Near Miss of the Day 527: Land Rover driver passes between cyclist and fuel tanker

The two letters at the start of the registration are a geographical code. In this case it's Oxford.  

I think at the most basic level they think it's your fault, for cycling on "dangerous road". It's as if you were a canoer canoeing down a dangerous river - obviously it's not the river's fault if you come a cropper. They don't understand the difference. They don't want to.

There are many reasons; we're an out group, so not like real people, the media is almost entirely anti-cyclist, the laws are pathetic and the chances of drivers paying for their callous indifference is tiny, life isn't fair.  I'm sure there are plenty more.

 we're an out group, so not like real people, the media is almost entirely anti-cyclist, the laws are pathetic and the chances of drivers paying for their callous indifference is tiny

I think that's a bit unfair on 'the media'- it's mainly the hyper-junk media- principally Mail, Express and Sun. They, along with the police and (to a slightly less extent, the courts) are The Enemy. Otherwise, agreed!

wtjs wrote:

 we're an out group, so not like real people, the media is almost entirely anti-cyclist, the laws are pathetic and the chances of drivers paying for their callous indifference is tiny

I think that's a bit unfair on 'the media'- it's mainly the hyper-junk media- principally Mail, Express and Sun. They, along with the police and (to a slightly less extent, the courts) are The Enemy. Otherwise, agreed!

OK, show me some media which gives cyclists a fair shot.  Which shows that cycling has incredible health benefits, reducing diabetes, cancer, obesity and death.  Show me some media that reports that cycling reduces congestion.  Show me some media that reports that cycling reduces pollution, or climate change or inequality.

Almost all the media for the past forty years at least, has ignored cycling whilst promoting cars, electric cars and everything except cycling.  The real problem in the UK is that the media is owned and controlled by drivers, including the BBC, and there simply is no such thing as a free press.

That's a long list of boxes to tick, but fair enough.  "Some media" is a tall order, but one medium is here:  https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/cycling. 

To a lesser extent (given the list of objectives) you could try another medium at https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/cycling?CMP=ILC-refresh... although that does include a lot of "things you need to kniow before you buy a helmet" (and falls into the presumed effectiveness line) and "top ten best widgets" types of articles.  But even the bike media are "guilty" of those articles.

Tricky, isn't it!

Fair enough, there is the odd exception, but that serves to show quite how bad are all the rest.  I gave up reading the Guardian many years ago when they had a centre page spread about a modular car, on bike to work day.

Get a camera, find out how to submit footage to the local police, and bombard them with footage. Not normally a shortage unless you wear the camera on your helmet which does seem to cut down on close passes a little. When you get unsatisfactory responses you need to contact the local PCC as in NMOTD 528. It may not work but I can't see a better way at the moment. I've started the process in Gloucestershire. Sadly no progress so far but it's early days yet, they only put a proper system in place in November 2020. I began submitting footage in August last year.

zero_trooper wrote:

I thought that the driving was shocking, but the police response is almost as bad. From the article it appears that this 'no update' is official policy. You report an incident, you get an acknowledgment (?) and then nothing. You have no idea if they did anything at all.

Disgraceful!

EDIT: I've re-read the article and apparently there is a positive outcome, you just don't know what, which is strange.

There are a number of police forces around the country who treat the recipient of a close pass as a witness to an offence rather than a victim (because, obviously, you can only be a victim if they actually hit you).

That status means they don't need to tell you anything. 

It's no good a letter or take 3 points, there needs to be a practical demo too of what is actually like on the receiving end.

There isn't going to be any 'practical demonstration', but there could be points- this is the only worthwhile outcome. The letters are worthless because the institutionally bone-idle police will make sure they mistakenly fail to notice any previous 'warnings' when the driver does it again.

But does 3 points make any difference even to insurance? My wife got 3 points for speeding on the A1 years ago. Insurance company treated it as business as usual and the premium was unaffected.

hirsute wrote:

But does 3 points make any difference even to insurance? My wife got 3 points for speeding on the A1 years ago. Insurance company treated it as business as usual and the premium was unaffected.

a single sp30 is like that because they are so common, insurance company view is (I assume) that the difefrence between someone with one speeding offence and someone with none is the one with none was lucky.

3 points for other offences may be treated differently. And multiple speedinign convictions makes a difference.

https://www.keithmichaels.co.uk/convicted-driver-car-insurance/info/conv...

I assume that certain DL offence codes are treated differently by motor insurance companies.

Quite, you can't ignore three points on a driving licence.

There are speed awareness courses and I even know someone who took a smart motorway awareness course. They aren't issuing 3 pointers in 'marginal' cases so they can't offer the alternative of a course. Either that or they know that the animosity towards Cyclists is so ingrained that they'll never change the way these shits drive.

hirsute wrote:

What is the answer to this ?

Root and branch review of the legal system as it applies to roads, as what we have now clearly isn't working.  Just like the government promised seven or eight years ago?

Road laws were written by drivers, for drivers; we need laws written by the vulnerable for the vulnerable.

we can have all the laws on the statute books we like, but if theres no enthusiasm or effort to enforce them, and no recognition among the general public at large they need to follow them, then a cyclists lot on the road wont improve one bit.

stonojnr wrote:

we can have all the laws on the statute books we like, but if theres no enthusiasm or effort to enforce them, and no recognition among the general public at large they need to follow them, then a cyclists lot on the road wont improve one bit.

One of the reasons that there is so little enthusiasm for prosecuting dangerous and illegal driving is the difficulty of proving it, because the laws are so vague and ill-defined.  Who wants to waste time on a court case that the jury will not convict on?  If we had laws which were much clearer and therefore easier to convict on, I'm pretty sure enthusiasm would rise.

Relating quality of driving to standards in the Driving Test would be a start.

Removing some of the subjectivity.

I doubt this was motivated by saving a few seconds, and more about utter contempt for a cyclist and the ability to intimidate the cyclist with no chance of retaliation. There needs to be a law change that requires all police forces to treat close pass videos as evidence of a road traffic offence, and for their responses to be available for scrutiny. If they cannot justify 'no action taken' then the culprit must have points and a fine as the minimum. No warning letters, it is an offence that could have resulted in death. Would they give someone swirling a hammer in someone's face a warning letter?