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Driver eating cereal.pngVideo: woman caught eating a bowl of cereal while driving
A woman has been caught on helmet camera eating a bowl of cereal while driving.
Footage of the cereal offender, who was caught spoon handed near Hampton Court, was uploaded yesterday by cyclist, David Williams, who spotted the woman mid-breakfast as he turned right across a queue of cars.
After passing behind the red Land Rover Discovery, which was waiting behind a bus and a car at a junction, he appears to do a double take and rides around to the passenger's side to knock on the window and express his disapproval.
He says: "Put that down, I'm going to the police. I've got your number."
"Absolutely ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous, you're bloody dangerous."
The woman, who was holding the cereal bowl in the left hand and steering with the right, appears nonplussed, gestures in front of her at the traffic and carries on eating as she pulls away again.
Range Rover (LF13 XEW) driver eating a bowl of cereal, Hampton Court: http://t.co/zoiHV30qDC via @YouTube
— David H Williams (@Bigdai100) June 16, 2015
He then turns to a woman in the car behind the Land Rover in the queue to say: "She's eating a bowl of cereal."
The woman says: "While she's driving?"
"Yeah," he replies.
Mr Williams told the Surrey Comet “You can see that her car is moving from a long way back and just as I pull alongside her she’s put some food in her mouth.
“She just carries on driving.
“We’ve all eaten mars bars or something, or had a drink of coke, but nothing like this.
“I mean, who takes a bowl of cereal into the car?
“I regularly see dangerous driving but I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Surrey Police have messaged Mr Williams to say an officer will be in touch for the footage and to identify the woman.
A Surrey Police spokeswoman said: "Police will be looking in to it a lot more. Surrey Road Cops will also tweet back to the poster with something of that affect so people can see police will look into it."
Laura Laker is a freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience covering cycling, walking and wheeling (and other means of transport). Beginning her career with road.cc, Laura has also written for national and specialist titles of all stripes. One part of the popular Streets Ahead podcast, she sometimes appears as a talking head on TV and radio, and in real life at conferences and festivals. She is also the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network.
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74 comments
Stupidity isn't and never has been limited to any particular type of vehicle - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3131256/Has-got-death-wish-Incre...
Be warned usual Dailymail standards included :p
The "news" on the front page of the recent Evening Standard is hardly 'new news' to regular cyclists in London
Go for a ride (carefully) or walk alongside queues of busy, slowly moving traffic and you will see hundreds of motorists busy making phone calls, tapping smart phones, using tablets, reading books, filling in paperwork on clipboards (van drivers), watching a movie on a small dash mounted screen, and yes eating meals from fine china (the women I rode past was eating a big plate of rice balanced on her lap).
see the look of shock on this guy's face, that someone has 'caught' him in the act of using his hand held cell phone whilst he is driving along
frightening thing is that he was rolling along at perhaps 5 mph and does not even have a hand on the wheel!
Eating cereal while driving is so yesterday, this is the new stupid.
Via - https://twitter.com/gmpcitycentre/status/611496279164776448
To be fair, that guy is probably endangering himself at least as much, if not more, than anyone else. I'm not entirely sure its actually as bad as the cereal eater.
Have you seen The Metro's "version" of this story?
It is quite impressively snide:
The Metro is the free version of the Mail, so this should not be surprising.
The Mail actually reported it in a surprisingly reasonable manner: they mentioned the guy is an experienced cyclist "who travels more than 100 miles every week", cited the relevant bit of the Highway Code and even quoted someone saying "Hats off to the cyclist who is calling her out."
I know. The Mail. I am as surprised as you.
If the woman had knocked over a child, would she be crying over spilt milk?
Surely that is the only reason to drive a all terrain vehicle on the road, I.e the ability to run small children over and hardly feel a bump. Don't worry her breakfast, upholstery and business suit are all well protected.
This really isn't about being a 'vigilante'. To be a vigilante you would need to be trying and punishing the 'offender' outside the law. Simply providing evidence of an incident to the Police - who can then investigate if a crime has been committed and then follow normal legal procedures - is not being a vigilante.
The reason there is so much aggravation and accusations of 'lycra-clad vigilantes' though is that driving culture has a deeply embedded sense of individual entitlement running through it that reacts badly to being told how to behave, and reacts even more badly to being caught-out for misbehaving. It's not just cyclists with cameras, this extends to prevailing attitudes towards traffic wardens, speed signs, speed cameras, drink-drive limits, the emissions-based VED, and even the presence on the roads of traffic Police themselves. All of these things get accused of being part of a 'war against motorists'. Look how many years they have run anti-drink-drive campaigns for, yet I still hear people refer to it as if it’s not a 'real crime'.
I still think the vast majority of cyclists who run cameras on the road do so in order to provide evidence in defence of themselves if they are involved in an incident. And it's worth remembering that if the de facto burden-of-proof in incidents involving cyclists wasn't so overwhelmingly in favour of drivers, then there wouldn't be anything like so many cyclists routinely recording their rides.
If he'd just given the footage to the police I'd agree with everything you've written there - but he posted footage of her on the internet with her face clearly visible and her registration number.
Given that her actions are literally indefensible, I don't have any problem with that. She's patently guilty, whether or not anyone ever officially rules on that fact.
Is she? As far as I'm aware it's not an offense just to be eating in the car - it would be if it was proved that she was not in control of the vehicle and driving without due care and attention. Given that she's in standing traffic, that doesn't look like the case at this exact moment; maybe she'd have put the bowl down if the traffic started moving, maybe not.
Eating a bowl of cereal in the car *does* seem stupid, but the sanctimonious attitude of this cyclist doesn't do us any favours when it comes to furthering this daft tribalism between cyclists and drivers.
Who is the 'us' to which you refer?
Cyclists?
Well I cycle, and I don't wish to be included in that 'us'. Besides, you started off complaining about 'tribalism', then gave what seemed a rather tribal defence of bad-driving, and followed it up by refering to 'us'. Which just seemed a bit confusing.
Ultimately, if you're not driving like a cunt, you've got nothing to be worried about.
Nah, even that low standard isn't enough to get you into trouble, because there are no police on the roads.
Eventually we will all have cameras surgically attached at birth along with a GPS tracking device.
Only then will Orwell be proved correct.
Only then will it be too late.
Ahem... http://road.cc/content/news/145230-video-maserati-driver-filmed-eating-b...
Some time ago, for about a year and a half my morning commute into San Francisco was done in the passenger seat of a friend's car, and I'd regularly see stuff like this — drivers eating, reading, using electronic gizmos, doing this and that. It wasn't every day, but it was fairly normal to see — yet shocking nonetheless.
I wonder if she'll go with "the trouble is they taste too good" defense?
Very ameusling footage.
Bring on lunch ………...
Did you spot her coffee and toast as well?
It's not just cyclists that are fitting cameras. Plenty of drivers do it and cars will eventually have them as standard, it started with the Primera.
What's needed is some standardisation in terms of what is acceptable footage and a formal police/DVLA means of submitting the footage and having points, fines, prosecutions issued.
To be fair, they are GREEEEEAAAAAAATTTTT
Clearly eating cereal whilst in the driver's seat isn't the most sensible thing to do. Obviously it's illegal. If she does it whilst actually driving then it's probably dangerous. Cyclists are vulnerable road users. But, all of that said, how about we don't start telling tales on every thing we see? Cyclists with cameras used to be about protecting themselves in case of an accident, now it's just a whole load of CCTV cameras picking up on any driving misdemeanor, publishing it on youtube and sending it to the police. It's easy to justify each case, we are cyclists and we are biased when we view them. But is this really a good direction to take?
Edit: I posted this before reading the thread, I now see I have basically said the same thing as Harrogate Spa, so I guess we are in agreement.
So I should not say or do anything when someone is doing something dangerous and illegal? Very odd idea.
You 'cyclists giving is all a bad name' types are all for telling off cyclists when they RLJ. Shouldn't we mind our own business then as well?
I didn't say anything along the lines of "cyclists giving us all a bad name". That's not my point. My point is that is it really a good idea for so many of us to film, name and shame drivers? I don't. My opinion is that so many of us support it here because it seems to be a point won in the car vs bike saga. If you take the idea away from cycling, do you support the idea of having people filming you throughout the day with the threat of exposing any misdemeanors?
I didn't say you shouldn't say anything to drivers. You seem to have made that up.
I haven't said anything about my opinion on RLJ, and I won't because that would sidetrack this discussion.
People do it because they feel unsafe on the roads and unprotected by the police, at the mercy of drivers who are at best negligent and at worst actively hostile. If the roads were properly policed, maybe cyclists wouldn't feel they needed to take matters into their own hands by making sure they have a ready source of evidence when the seemingly inevitable happens.
I don't object to people wearing cameras, I definitely see why people would want evidence in the case of a collision etc. What I think I object to is that the cameras aren't just used for that purpose, but instead are used to tell tales on any and all driving misdemeanors. I'm not suggesting that it's OK to eat cereal whilst driving. If I saw it myself I might well have a polite word about it. But I wouldn't post the video on youtube and send it in to the police. I think that's crossing a line and I would hate for it to be done to me.
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