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news
Close pass operation “A close pass isn’t an offence and a lot of cyclists don’t realise that”: Police chief’s “odd” claim that cyclists need education on driving offences highlighted as evidence of UK’s current road safety “mess”
As Gloucestershire Constabulary announced that it was adopting Operation Snap, enabling road users to submit video evidence of dangerous or careless driving to the police through a dedicated online portal, the force’s non-crime unit head has come under fire from cyclists, after claiming that “a lot” of people who ride bikes “don’t realise that… a close pass itself isn’t an offence”.
The officer also said that the police “need to try and find a way of educating” people who submit footage to Operation Snap that the clips need “to show that the driver or rider is being inconvenienced in some way”, while bizarrely adding that “in the Highway Code you have something called a close pass, where you should allow cyclists 1.5m width”.
The muddled messaging from Gloucestershire Constabulary has been widely criticised on social media by cyclists, who have argued that the officer has failed to realise that close passes often constitute an example of careless driving, and that the officer’s comments misrepresent cyclists’ concerns about road safety and highlight “the mess in which we find ourselves as we seek to lower road crime against cyclists and encourage more people to cycle”.
This social media backlash followed Gloucestershire Constabulary’s announcement this week that it is the latest UK-based local police force to take part in Operation Snap, an online portal which allows road users to submit footage of instances of alleged dangerous or careless driving.
Across the UK, 24,000 clips have been submitted using Operation Snap over the last six months, with Gloucestershire’s dedicated officer currently dealing with over 140 submissions a month. According to Gloucestershire Constabulary, around 25 to 30 per cent of the footage so far has resulted in a Fixed Penalty Notice being issued, or an educational course being offered to the offending driver.
Speaking to the BBC, the head of Gloucestershire’s non-crime unit, Robert Vestey, said that dashcam and cycle camera footage has proved an “emerging way” of dealing with dangerous or careless driving “over the last three or four years”.
“It’s simple, it’s very effective, and it allows us to educate as well as prosecute where we need to,” Vestey said.
“Quite often they don’t even realise how bad their driving has been, so it allows us to work with them and just improve the safety on Gloucestershire’s roads.”
However, it was Vestey’s comments concerning the threshold at which the driving captured in the footage constitutes an offence – particularly when it concerns motorists’ actions around people on bikes – that have bemused and baffled cyclists on social media.
“The footage itself has got to prove the offence,” Vestey said. “There are some offences though that are so bad they would immediately go to court, and others that the public think are an offence but they’re not, so we need to try and find a way of educating people on that.”
The officer also insisted that the footage submitted has “to show that the driver or rider is being inconvenienced in some way”, and that he believes that one of the key solutions to increasing road safety is to send “advisory letters” to offending drivers detailing the Highway Code and the law.
He continued: “We get a lot of images sent in from cyclists, and in the Highway Code you have something called a close pass, where you should allow cyclists 1.5m width.
“But a close pass itself isn’t an offence and a lot of cyclists don’t realise that, so they get quite frustrated with us.”
“Most other forces reassure their communities that they do act against crime”
Since the Gloucestershire officer’s statement was published earlier this week, it has been met in particular with one, rather bemused question: What on earth does he actually mean?
“This statement, from the representative of a police force, shows us the mess in which we find ourselves as we seek to lower road crime against cyclists and encourage more people to cycle,” Tim, a cycling instructor and road safety campaigner, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) in response to Vestey’s comments.
“‘But a close pass itself isn’t an offence’ is an odd thing to say,” Tim said in a lengthy thread. “Close passing cyclists is an example of the offence of driving without care and consideration. Every week, hundreds of drivers face police action for close passing. The Metropolitan Police explain it clearly on their Driving Offences website: driving too close to another vehicle is an example of careless or inconsiderate driving.
“‘A lot of cyclists don’t realise that’ is equally odd. Cyclists who report close passes to their force are mostly aware that close passing cyclists is an example of the offence of driving without care and consideration leading to drivers facing police action every week.”
Tim continued: “The police force representative misrepresents the difference between laws on driving behaviour that are cited in the Highway Code – signalled by rules using MUST or MUST NOT – and the rules which set out the minimum standard for careful and considerate driving signalled by rules using SHOULD or SHOULD NOT.
“SHOULD or SHOULD NOT rules, which set out the minimum standard for careful and considerate driving, are (not unsurprisingly) the rules used to evidence the offence of Driving Without Care and Consideration.
“Could the statement be a ‘slight-of-hand’ attempt to justify why the police force they represent don’t take action to the same standards as other forces? If cyclists reporting close passes know that other forces take action to best practice, it’s not surprising that the force representative sees that these cyclists ‘get quite frustrated with us’.
“They just misrepresent why cyclists who report close passes get frustrated. The frustration is not a failure to understand the law, but a frustration with a force not applying the law for the purposes that it was introduced.”
> Here's what to do if you capture a near miss, close pass or collision on camera while cycling
Tim also argued that Vestey made the “opposite misrepresentation” when he, somewhat bizarrely, stated that “in the Highway Code you have something called a close pass”.
“While the term ‘close pass’ isn’t used in the Highway Code, it clearly sets out a rule that we should ‘leave at least 1.5 metres when overtaking cyclists at speeds of up to 30mph, and give them more space when overtaking at higher speeds’. Variability is classic excuse talk,” Tim wrote, before adding that, in any case, the 1.5m rule forms part of the code’s aim to “promote safety on the road”.
Responding to Tim’s thread, Henry Godwin noted the ‘postcode lottery’ aspect of road safety policing frequently cited by cyclists.
“If you dial 101 in the Avon and Somerset Constabulary area, one of the menu options is to report a close pass of a cyclist. So thankfully not all police jurisdictions are as ignorant of the Highway Code,” Henry said.
“All forces are moving in the right direction, and most forces make strong statements on road harm reduction but, as things change too many individuals are lagging behind,” added Tim. “Training is essential for improvements in forces.”
Responding to a post arguing that the officer’s statement was merely “clumsy” and nevertheless linked close passing to a potential careless driving offence, Tim said: “It is clumsy, and it does reference that relationship of behaviour to offence.
“However, it’s deployed to justify not taking action against those offending. Most other forces articulate this relationship to reassure their communities that they do act against crime.”
While Gloucestershire’s foray into the world of Operation Snap hasn’t been without its hiccups so far, they’re not the only force who have been criticised for their approach to the road safety portal.
In spring 2023, West Midlands Police came in for criticism after it emerged that the force had prosecuted just one driver from 286 videos of alleged close passes submitted by cyclists.
However, in February the force’s Operation Snap figures revealed a stark increase in third-party video footage leading to police action compared to the previous year, with a third of cyclists’ reports in January 2024 leading to a motorist receiving a fixed-penalty notice – and 97 per cent of cyclists’ reports being actioned in some way.
Meanwhile, a Freedom of Information request last year revealed that 80 per cent of the almost 1,000 motorists accused of close passing a cyclist in Surrey over the previous 15 months were issued with warning letters, with only three incidents resulting in a prosecution.
Responding to criticism of its inaction on close passes, Surrey Police told road.cc that “in the majority of cases, issuing a warning letter is the most appropriate course of action”, due to the “evidential viability” of the submitted videos and the “associated threat, harm, and risk” of the driving offence committed.
The force also claimed that it “regularly” receives video submissions of alleged driving offences “from the same people”, and called on those who frequently submit close pass clips to “engage with us further and work together to tackle” issues around road safety.
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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UPDATE
As I'm local I looked up Robert Vestey and found his email address so I decided to ask him to comment on the points I made below. His first point was that the BBC story didn't give the full picture and the point he was trying to make was that from now on close pass reports would be dealt with using advisory letters rather than NFA if the evidence was not good enough for an NIP. This is an improvement on the current system. On the evidence needed he said :
This would explain why some of my submissions have been NFA while some have had action taken even though the risk of serious injury to me was less.
On the matter of NMOTD 674 he said that they didn't always get things right and that this was a pretty obvious mistake and that retraining would be given. This explains some of the other NFAs I've had but I did not feel it would be productive to go into individual cases at this point.
And finally he is going to look in to giving a summary of outcomes of OpSnap reports on the website whre they already have results of speeding prosecutions in the county.
In conclusion then it seems to me that this should have been a story about a police force trying to do the right thing for cyclists but hampered by the contraints they are working under.
Is being so shocked you shout an expletive considered being 'inconvenienced'?
If I take my car down to the local supermarket car park to practise handbrake turns and doughnuts, I guess as long as I don't inconvenience anyone else then that's not driving without due care?
I'm not sure I agree with their prosecution criteria.
That's absurd! By that criteria no action would've been taken against the Ferrari driver this summer who on a clear straight road, where he could've overtaken me completely in the oncoming traffic lane, quite deliberately "buzzed" me by about 50cm at a speed I would estimate as being about 80-90 mph, I didn't take avoiding action, wobble, brake or change direction because frankly it was all so fast it was over before I had a chance to react in any way, and there was no vehicle coming in the opposite direction. As it happens no action was taken because I was nearing the end of a 150km ride and my camera battery had run out and the driver was going so fast that I had no chance to note his numberplate, so I couldn't report it, but if the camera had been on and the police had taken no further action because my reactions didn't fit any of the criteria above I would certainly be making an official complaint.
It is the last point that is key with many Dashcam clips we receive where a cyclist is cycling along a road and a vehicle drives past too close. There needs to be some evidence of how the cyclist is inconvenienced e.g. wobbled, took avoiding action, had to brake or change direction or a vehicle coming in the opposite direction had to take avoiding action or brake
This provides conclusive proof, as if any were needed, that many police officers are not only malevolent, anti-cyclist b******s, but are exceedingly thick, malevolent, anti-cyclist b******s. I wonder what Chief Dimwit Vestey would say about this:
https://upride.cc/incident/ca70mkc_citroenvan_closepass/
I have made this point before, and Rendel makes it below-In the few milliseconds in which the Citroen passed me, I took no actions which would convince Vestey that I had been 'inconvenienced'. Anybody who starts wobbling or performs any other out-of-control manoeuvre in response to assaults like this is going to be KSI'd in the not too distant future. In fact, I was so frightened that I had to pull over to the side to recover- This is the only video evidence I have of the effect such a close-passing assault had on me from all my headcam years.
https://upride.cc/incident/yn67mvj_sainsburys44tonner_closepass/
I already know what early model Replicant Vestey, who would undoubtedly fail the Turing Test, would say about that: there is no evidence that the cyclist was inconvenienced as he just kept on cycling in the same manner. I recall desperately trying to remain upright on this slow uphill section, grimly concentrating on staying away from the container nearside while being thankful I didn't have wide flat bars with rubber grips on the end which could have been scooped up by the container wall, tipping me under the wheels- but it would all have been NFA'd by Vestey. It didn't even get that far with LancsFilth- they just ignored it like everything else.
Thank you for your comments. Just a couple of points.
I wonder whether this would count as being inconvenienced. Yupiteru makes the point that they always include the fact that they were so affected by the close pass they couldn't sleep at night and this seems to have met with positive action in those cases.
I have obviously not explained this very well above. The whole point of what the interview was about was to say that if there was no evidence of inconvenience then close passes would be dealt with by sending Advisory Letters rather than NFA. I know you will see this as not helpful but in my opinion it is a step in the right direction for Gloucestershire.
I do believe they are trying to improve here and I am much happier with the outcomes of my reports in 2024 than I am for the 2023 ones.
Your experience in Lancashire does sound pretty awful from what you tell us and I fully understand your disillusionment with the police there.
if there was no evidence of inconvenience then close passes would be dealt with by sending Advisory Letters rather than NFA
You know I'm going to say this: Advisory letter = NFA. Letters are worthless junk, just like words of advice and 'community resolution'
Yupiteru makes the point that they always include the fact that they were so affected by the close pass they couldn't sleep at night and this seems to have met with positive action in those cases
Yupiteru means: you have to lie about it to make the story sound good- which I'm not going to do. Close passes do not have that effect on me because I'm not a nutter. Inventing PTSD does not help, and the only thing affecting my sleep is what is loosely described as 'prostatism'
I have to say, you don't often give the impression of being very pro the current state.
Thanks for following up. But as per my post below, his response continues to demonstrate a fundamental error in his understanding the law. Drivers can be charged if they drive carelessly or if they drive inconsiderately. Driving carelessly only requires the driving to be below the standard of a careful and competent driver - no-one else need be inconvenienced.
Yep. s.3 RTA 1988:
If a person drives a mechanically propelled vehicle on a road or other public place without due care and attention, or without reasonable consideration for other persons using the road or place, he is guilty of an offence.
s.3(ZA)(2):
A person is to be regarded as driving without due care and attention if (and only if) the way he drives falls below what would be expected of a competent and careful driver.
s.3(ZA)(4):
A person is to be regarded as driving without reasonable consideration for other persons only if those persons are inconvenienced by his driving
This police guidance also conflates the two offences. But the CPS prosecution guidance makes clear they are separate offences and prosecution has to decide which to charge.
Drivers can be charged if they drive carelessly or if they drive inconsiderately
But they aren't, because of the situation which has developed where the police essentially make the law by being permitted or even encouraged to enforce laws entirely by their own choice. They choose to enforce them against people they don't like, which for our present purposes means cyclists (Duncan Dimwit's Crusade against Terror Cyclists, Blackpool Police's Tough on Pavement Cycling but Lax on the Causes of Pavement Cycling: if you don't like the roads, find another mode of transport etc.), and conspicuously don't enforce them against people they do like which means motorists.
I moved onto MOT and VED evasion and mobile phone use while driving and red light offences etc. because there's no argument about whether they're offences whereas close passing is never significant as far as police officers are concerned- in Lancashire they don't pay any attention to those offences by motorists because 'everybody does it'. They won't do anything about PK17 XHR's MOT evasion, for instance. He will likely move on to VED evasion tomorrow because there are no consequences in Lancashire. That's what lawmaking by the police does for you!
You are very welcome. It didn't look like any one esle was going to follow up. And thank you for the info.
I do not have enough knowledge to say who is right but internet searches would seem to indicate that what you are saying has some merit. What I don't understand is how a police could get it wrong. Surely they have lawyers who have a lot more training, knowledge and experience than the rest of us. Surely they are just using national guidelines.
Anyway, I think that's a battle for the future, unfortunately not one which I feel qualified to undertake. As far as the present is concerened, if you are reporting in Gloucestershire, it would seem be a good idea for the video and/or statement to indicate that you were inconvenienced.
"Educating cyclist" rather than drivers seems to be a directive that has gone out to all forces – got a call from Thames Valley Police today that close passes aren't illegal and to stop wasting my time and theirs reporting close passes where someone was "just driving".
They have such a big backlog that they don't even investigate some accidents.
They are working overtime to try and comply with the 14 day notice required by law to serve notices.
So rather than highlighting to their superiors and ministers that their processes and system needs reform, they're taking the overtime and binning reports.
When I tried to argue that proactiveness would prevent deaths, I was told that it's a different team that deals with deaths.
This country is Fd. I may trade in my bike for a small boat and seek refuge in fear of my life somewhere else.
This is all very disappointing and yes processes aren't working how they should ... but unless you're moving to somewhere that has mass cycling or is trying to get it (quite a bit of Europe now but outside of NL it's still patchy and "city by city") this wouldn't (yet) be a good decision.
In fact the UK has one of the better road safety stats in Europe. Albeit this has in large part come about via discouraging road use without a motor vehicle and "moving the vulnerable road users out of the way of the motor traffic" eg. making it *most* convenient for drivers...
24000 clips in 6 Months.
Let's be generous - 5 day week so :-
24000 / (365 * 5 / (2 * 7)) = 184 clips / day.
45 police forces
184 / 45 = 4.09 clips per force per day.
They must be making their doughnuts soggy and crying in their coffee with all that work.
It's nearly as soul destroying as being the indicator fitter at the BMW factory.
Certainly seems to be a bit of a post code lottery with different forces having different criteria. Gwent and south Wales Police which is my area, seem to be pretty good in my experience with some high profile cases resulting in some stiff penalties and all my submissions having some kind of action taken so far.
I find it useful to have my camera (front only at present) under the handlebars in such a way that it can see a section of the drops on the right hand side and angled down slightly to see my tyre, so as to give some perspective and make it much easier to see how close the pass was to my right hand side and to me rather than just from the kerb.
I also always make sure to state that the pass made me very frightened and fearful for my life/welfare and that i could not sleep that night due to the anxiety caused. I have even when necessary, used Google maps satellite view to measure the width of the lane and submitted the screenshot with a arrows and road sizes to make officers aware of the relative local dimensions.
There are other things I would recommend as well, but not got the time here to highlight them all. Just be as comprehensive as you can and make sure your statement conveys the fact that the close pass was an issue to you.
Don't try and be brave about it, you must convince the reviewing officer that you were in great danger and that it effected your life/mental health or your journey in a way that would not have occurred, if it was not for the close pass, you must convince them that the offending vehicle/drivers actions were very dangerous, unneccesary and troubling, not just that they came closer than 1.5m.
The Police will be reluctant to take strong enforcement action if there is a chance that the driver will get off if they take it to court, so don't rush your statement, take your time and cover absolutely everything.
All excellent advice but I wonder how much time this takes per submission?
Of course there must be a police calculus too for reporting - presumably even forces which aren't trying to say "just don't bother" want there to be some barrier to climb as they're aware that otherwise even just reviewing well- evidenced submissions would overwhelm their resources (this isn't an uncommon offence sadly)?
Very true. You really have to do the Plods job for them; providing the video evidence alone isn't enough, you need to make the conviction as easy as possible for them, by providing lots of extra information. The same with everything these days; I'm still waiting for my staff-discount at the supermarket for scanning my own groccceries, and restraunt staff-discount for taking my own order with my own device. No different here sadly
And when you get on a bus now (First Group Bristol, anyway) to find that you can't buy anything other than a single ticket from the driver, and if you do try and buy it from the driver and aren't paying with "cash" (the horror! the horror!) then they just mutter "Tap on, tap off" and don't give you a ticket or even explain WTF that means
"...the force’s non-crime unit head..."
Careless driving is a criminal offence (it's not a civil matter).
So does that mean that Something Will Be Done if I submit clips showing me being inconvenienced and held up all the f-ing time by nose to tail motor traffic, all carrying only a sole person?
I am a Gloucestershire resident and I have been submitting videos of poor driving since August 2020 (https://road.cc/content/news/near-miss-day-461-dangerous-overtake-rain-2...). As far as I know only one report has resulted in points and a fine. When I started they didn't have a system for submitting videos and it had to be done with emails. They then developed their own online system before moving to OpSnap around Dec 2022.
I will just leave these observations here.
The following quote is from the FAQ section of the Gloucestershire OpSnap website : https://operationsnap.gloucestershire.police.uk/faqs
From the above article.
However I would direct you to https://road.cc/content/news/nmotd-674-driver-inconveniences-cyclist-288521 where the officer seems to admit that I was inconvenienced but still no action.
And finally I have uploaded a graph which shows the outcomes of reports by cyclists for 2023. As far as I am aware they haven't published any figures since.
Sometimes whatdotheyknow.com will show an foi request for data though often theyll respond with speeding camera fines data, not dashcam reports data.
But it's rubbish most forces don't publish the data as a matter of course. I think most are trying to quietly ignore the problem, hope people get bored reporting it and they can drop pretending to be interested.
The above graph reflects the data obtained through an FOI request but even that was a struggle. The FOI was submitted in Nov 23 and finally replied to in Jan 24. A couple of links with more info.
https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/cheltenham-news/gloucestershi...
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/operation_snap_submissions_and_o#...
They say they will publish data regularly so if we interpret this as yearly I thought I'd wait till the end of this year before asking for the 2024 data. If it's not forthcoming I guess another FOI will be needed.
Who the f*** is this clown who is meant to be in charge? That is all.
Just like saying that stabbing someone with a 10" zombie knife isn't an offence. Correct, there isn't a specific offence of stabbing someone with a 10" zombie knife, but it is a covered in a general law that allows all such instances to be prosecuted. Dumb pedantic police officer trying to be clever but failing miserably.
As an Engineer.. I dislike these images of 1.5m clearance
To be 1.5m clear - you don't measure from the wheels. Take the handlebars (or half a human) .. It's about 0.3-0.35 too close..
And yet regardless of that engineering point, it would still be more room than the majority of motorists give cyclists.
So I'm happy with a broader brush approach, the day when we can quibble about where the gap should be will be a happy day
Post removed as I was talking rowlocks! Thanks to the more careful reader of the legislation who pointed out my error.
I can tell you what they weren't thinking, and that is that they might need to consider anyone other than other motorists in any shape or form.
As a cyclist being close passed, I consider the surge in my adrenaline levels, the disruption to the airflow around me and the possibility that I don't have enough room to manouevre around a pothole or piece of detritus lying in the road to be plenty inconvenient, thank you very much.
It is not that big a step from a police officer denying cyclists have been inconvenienced when a close pass occurs to the all too familiar "well, I didn't hit you, did I?" that some drivers seem to think is the acceptable standard.
I wonder why more close passes aren't prosecuted as assault as they typically leave the victim fearing for their safety.
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