they _loan_ it to them, on the understanding that they give it right back, by purchasing, or better still subscribing to, a bunch of stuff they don’t need.
Not anymore it isn’t. The people who earned it were obliged to hand it over to the government to do things with it for the collective good.
Well I’m pretty sure I’m not on the right… I know the point you’re making and indeed have often pointed out to people that they should look at their take-home pay and if they’re happy with that stop worrying about what their employer gives to the government. However when I’m paying for my shopping it’s not anybody else’s money going on the VAT and duty, is it? If you frame Government expenditure as not taxpayers’ money then you run into another problem which is if it’s not our money then why should we have a right to have an input in telling the government how it should be spent?
You don’t get to tell the government how to spend their money, you just have an option to try to kick them out every few years if you don’t like what they did.
In a sense you can’t kick the government out. At best you can kick all its members out, to be replaced by others … but very often it turns out they’re a lot like the last, and not more effective…
Still the fact that we get to spin the wheel if most of us are unhappy and maybe even *try* to get it to stop in a better place puts us in a better place than the Irans, Chinas etc.
Apologies – apparently I can’t reply to Blackladder’s post, so going for the nearest point…
* Despite what they promised… and they were probably sincere! Directing the country is just far harder than they thought.
Oh – I thought the “Despite what they promised” bit was in reference to fixing the comment system. ;o)
“4like”
In other news, I found this on the BBC website:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn71xyjpdl2o
I was especially taken with Emily’s comments …
“Emily McGuire from Essex told the BBC: “I am in my 30s and sometimes I can’t tell if [other vehicles’] main beam is on or off and once they have passed, I can’t see properly for a good few minutes, it’s terrible … I suffer with migraines when a car approaches me with extremely bright lights, I have to look down or in the other direction… ”
Good on you Emily, you keep on driving in the dark when you can’t see properly and actively looking away from the road to avoid the problem …
But but *she has to drive* though!
She has to drive so much that it doesn’t matter she’s getting migraines – SHE HAS TO DRIVE.
We all *have to drive* it seems. I don’t even own a car currently, and occasionally I still have to drive. Though I do a bit of legwork – aha – to try to reduce that.
Yes I read that and had the same reaction. Frightening really.
If Emily thinks that a migraine is instantly triggered by a bright light, and if she thinks that people with migraines are capable of continuing to drive whilst in the grip of one, then Emily doesn’t really know what a migraine is.
then Emily doesn’t really know what a migraine is
I suspect she doesn’t – the best guess from the information we have is that her migraines are headaches which may or may not be triggered by oncoming headlights. It’s similar to people who claim they have ‘flu when it’s really some form of ‘cold’- such false claims led to the frequent assertion by nutters during the active pandemic that Covid was ‘just like ‘flu’, meaning nothing at all to worry about. I think we’re now at the stage where ‘flu is presently a greater public health hazard than Covid.
Clearly.
That said, I have had the pre-migraine aura before (I don’t get the actual migraine, or at least if there’s something going wrong in my brain it doesn’t generate any horrible symptoms). It’s triggered by bright light – sunlight reflecting off something – and I definitely wouldn’t drive whilst it’s happening. I don’t know whether an LED headlight would do it.
Don’t you just hate it when you put something up for sale online and timewasters ignore your ‘for collection only’ tag? :o)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c795eexrv34o
Excellent story, well done all concerned. You do get some muppets though, a couple of years ago I was selling a bike and got a message from a guy in Ulster who said he knew I said collection only from London but did I by any chance ever visit Ulster and if so could I bring the bike with me; the real clincher was he wasn’t even committing to buy it, he wanted me to take it over so he could see if it was a good fit for him…
A sprinters’ festival makes for low TV ratings until 15 minutes before the end of the race. Unless crosswinds blow, then everything can happen.
I wouldn’t mind watching live coverage of construction of the artificial hill. As long as it isn’t on a TNT subscription channel.
(And I hope the event organisers don’t employ the pillock in the earlier article from Notts who flattened a cycle path embankment to create a flat area for caravans).
How to go from clean licence to six points in under a minute
One of the comments on the video is that in Belgium, phone-driving results in immediate confiscation of the car for fifteen days. I bet that works a lot better than our points system, but since we live in a car obsessed society, it ain’t gonna happen here.