Coach driver who close passed cyclist avoids fine thanks to incorrectly worded police letter

I read either here (or onTwitter) that there is a get-out for the 14 day NIP rule.  It sounded like the Police have (conveniently) made it an absolute rule in their minds, like what happens with GDPR and recognisable images of people and vehicles where law enforcement and the public domaine are concerned.  Drivers promote this thinking as it suits them.

Unfortunate result from Northumberland Police I am in two minds as to whether that was a deliberate punishment pass or complete impatience from the driver of the bus.

The driver appeared to hold the line passing the cyclist until the last possible minute before he almost violently swerved to avoid the parked cars in front of him. 

The point where the bus overtook the cyclist is a natural pinch point in the road and it widens significantly just before where the cars are parked.  Meaning the driver moved out as soon as he could after the pinch point.

Either way it's shocking driving from a professional driver.

As someone else mentioned, this company has school run contracts with Northumberland C.C. Ovington is on a bus route so you will get larger vehicles going through.

To be fair to Northumbria Police their reporting system for camera footage is very good and they have replied to all the submissions I've made. Try sending this story into the Hexham Courant, bit of bad publicity usually works.

How many other motoring prosecutions have been compromised by this 'mistake'?

Hundreds? Thousands? Presumably Northumbria Police use a standard pro-forma letter. Have any other cases arisen where similar letters were sent out and court proceedings had to be dropped?

This smells as fishy as a Craster kipper.

That looks more like Jubilee Road than Coal Lane - the two merge at the beginning of the village. As well as being on an NCN route Jubilee Road is a regular bus route, is used for school buses (probably something Rowells do under contract to the county council) and is used as a short cut to the A69. The problem of people rat running to the A69 through Ovington was exacerbated when the next junction along (by Bearl) was closed to traffic going east onto the A69 because of the conflict with traffic coming from Stamfordham - rather than go west to the next roundabout traffic from Stocksfield comes along the river road then up through Ovington.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Northumbria Police for issuing the FPN in the first place, giving feedback to the submitter and owning up to their mistake. Most importantly they do seem to want to correct it. If only all police forces were as good as this.

As for the bus driver, he's only following the example set by our leaders by using the law to get away with morally indefensible actions.

There is a good chance that the driver will learn from this. They can't rely on getting away with future FPNs in the same way and it would probably affect their employment adversely. At the end of the day we want behavioural change and the actions of the police in this case may well achieve this.

Even the Filth are not thick enough to have failed to work out the rules governing NIPs by now- what else do they have to know?- in Lancashire they don't waste time studying the Highway Code. This is a deliberate 'error' to give themselves a get-out from having to take some action. This case was supposedly 'actioned' but they just give the minimal- probably 'words of advice'

At least they're a force that will issue FPN's from camera footage and this procedural error has been corrected.