Near Miss of the Day 657: Overtaking driver pulls into path of oncoming cyclist

They can only cope with one hazard at a time, clearly...

Just to be Devil's Advocate (or at least to put some perspective on this).

How many serious close passes are there in a day? I would suggest they are uncountable as I reckon that every day I cycle I will see one. How many cyclists a day doing significant mileage?

How many people now have video cameras?

How many are reported to the police?

Now for the police to review the footage and determine a course of action, and do the paperwork logging the incident and respond to the complainant, you are probably looking at about 30 minutes an incident even for no action. If they go through the admin to send a letter, you are probably up to an hour. If you want a court date, you are probably looking at a day - half a day court attendance plus preparation.

The numbers don't add up, do they?

My daughter is in the CID and deals with shootings. Here is an annecdote to put things in perspective. They had a suspected drug dealer go to their Northern city from London and he contrived to get himself shot. When arrested, he was also a victim. He got an order barring him from the city. On release, they had a duty of care so they had to be sure he would not get shot again - or not take revenge. They needed to remove him from the city so they could be shown to have enforced the barring order. He contrived to have no money or phone, so he had no means of travelling. In the end, two officers spent their Sunday morning taking the scrote to the train station, placing him on the train to fulfil their duty of care. They had to use their own money to put him on the train (claim to be made) including giving him cash as he could not otherwise buy a tube ticket. The alternative was a 400 mile round trip in a police car. In the mean time, the perpetrator of the shooting remains unknown as the victim will not cooperate with the police to provide evidence. That case will be ongoing for any number of police hours, to add to the dozens of other shootings that occur regularly in that city - my daughters' team only deals with non-fatal shootings as their full time occupation.

So the point is, infuriating as it is to get no response, the reality is that to the police, an incident that does not result in actual harm is miniscule in relation to their other workload - what was it 1% success rate in rape prosecutions headlined recently? While the police will have prevention initiatives and recognise the benefit, they really have not got the capacity to deal with the volume of criminal incidents. I think there is a fundamental dishonesty about the situation, in part because if the police admit the extent that they are overrun then that becomes part of the problem, but we see lawlessness in every day interactions even outside cycling. My prime example, as a walker, I shouted "Slow down!" as a car passed at speed. I got stalked by the driver for 10 minutes and he said to me "I should have smacked you one." 

It is not a cycling problem, though it is a driver psychology problem as we see with apparently reasonable people showing "road rage" continually, but also it is a wider problem with the breakdown of community.

Fair point however : It must take less time to view footage than to mount a close pass operation. If feedback is given, an additional 5 minutes, then submitters can be more selective in what they send in, certainly true in my case, again saving time in the long run. Finally of course if some action is taken then driver behaviour may change, more people will cycle and may be the planet can be saved and the police can get on with dealing with other crimes like the one you describe.

IanMSpencer wrote:

So the point is, infuriating as it is to get no response, the reality is that to the police, an incident that does not result in actual harm is miniscule in relation to their other workload - what was it 1% success rate in rape prosecutions headlined recently? While the police will have prevention initiatives and recognise the benefit, they really have not got the capacity to deal with the volume of criminal incidents. I think there is a fundamental dishonesty about the situation, in part because if the police admit the extent that they are overrun then that becomes part of the problem, but we see lawlessness in every day interactions even outside cycling. My prime example, as a walker, I shouted "Slow down!" as a car passed at speed. I got stalked by the driver for 10 minutes and he said to me "I should have smacked you one." 

It is not a cycling problem, though it is a driver psychology problem as we see with apparently reasonable people showing "road rage" continually, but also it is a wider problem with the breakdown of community.

All of which is a perfect argument for drivers having their competence to drive retested at regular intervals, instead of being able to take a driving test at age 17 and then drive with inpunity for the next 53 years, whilst also ignoring multiple changes to the highway code they were tested on. 

Exactly.

The police are lumbered with the laws they have to work with.

The problem is that as the majority of the population are motorists, it takes a wise and determined politician significant effort to reform law that their electorate see as infringing their "RIGHT" to drive. When was the last time you saw a politician like that in power?

I agree, there's a lot of pressure put on the police.

Looking at it from a wider society angle though, the time spent by police correcting/educating drivers would probably save time spent by other services (e.g. NHS) if future RTCs are avoided. Personally, I think we should increase police funding to focus on making roads safer and then maybe more people will switch to active transport which will lead to saving a lot more money.

Good point.

Same same with investment in infra - would eventually 'pay for itself'.

The police are wasting massive amounts of time on ineffectively policing 'serious' cases such as the ones you mention at little or no benefit to the community they serve and do not properly police dangerous driving offences which are a far more significant and widespread problem.

I dont see how they can even send a letter on this one, if the vehicle had maintained the line it took as it overtook, then the cyclist going the other way would be in a KSI collision.

they werent, so the driver must have steered the vehicle back to the correct side of the road to leave a gap, but the footage doesnt show that, so even though we might suspect it was too close, it cant be proved.

and I think even with warning letters there is an evidence based threshold that has to be passed.

I'd agree - the video doesn't show clear evidence in my opinion.

It's a bit of a learning curve with cam footage to figure out what the police find useful or not, so it's often worth submitting stuff that you're not sure of just to find out. Unfortunately, there'll always be opportunities to submit clear, unequivocal footage of bad driving.

hawkinspeter wrote:

It's a bit of a learning curve with cam footage to figure out what the police find useful or not, so it's often worth submitting stuff that you're not sure of just to find out. 

The trouble is it's difficult to learn when the police are so infuriatingly inconsistent; with the Met one can send in two incidents of the same type a week apart and the clearly milder one will get an NIP and the more severe one NFA. There is surely a case for a dedicated national centre with specially trained operatives who could post examples of what they will and won't prosecute. Given the number of bad drivers out there it would surely be self funding.

Well, it's very similar to the situation so commonly encountered during close-passes when the vehicle comes from behind. There is just about enough width in the road for both a car and a cyclist to occupy the lane without contact if the cyclist dives to the very edge. The fact that the oncoming cyclist squeezed through the narrow gap without being hit doesn't mean the car driver had made a safe overtake. It gave no buffer for even a slight deviation further into the road by the cyclist.

it doesnt, but the crucial part is theres no evidence in the video that shows that the overtake was bad, we might infer it from our experiences, but we cant demonstrate that was the case.

At least with close passes and a vehicle from behind, the camera captures the distance with which the vehicle has passed you, even if its never as perfect to see the whole pass in context, here weve only got well that looked kind of bad, and probably was for the other cyclist, but if they havent lodged a report either with maybe their cam view, I dont see its possible to move forward on it.

and as I said before I believe warning letters have an evidential threshold they must pass, they arent just a catch all for the things the police/cps dont want to take forward to prosecute in court, they simply at the low end of outcomes.

Yes, that was my shout of dismay as I realised that a third car had come past me!

On your first sentence I'm in agreement. Front facing camera evidence might have been more forthcoming but with the rear just showing the aftermath of the cyclist coming past, and whilst everyone watching can make the general assumption, legal evidence cannot be assumptive really and needs to be definitive. We saw with Rendel that the driver / defence stated spurious lies for the actions taken off camera (even with an additional witness behind him) which meant the driver was let off even though they sped past the turning cyclist with inches to spare. 

But yes, it would have been nice if the Police did monitor the numberplate as well. 

Yes, this frustrates me too. It's too all-or-nothing. I can accept that the video wouldn't have supported a court hearing. But it strikes me there could be other ways to modify driver behaviour that are proportionate to the evidence. In a case such as this one, a letter to the driver suggesting that they would do well to pay more attention to the requirements of safe overtaking (and an explanation of why they are being contacted) could have a susbtantial impact for minimal resource expenditure (relative to a court case). Sure, some drivers will just ignore a letter and go on driving as before. But I suspect for many well-intentioned but insufficiently careful drivers, receiving a letter from the police could have all the impact needed to transform their approach to other road users.