Near Miss of the Day 470: Terrifying head-on close pass (+ video)

Essex Police have updated their site after an overhaul

Experience tells me that they have updated it into a bin where it is preordained that most cases are filed straight in the bin and you won't hear anything about what they have done- knowledge of human (police) nature indicates that they have adopted the principle of 'out of sight, out of mind'. When they won't admit to what they have done, when all it would take is a quick email, it's because what they have done is treated the incident as a joke and they don't want people to know

But you don't live in Essex so your experience is irrelevant.

You need to let go of this bitterness; it is not good for you.

On the contrary! I feel I can safely ignore your opinion on what is 'good for me' with rather more justification than your dismissal of any experience which does not happen to involve Essex, which I admit to not having visited for 45 years. The 'bitterness', which is really cynicism born of experience, is what has kept me going through police complaints and letters to my MP and has led to the present spate of what are now 10 digitally signed statements for prosecutions which are reputed to be going ahead- for offences dating back to 30.9.19. Unfortunately, the courts are knackered at the moment, so none has arrived there yet. You give me proof of your prosecutions, and I'll provide proof of mine! It could become a long term project of ours. PS Warning letters and 'having a word with him' don't count, but I'm prepared to accept the odd 'driving course'.

You have that back to front. You told me what the outcome would be in Essex based on your experience of Lancs. You tried to impose your experiences onto me with no knowledge of my experiences. Why did you think that was ok?

I thought it was OK because it is. It's called disagreement, and I would have thought that someone with 2500 posts on this forum alone might have grasped that by now. I think that any organisation with 'partnership' in its title is either a mental health trust or something dodgy, and that's just for a start. When the 'partnership' writes: Essex Police will review your submission in line with current prosecution policies and the decision on how the matter is dealt with is final, I become even more suspicious. The Big Con is that it's still the police who make the decision to do nothing, but the hapless punter is expected to believe that it's the Faceless Partnership which has ordained that the police decision is final. It isn't- complain against the Idle *******s.

You have to fight tooth and nail against the inherent police indolence and the institutional opinion that no offence against cyclists is a real offence unless, as a basic minimum, it is accompanied by a lot of cyclist blood on the road. I don't think that attitude is compatible with my continued survival and I therefore campaign against it. All my successes with the equally indolent Lancashire Constabulary have occurred following doggedly persistent complaints, letters to MP etc. The police invariably choose to do nothing initially, and if you do not object they will deploy the standard excuses for doing nothing, such as 'we must have x minutes of video before and after the incident'. You can choose to accept the action of SERP even when they won't tell you what the action is and it's very likely to be not very much, or you can fight against it- your choice. Below is the result of a recent battle- it's a screenshot of the front of the MG11 magistrates Court Statement form- as I said: I'll show my court documents if you show yours

Whilst that might be the case here, it isn't elsewhere and this person has shown he cannot be trusted to check on it is safe to pull a simple manouvre so needs to be off the roads. 

@AlsoSomniloquism couldn't agree more that this guy is too dangerous for driving in public roads. This incident has to be reported.

But when we ride, we must use common sense to survive first of all and not trying to become martyrs when trying to establish our achieved road rights.

We (the Royal we) didn't achieve anything by staying out of the way of the cars. *We* need to report dangerous driving every single opportunity. We need more cyclists on the road, not less. This driver is going to kill someone, and at least we now have on record one attempt. 

Haloric wrote:

We need more cyclists on the road, not less. This driver is going to kill someone, and at least we now have on record one attempt. 

Completely agree!  We should 100% behind people commited to holding up our rights on the road

Quite. 

"but can you account for every second in the two minutes leading up to the assault, in detail. We need to ensure that there was no provocation or excuse..."

Umm, you press record at the start of your trip and stop at the end.

Let's hope that nothing happens before minute seven of your ride.

 worth considering a camera upgrade for the future

I doubt if he needs an upgrade (but I'm happy to be corrected by the OP). Most of us have to compress the file down for public viewing here and the original is considerably better, but might be hundreds of MB. Mostly, I only switch my camera on for known hotspots, although I do miss the odd close pass that way. I only send cases to the police with unequivocal car identification, because they're always going to claim an inability to locate a doubtful plate. They have claimed on several occasions to be 'unable to contact' definite number plates where the overtaking car had to swerve in hard back across the unbroken white line in front of me to avoid colliding with the oncoming vehicle. It is basically police idleness- and I write that on the day I have received 2 statements to sign digitally for claimed prosecutions of 2 vehicles crashing red lights 20 minutes apart (1.1 and 0.7 seonds after the lights turned red). These prosecutions, if they come about, are only being made because I sent an annoyingly detailed and comprehensive letter to my MP and he wrote so promptly to the police that I was amazed.

At 14 minutes total that would be 6-7 GB on a GoPro Hero 7 Black, and would be on 2 files. They're making it up!