Devon cyclists to be given helmet cameras to help catch dangerous drivers

I added up the number of traffic offences I've personally initiated this year and it's over 150

I'm going to have to temper my sceptical tone if more officers like Inspector K turn up!

Although anyone who follows road.cc over a period of a few months will notice the significant disparity between forces.
Why is there no agreed standard for forces to work to and assess against?

I don't know. 43 forces - 43 ways of doing things. 
 

localism, which is baked In to policing due to the organisation structure, can also mean that a force sets its priorities according to what are perceived to be the local hot topics. Each PCC sets their own priorities, each chief sets theirs and so on, leading to differences in budget sizes and teams. Each local force gets a different proportion of its funding from central and local government for example. For those forces in less affluent areas central government funding is a larger factor than local precepts. 
 

There was a drive long ago to regionalisation which would have simplified things across country but that appears to have withered on the vine. 
 

Roads policing is not generally an area that attracts attention as it leads inevitably to people getting prosecuted for their driving.  This is unpopular with the voters.

In my area according to surveys  road safety is something the community care about so I've been able to invest some resources into improving it - interestingly on social media when we deal with antisocial driving and parking we tend to get lots of appreciative comments.  One of our best results this year (14k in drugs money recovered) was from a "speeding" stop. 
 

anyway my point is, according to Sir Robert Peel "the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence"  

as such citizens proving us information that allows us to make the roads safer can only be a good thing.  And video evidence is very persuasive  

I don't know. 43 forces - 43 ways of doing things.

Pretty convincing- this seems like authentic and valuable horse's mouth stuff to me.

Your last para
This is the nub though, you only have to read road.cc to see forces have a different attitude to safety and incidents in one area get completely different results to another as much as nfa to nip.
Let's not mention the chap whose video was sent from one Welsh police station to another until the 14 days elapsed.

Yeah, just amazed no cyclist ever thought to do this off their own bat. Submit video evidence to the police, eh? Novel.

The _Kaner wrote:

https://www.stickybottle.com/latest-news/irish-cyclist-fined-gardai-over...

You can't win....

We will

That article is a shit storm - but is signalling a legal requirement for cyclists and very few cameras would pick up your signal. Also, positioning and swerving is surely part of the context of the road and what's going on in the environment. Madness!

HWC 67 - "You should .... Give a clear signal to show other road users what you intend to do".

HWC "MUST" rules are backed up by a clear statutory provision; "should" rules are not, but range from "sensible advice" (eg helmets and clothing), "best practice" all the way to "you're at risk of an eager PC charging you with an offence if you don't, and don't rely on the Magistrates letting you off".

There are occasions when I "should" signal, but when the hands are occupied keeping me upright and allowing me to brake, the signal has to be skipped in favour of not crashing!  I thought that there was a particular provision in the HWC that said as much, that there might be times and circumstances where it would not be possible to signal, but it's not in the bicycle rules section.  And it's always possible that either I have misremembered, or the HWC has been revised in such a way that such wording was dropped.

Pretty ****ing stupid of the Gardai, though.  They clearly don't get the concept that a motor vehicle driven badly presents a serious risk to others, whereas a bicycle ridden badly rarely does. And the harm done by each is on a wholly different scale.

From the website

"A cyclist who submitted videos of drivers he alleged had overtaken him in a dangerous manner has been told by gardaí the drivers would be fined and would get penalty points.

But the gardaí have also issued the cyclist with two €40 fines because they said his own videos showed him cycling without due care."

Two drivers fined and given points is a great result. OK the 40 euro fines aren't ideal but hopefully these two drivers will be more careful in future potentially saving other cyclists lives. An act of true altruism and a win in my book.

I am coming to the conclusion that one of the reasons forces ask for 2mins before and after is to check on the cyclists behaviour.

northlondon wrote:

I wonder what cameras they are using?

Quote:

The cameras look like helmet-mounted lights, so they’re not particularly noticeable

I'm guessing not the one in the lead picture then. 

Drift Ghost XL Action Camera

The more recent of the very large number of comments below this Devon Live article redress the balance - there are many well-argued, articulate ripostes. The viafoura system that the [county] 'Live' group of regional news sites use to manage comments always email a commenter to tell them their original comment has been responded to, so hopefully at least some of these will have been read.