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news
“Victim blaming garbage” – Police Scotland slated after sharing “cycle safety” video of HGV driver left-hooking cyclist
Police Scotland’s Road Policing Unit has been slated on social media after sharing a five-year-old “cycle safety” video on social media that was widely criticised by cycling campaigners including Chris Boardman when first released in 2016. What’s more, the specific circumstances portrayed in the footage, is one addressed in forthcoming changes to the Highway Code which make it clear that people on bikes have priority when travelling straight on at a junction.
#FifeRP know the @FifeCouncil roads are great for cycling. To support @ProjectEdward we'll be speaking to cyclists today to improve their safety & re-iterate their own responsibilities to other road users.
For guidance follow -https://t.co/qQPkU3ckHrhttps://t.co/hZsEs4oQkM
— Road Policing Scotland (@polscotrpu) September 16, 2021
The video, produced as part of the Department for Transport’s THINK! Road safety campaign and entitled “THINK! Cycle safety: Hang back from lorries turning left,” was uploaded to YouTube in September 2016.
> Fury over Government cycling HGV warning video
It begins with a rather jarring montage, including cartoons, of “Things you shouldn’t get caught between” – including a grand piano being dropped from height, a pair of boxers fighting, a gunfight in a Spaghetti Western and a butcher using a meat cleaver to chop meat – then inserts scenes of a lorry driver and cyclist heading towards a junction, where the driver turns left across the bike rider’s path.
The clip, viewed nearly 300,000 times, ends with a scene of the lorry stopped at the junction, the bicycle crushed beneath its wheels, and a police car and ambulance in the background.
At the time, Boardman said on Twitter that it was a “Desperately misguided campaign that a) tries to make death fun b) vulnerable road user responsible for vehicle not fit for road.”
“Companies, THINK buy lorries that let your poor drivers see more than 70% of the road, they exist,” he added.
Duncan Dollimore of Cycling UK said that the charity had “raised its concerns with this campaign at the earliest stage and we are very disappointed this was not taken on board. Hopefully, following the understandable widespread negative reaction THINK! has received from road safety campaigners, they will rethink and re-engage to learn from their mistakes.”
Dozens of comments beneath the video on YouTube point out the flaws in the message it sends out, with some commenters pointing out it is the driver’s responsibility to ensure they overtake and turn safely and others accusing it of “victim blaming.”
Despite the backlash to the video, Police Scotland’s Road Policing Unit shared it on Twitter yesterday morning, in a tweet referencing Project EDWARD, the acronym standing for European Day Without A Road Death, a Europe-wide initiative launched five years ago by the European Traffic Police Network and supported by the European Commission.
The tweet said: “We'll be speaking to cyclists today to improve their safety & re-iterate their own responsibilities to other road users.” Reaction to the post was unanimously critical.
What contemptible, victim blaming garbage! You think cyclists are getting hit at junctions, trying to undertake left indicating vehicles? They are getting left hooked by vehicles that have just overtaken them or vehicles they have pulled up alongside at a red traffic lights.
— Not The Echo Chamber (@not_chamber) September 16, 2021
Didn't you even read the comments beneath the clip? The lorry driver breaks the law and presumably kills the cyclist, so you're blaming the victim. Amazing.
— R C D Mitchum (@PaulCra33107260) September 16, 2021
Nothing about tipper-drivers (and others) who DGAF? Naaah - it's "speak to cyclists". Cheap, but gives you a tweet.
Inadequate. Inept. FFS - dangerously ignorant messaging. That's not @ProjectEdward. That's ...
a) victim blaming;
b) exonerating the killers on the roads.— gavincooks (@aLeedscyclist) September 16, 2021
One Twitter user highlighted the hierarchy of road users that will shortly be introduced to the Highway Code under new Rule H1, which says that “Those in charge of vehicles that can cause the greatest harm in the event of a collision bear the greatest responsibility to take care and reduce the danger they pose to others,” adding that “This principle applies most strongly to drivers of large goods and passenger vehicles.”
Unbelievable. You shift blame onto the cyclists? With a video of a driver breaking the law? Ever heard of "road hierarchy"? Tweeting this is utterly irresponsible, and shocking evidence of incapacity. pic.twitter.com/C406xiVSfO
— Bummer (@bumm0r) September 16, 2021
Meanwhile, new Rule H3, which applies to drivers and motorcyclists, is clear that cyclists have priority when travelling straight on at a junction. In full, it reads:
You should not cut across cyclists going ahead when turning into or out of a junction or changing direction or lane, just as you would not turn across the path of another motor vehicle. This applies whether cyclists are using a cycle lane, a cycle track, or riding ahead on the road and you should give way to them. Do not turn at a junction if to do so would cause the cyclist going straight ahead to stop or swerve, just as you would do with a motor vehicle. You should stop and wait for a safe gap in the flow of cyclists if necessary. This includes when cyclists are:
approaching, passing or moving off from a junction
moving past or waiting alongside stationary or slow-moving traffic
travelling around a roundabout.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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29 comments
Have Police Scotland’s Road Policing Unit been contacted for a comment to explain why they re-used an inappropriate, misleading, inaccurate, completely useless video of a law-breaking driver killing a cyclist and blaming the victim that was condemned and ridiculed when it was originally released?
I think they should have left it at "don't step into the middle of a (gun) fight", they caught themselves out by trying too hard. Selective concern - if they were really worried on our behalf they'd be proactively nicking drivers doing dangerous / illegal stuff which could lead to injuries to cyclists. As any force that has run the likes of a close pass operation knows it's a sure-fire way to crank up your detection stats. It turns out there's a good correlation between "genuine crims" (incorrect licence, no tax, drugs in the glove compartment) and people who don't give a toss on the road.
any force that has run the likes of a close pass operation
I'm pretty sure that Lancashire has never run a close pass operation, on the grounds that they have never prosecuted anyone for a non-contact close pass (mine was to be the first, but they sabotaged their own prosecution by 'by accepting an offer by the offender's barrister that he would, after all, go on the joke course). One of the perverse consequences of my ceaseless campaign against the anti-cyclist LC, is that they now can't run a close pass operation and publicise it because of me rushing out photos of close passing that they do nothing about.
By the logic implied in the scenario, the lorry driver has priority to turn across all other traffic and it is for the other road users to look out because the lorry is bigger and heavier than their vehicle. So turning right is no problem for the lorry driver, woe betide the driver of oncoming vehicles?
Or, does this priority only apply when turning left - because the only possible vehicle in contention then will be a bicycle, which does not carry the same standing on the road as proper vehicles?
I didn't see that. I saw a lorry and a cyclist heading towards a junction. I don't think a lorry driver running along beside the cyclist would have posed as much danger.
I'm pretty sure the driver is heading towards the junction too, unless we've moved to driverless lorries.
You can't have it both ways, either a lorry and a bicycle or a driver and a cyclist.
I can see the bicycle, I can see the cyclist, I can see the lorry. I can't see the driver. Yes, the lorry must have had a driver but describing the scene as "a lorry driver and cyclist" is perverse.
If you're stopped at a level crossing you wouldn't say you were waiting for a train driver to go past, would you?
Picky!!! (If in fact correct).
And just how, Police Scotland, is a rider supposed to avoid being overtaken on the approach to a junction?
HWC is clear that it is the overtaking driver's responsibility not to do this.
FFS
It's also noticeable how late the lorry driver signals left (he's not signalling in the first shot).
Oh, I'd forgotten that one! Lorry overtakes cyclist on final approach to a junction and turns left across them, but Somehow that's the cyclist's fault for daring to ride in a straight line. Hmm.
Is this victim blaming or just a strong reminder that a lorry is a big, dangerous thing that is hard to control and from which one better stays away?
Even if an excellent, responsible HGV drivers gets it right 10,000 times, you don't want to cycle in the corner the one time he's been distracted...
The LGV driver elected to overtake the rider within metres of intending to take a left turn. This is in direct contravention of the HWC (162, 163 and 167) It was not in the rider's gift to avoid this situation.
The situation outlined would have been manslaughter. PS is telling potential victims of manslaughter not to be killed (without even outlining how that could be achieved)
In the film, the cyclist is actually faster than the lorry - speeding into the gap - it's not the lorry overtaking. So, slowing down the bike would have helped - even if not required by the HWC.
And lorries don't just speed around corners - they must slow down first. Which gives a cyclist some indiciation and some time to react (pulling the brakes) even in bad cases.
So, there are things we could do and others we could avoid to make things less dangerous for us. But just insisting on our rights might have some rather irreversible effects when facing the immediate risk of death...
(But hey, I also tell my kids to check if cars are actually stopping before taking the pedestrians crossing - I never thought of this being victim blaming...)
Unfortunately, that's not ascertainable at the angle due to parallax
HA!
Not good enough - lorry driver still at fault. This merely puts the onus on innocent victims to react effectively to dangerous driving, as a road safety policy.
This I agree with, however that which is appropriate for me to enact, or tell my kids to enact, may not be appropriate for a Police force to broadcast indiscriminately - it is a clear attempt to convey the message that the lorry driver has no agency or culpability, and members of the public have a duty to mitigate for the dangerous driving of others
As "the public" includes folk from all walks of life, trained, untrained, slow, fast, old, young, and kids, all of whom are entitled to use the public highway, the target of the message must be the users of dangerous vehicles, and the message must be backed by hard action against those that demonstrate a risk to the public.
Without this these messages are ineffective, and actually encourage crap, dangerous, driving.
On the one hand you are technically correct - in the very brief section of film included, the cyclist is travelling faster than the lorry, and may be just about behind the lorry when the clip starts. So the cyclist does "speed into the gap".
However, we don't see what came before. Lorries generally travel faster than cyclists - the road is clearly a 20mph limit so a typical lorry would have been travelling at 25mph. A typical urban cyclist travels at roughly 15mph (can't find an official source for this, but seems about right to me and is in line with various non-official estimates). So it's very likely that what we see comes immediately after the lorry overtaking the cyclist. Just because the lorry got a nose in front of the cyclist, why should the cyclist have to slam on the brakes?
Furthermore, even if we accept that the cyclist did catch up with the lorry and start undertaking, whatever happened to mirror, signal, manoever? There's a reason you check mirrors! And there's a reason for signalling too - in the whole of the first clip, the lorry is not indicating despite getting very close to the junction. We only see the lorry indicating in the second clip, literally fractions of a second before starting to turn.
And if the cyclist did 'catch up' with them, since there's no other reason for them not to have completed the turn before the cyclist got there, that pretty much implies that the lorry driver deliberately waited there for them so that they could turn left across them and run them over. Which seems to me to be even worse than just doing it carelessly.
'So, there are things we could do and others we could avoid to make things less dangerous for us. But just insisting on our rights might have some rather irreversible effects when facing the immediate risk of death...
(But hey, I also tell my kids to check if cars are actually stopping before taking the pedestrians crossing - I never thought of this being victim blaming...)'
Steady on, Anke. Our local group-thinkers will not like you saying that. Not at all. Don't you DARE to be sensible and realistic and pragmatic. No way!
I think you have mistaken the argument. At the moment it is whether a left hook was executed.
Well when as per the cyclist in this video,you've got a truck (and b******s is that thing 1.5metres away in the video or doing only 20mph) whose turning wheels are basically head height and you know falling anywhere near this thing is instant death, I'm pretty maxed out on the strong reminders trucks are big and very dangerous already, and I've not even mentioned the panic you get as the aero effect of the side of the truck at speed sucks you towards the rear wheels.
I've never ridden and never would ride like the example they portray, I dont know any cyclist who would, we arent that suicidal.
But I have a number of times been put in a position by professional truck drivers who have overtaken me, and then immediately turned across me,or in front of me, causing me to choose to be crushed or try and brake full stop not come off,escape onto pavement, anything but end up just another statistic.
The real life sequence of that video is the cyclist is out front riding completely normally, the truck starts indicating left but wants to get to this junction before the cyclist for no real reason other than MGIF, so accelerates to overtake the cyclist, who realises they are in imminent danger,but has limited options and tries to back out of the way,hope people following the truck have even seen theres a cyclist rapidly stopping, and the truck makes the turn in a mix of air brake noise,transmission,gear grinding and load leaping about as the left rear wheel rides over the kerb. Leaving the cyclist to stare at the kerb and realise their own mortality.
How about. "Motorist/Lorry/Bus Driver. Do not overtake a cyclist and immediately turn left". Especially with the changes in the HC coming up.
The cyclist doesn't accelerate into the near side of the turning rigid. He's level with the truck as it turns so doesn't see the indicator to scrub his speed. The driver has started an overtake then brakes heavily to turn forcing the cyclist into the drivers blind spot. The HC in its current form explicitly states that a motorist shouldn't overtake and immediately turn across the path of a cyclist. The new version now emphasises that the cyclist has priority at the junction if already ahead.
Yesterday I had a girl pull out in front of me with 10m to spare because some oncoming fool had flashed her out. I had a van driver overtake me and cut me up missing me by inches when moving off from a set of lights to immediately park up 30 feet past the lights. I also had three attempted left hooks. Fortunately I was heavy enough on my brakes to avoid an incident
When learning to drive over 30 years ago it was impressed on me that I had a huge responsibility to ensure the safety of pedestrians and cyclists and to give them priority if the were ahead of me or had committed to a manoeuvre
The sooner our devolved governments and respective Police Forces start reminding motorists that they aren't the top of the food chain and have a duty of care to others the better
The Inter-Police Anti-Cyclist Competition is hotting up! An early lead from Wiltshire was threatened by North Yorkshire, but they are both blindsided by a five year old resurrected victim-blaming vid from Scotland.
I am waiting with bated breath for the next instalment. When does the judging committee meet to decide the winner?
Sadly we are seeing policing with an agenda now not upholding in the law
Punched in the face? That's OK, what you were displaying was offensive (even though they have a right to display it).
Blocking the highway? Are you comfortable enough, can we get you a cushion? Cup of tea?
Sickening the way it's going.
You might think so, but only because the two examples you provide are not equivalent; one is an illegal assault on an innocent person, the other is, as confirmed by the Supreme Court, a perfectly legal protest.
Do they not have access to a cyclist so that they can check that they're not posting victim blaming crap?
Clearly not
Nah mate; they phased out police bicycles 50 years ago 'cos they was too efficient, init. And there ain't no way they're talking to civilian cyclists is there?
Do they not have access to a cyclist so that they can check that they're not posting victim blaming crap?
Obviously not! Instances of how little the police know about their enemies the cyclists have abounded on this site: we had Essex saying that a close pass wasn't significant because the cyclist on the video 'hadn't wobbled or brakes', Northumberland wanted to stop cyclists being on the road 'at busy times', South Wales soon followed up with 'stay off the roads at night' etc. etc. I know that the only criterion of a prosecutable close pass accepted by Lancashire is that the motorist was hit by the cyclist, and even then this is deemed to be a necessary but not a sufficient condition.