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Video of Dangerous overtake (and police telling me I shouldn't go through amber lights)

by PonteD
Sat, Aug 09, 2014 02:37
5

Have a watch, am I being fussy. I've added annotations regarding the police response to this. Is there anyone on here who reckons they could have stopped in the time it took for the lights to change? (its the one on the left BTW, the other is a filter).

http://youtu.be/WWQzZLDLpGA

Feel free to comment on youtube as well as here, and share. I'm off to put on my flame proof suit now.

If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.

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5 comments

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Colin Peyresourde | 10 years ago
0 likes

I understand your point. It is not good driving (I recognised that he probably broke a red). But from the video it doesn't look very dangerous and I wasn't really aware of you changing speed. Probably the worst thing was the driver at the junction looked like they were about to pull out on you, but didn't.

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PonteD | 10 years ago
0 likes

I really do wish there was somewhere to simply log complaints, unfortunately all I have found with West Yorkshire Police is the 101 report a crime page. Not what I want to use, but this is what they recommend for non emergency contact (even down to if you suspect someone is up to no good). I've repeatedly asked for some way to let them know without making a song and dance, they should have a forum where people can just discuss things or even an email address to just get in touch on.

As for the Amber thing, they did get back to me and said they wouldn't expect someone to stop in 2s from approx 20mph, but that I should "pre-empt" Amber lights (does this mean we should slow down as we approach lights, just in case?).

As for whether this is close, no, I've had much closer but my issue is that the Highway Code specifically tells you to hang back and not overtake just before you are turning left, which is what this driver does (and the police totally ignore the fact that if I went through on amber, they must have gone through on red as you see them on the right, just before the traffic lights and they pass me a good number of seconds later this is why I included all those extra seconds at the start, so you see where the driver had come from).

sorry for the long post BTW and thanks for watching the clip

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Him Up North | 10 years ago
0 likes

The overtake doesn't look that bad on the video. It probably seemed worse to you at the time.

As for being an amber gambler, plod is right. Amber means stop. The Highway Code does say a vehicle can go through amber if stopping might cause an accident - and you may claim it would have - but at the same time it's incumbent on road users to proceed towards signals with anticipation. Of course, in the real world most road users speed up a bit in the hope of getting through, don't we?

I was copped for passing an amber a few years ago (in my car) by a copper who I thought was being over-zealous. Still, it was 3 points and a fine.

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Flying Scot | 10 years ago
0 likes

You're being fussy, OK you had to slow a little, but it gets a lot worse than that before I react.

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Ashfordian | 10 years ago
0 likes

The amber light. Not a problem IMO.

The dangerous overtake I'm a bit meh about! Maybe it is the wide angle lens, and I was not in the situation so I can only comment how it comes across on the video.

The positive is that the police viewed the video which in itself feels like it is a rarity.
The negative is that from the viewer it is not that bad, 'meh' as I described my feelings to the video. There are plenty of videos on YouTube of dangerous overtakes that make you wince and feel wow, that was close. The problem is now the next cyclist that takes a video to the police could be viewed as a time waster and not taken as seriously as you have been. This unfortunately is human nature, 'boy who cried wolf' moral story if you will.

The approach I would have taken would be log the incident on the police website. This would then log against the vehicle registration and I would hope multiple reports against the same registration would prompt an investigation where this video would be viewed more positively inline with other reports.

This will probably get flamed more than your post but you asked for a comment

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