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NMotD 752“This is not policing, this is intimidation”: Alliance of British Drivers takes on Sheffield police over close pass conviction
The Alliance of British Drivers has described a court’s decision to convict a motorist for careless driving as “idiotic” and “pathetic sucking up the cycling lobby”.
The pro-motoring pressure group was responding to footage of a close pass posted on Twitter by the Sheffield North West Neighbourhood Policing Team – and featured earlier this week on our Near Miss of the Day series – which resulted in the driver receiving a £417 fine and their licence endorsed with five penalty points.
If the motorist is caught driving in a careless or anti-social manner in the twelve months following the incident, their vehicle will also be seized by police.
> “If anyone thinks this is an acceptable manner of driving, let this be your warning,” say police
The footage posted online shows the moment the approaching driver passes a group of cyclists too closely, at what the officers described as “excessive speed”. The police also added that “if anyone thinks this is an acceptable manner of driving, let this be your warning”.
COURT RESULT: CARELESS DRIVING. The driver of this vehicle decided to pass a group of cyclists at excessive speed and far too closely. Fined £417 in total, licence endorsed with 5 points. If anyone thinks this is an acceptable manner of driving, let this be your warning. pic.twitter.com/zInKYa84cc
— Sheffield North West NPT (@SheffNW_NPT) April 21, 2022
However, the clip was greeted with complaints from motorists who criticised the behaviour of the cyclists, with some arguing that they should have stopped to let the driver pass as they approached the poorly parked car on the left-hand side of the road.
The Alliance of British Drivers, a pro-motoring lobby group known for its anti-cycling stance, launched a prolonged online attack on the court’s decision, retweeting the footage with the caption “If your [sic] weren’t already convinced that the police are out to get you…”
The Alliance of British Drivers @theABD is - unsurprisingly - defending illegal driving, and arguing with Sheffield's police @SheffNW_NPT, describing the police's actions as "pathetic", "intimidation", "idiotic" and "fool(ish)" pic.twitter.com/5PmPdMhHN2
— ABDBlocked (People blocked by the ABD) (@ABDBlocked) April 22, 2022
The alliance’s account described the fine and penalty points issued to the driver as an “idiotic decision that undermines the credibility of the courts and the police.
“We all know there are fanatics who want drivers to stop and bow down before every cyclist. If the police foolishly choose to side with them it will damage the relationship with the public,” the account argued.
Idiotic decision that undermines the credibility of the courts and the police.
We all know there are fanatics who want drivers to stop and bow down before every cyclist. If the police foolishly choose to side with them it will damage the relationship with the public.— 𝗔𝗕𝗗 (@TheABD) April 22, 2022
The alliance claimed that the prosecution was “just pathetic sucking up to the cycling lobby”, and described the police’s publicising of the incident as “vile threats” which “make it abundantly clear whose side you are on”.
“This is not policing, this is intimidation,” the account wrote.
The group also criticised the use of the term “victims” to describe those on the receiving end of close passes, labelling it a “joke”.
The Sheffield North West officers, on the other hand, were keen to dismiss what they described as anti-cycling “whataboutery”, pointing out that if the offending motorist “had simply driven to the conditions at a less dangerous speed and stayed on his own side of the road he wouldn’t have been prosecuted.”
After another Twitter user claimed that it was “strange that we never hear about how many cyclists you prosecute”, the officers replied: “Exactly how many car drivers were killed by cyclists last year David? There’s your reason. We prosecute those whose behaviour is most dangerous.”
Last week, the Alliance of British Drivers’ director Duncan White claimed in an interview with GB News that the recent revisions to the Highway Code “created a false sense of winners and losers” and “entirely failed in creating a sense of shared responsibility for the safety of all road users”.
White also said that the changes, introduced in January to protect vulnerable road users, have resulted in “very provocative behaviour” and even “deliberate” acts of obstruction by cyclists.
The alliance’s Twitter account is known for its provocative and often volatile pro-car outbursts. This morning, the account tweeted that Rod King, the director of road safety campaign 20’s Plenty For Us, “needs to be deported to a third world country before he turns Britain into one”.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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66 comments
It really does seem over the top, plenty of room for the cyclists to pass the parked car and the oncoming car to proceed .... but the oncoming car should have been pulled over and made to feel inadequate for the crossing of the centre line as there was no obstruction to go around from that direction, instead of a fine and points.
This would be my preffered inital punishment method for all road users for poor use of the roads before further harsher action.
Re the current 1.5m space to pass encouragement, personally , I would prefer vehicles to pass promptly and with a minimum of .5m rather than pissing about for ages in the wrong gear !
from cyclist/motorcyclist (advanced) car /van driver/pedestrian
Driving at high speed towards a cyclist, crossing the centreline and thereby missing them by about 50 cm and you think a fine and points is over the top? Imagine if that had been a beginner or nervous rider who had flinched, or the rider had hit a pothole that had sent her further towards the centre line, we would then be talking about a head-on crash with closing speeds of around 70 mph, and therefore a dead cyclist. Given that it seems quite likely that the car driver was being deliberately aggressive towards the cyclists – there's no reason for him to be there at all – five points is the absolute minimum he should have received.
"It's not my fault if a cyclist falls over in front of me" - Dr Helen Measures
That would be "killer driver" Helen Measures...
I've been on the other side of this so can understand the nature of the punishment, and also why the driver might want to challenge in court.
I suspect that the initial NIP letter issue to the driver included a video still, not dissimilar to the image at the top of this article.
Based on that image, the driver will be given a choice of driver awareness course (if available), fixed penalty, or enter a not guilty plea and go to court.
What the driver does not have access to is the whole video, so they will need to make a judgement call based on the image and their own recollection of the incident. Mindful of confirmation bias, that recollection is bound to be rose tinted; its easy to see why the driver fancied his chances in court.
The problem with going to court is that if found guilty you will be sentenced as per set guidelines rather than a simple fixed penalty.
Driving without due care and attention has three levels of seriousness. These levels take into account things like harm caused, or the potential to cause harm, amongst other factors.
One thing that automatically elevates an offence to band 2 sentencing is if the offence involved or was around vulnerable road users - such as the cyclist in this case. The minimum punishment for a band 2 offence is 5 penalty points and a significant fine (I thought it was actually £500 but hey ho).
So yeah, to an extent this may seem harsh, but the driver chose to have their day in court and was punished in line with sentencing guidelines for the offence the court judged them to have committed.
The answer is simple... don't drive like an aggressive idiot. And if you do and you are caught, do your research before taking on the state!
Jimmy, I completely agree with your post - I am a cyclist and also a police officer and you are quite correct about the various punishments etc.
a year ago I was hit from behind by a driver of a certain age with defective eyesight- he got the higher level fine and a disqualification ( serious injury to me). The only bit I'd add to that is that the driver will have been interviewed by the police and had the evidence put to them including the cctv ( unless they told the police to get lost and they prosecuted him without interview).
The clip isn't the same as seeing / hearing the witness accounts, but from the video it certainly does appear to me that the driver failed to slow down, and deliberately moved the car near the cyclists and across the centre line as a punishment for the perception of a right of way. Whilst the driver could rightly say that an approaching motor vehicle would have to give way as the obstruction is in the opposite lane, the cyclists are entitled to overtake the stationary car providing they simply use their own lane - which they do.
hope that made sense.
????
What are you talking about? Pulled over by who?
I read that as the driver hestitating too long and being too close for too long thereby increasing the overall risk.
Or is could just be the uncomfortable feeling that you have a not very good driver around you and worry they might feel forced into a reckless overtake by drivers behind them.
That's why I sort of queried it. I took the opposite view so thought I'd ask.
Lesson number one- you don't know how good or bad a driver is until they are safely past you!
Piere
As a enthusiastic cyclist I find a disparity in punishment meterd out to drivers. In this case,the penalty appears to me excessive for such a close pass as this, compared to a driver who entered a dedicated and segregated cycle path that I was riding on and hit me to the ground,writing off the bike,got £100 fine and 3 points on his licence. Different force but there should be more consistent penalties.
Sounds more like a fpn or guilty plea whereas this went to court with a non guilty plea.
The adb don't do dialogue and have a thin grasp of stats.
https://twitter.com/ABDBlocked/status/1517806945939468289
In other news - figures suggest more fish dying in the sea than on land. Association of British D(r)ivers encouraging them to safety on the beaches.
In other news - figures suggest more fish dying in the sea than on land. Association of British D(r)ivers encouraging them to safety on the beaches
You are guilty of making a point which can only be appreciated by hominins several species advanced from the dead-end regressive lineage which has resulted in ABD members and Councillor Vincent Stops. This is gross Species-ism, and contrary to LGBT......etc...S rights!
Were the fish that died wearing a helmet and hi-viz? No? Conclusive proof that helmets and hi-viz are effective; I think. Or at least they should be mandated in case they might work.
Quite right - some had the helmets, some had the hi-viz but neither had both.
The blue fish looks remarkably like Cllr Stops
Stops has been schooled over and over again on how ridiculous and misleading that statistic is, but he continues to repeat it. It's a deeply bizarre stance for someone who claims "twenty years experience working on streets policy, mostly bus, cycle and walk" and is chair of Hackney LBC's planning committee.
You literally have to be crackpot crazy to believe that someone on a 10kg bike travelling at 15mph can ever "intimidate" someone travelling at 60mph in a 2 tonne steel cage on wheels.
It's the old "but the minority will hold us hostage" idea again. OK cyclists aren't running over drivers (but don't forget the pedestrian carnage), but they're causing drivers to have accidents.
I think they were referring to the police intimidating them by prosecuting a dangerous driver.
ABD. We all breathe the same air.... We use rules to look out for one another. And this driver broke those rules. Did not stay in lane. And so it could've been a case of murder.
And you choose to criticise the police decision.
Please reconsider your position. Your comments are reckless and have consequences for your fellow human beings who do not have the benefit of a metal safety net.
... some of us through our noses.
It would be useful to see a little before this; was there something in the road that the car was pulling out to overtake? Or was the driver purposefully getting close to the cyclists to be a c**t?
Noting the size of the fine and quantity of points, I'm guessing the police and magistrates figured out which of the options seemed more likely.
I think someone with more local knowledge said the driver came from a narrower section and held their original line (as the generous version).
Wouldn't that mean that the obstruction was in their lane, and that they should give way to oncoming traffic?
By luck, this came up in my notifications.
View from the driver's direction showing the normal way people drive.
https://twitter.com/geckobike/status/1518200656267468801
Even if they were pulling out to overtake, shouldn't they have at least waited til the other lane was clear of cyclists?
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