“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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I’ve got a G-Line. I quite like the look of some of that bling. I can’t imagine any of it will be cheap though. :( It’s already quite an expensive bike.
@SVXY It does not say you can't ride three or more abreast. It does not say that to do so would be inconsiderate. I'm afraid your opinion that it would be has no particular legal status.
@SVXY Rule 66 of the highway code says you can ride two abreast but to also 'be considerate of the needs of other road users when riding in groups.' It does not say you can ride three or four abreast which would not be considerate of the needs of other road users. As the highway code is used by prosecution lawyers as evidence to convict in Road Traffic Act offences cases you certainly could therefore be prosecuted and convicted for careless cycling if cycling three or four abreast
@SVXY This is a curious tactic - rebutting your own argument with your very next sentence.
Affordable? Starting at £6K? You 'having a larf?
@SVXY Ah, so it *is* the "flood the zone with shit" argumentation technique then? Or perhaps ... you are genuinely unclear about the difference between the Highway code and the law (and perhaps the difference between cyclists, drivers and indeed horse riders? And rusty on safe practice? As mdavidford notes you appear to be confusing rule with Rule 66 (for cyclists, which doesn't say anything about not riding x abreast) with Rule 53 (for horse riders which gives guidance not to more than double up - I don't think this is a direct summary of any law since "should" not "must"). Charitably I'm going with "*i* know what it says!" which as I noted many of people feel they do. Anyway away with you, I feel you've had your fill of attention for today.
Road tax was abolished in 1937 by Winston Churchill because, as he said, "road tax makes motorists believe they are the moral owners of our roads." He got that right.
@SVXY None of the magistrates who sentenced him said the CPS should have charged him with dangerous driving. Why should they? He was not speeding, he was not on his phone and he was not drunk or under the influence of drugs either
@SVXY The court does not decide on whether someone was driving carelessly or dangerously, they can only decide on the guilt or otherwise of the defendant on the charge the CPS decides to lay against them. The CPS is notorious for preferring to charge careless rather than dangerous because it's an easier win; this results in entirely unjust sentences such as this one.
@Rendel Harris Wearing sandals may be fine if cycling on tracks over fields or in a quiet residential street with a 20 or 30mph limit. It is not sensible cycling on a 60mph main road
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.