Big Hello to R242AAC: roundabout jumper

We've had this video for a while, but been keeping quiet about it. Why? because there is a limit of six months for charging anyone for any dangerous driving/careless driving offence, and this driver has been successfully avoiding all attempts by the police to contact him. While that creates a new offence, "failing to report who was driving at the time an offence was committed", again, that has a limit.

This is profound. It means if you can hide for long enough, you can even get away with nearly running over a family at a roundabout.

The video and email came to us from "S":

I have a video of a near miss by a car that failed to stop for me and my nine year old son at a roundabout.

We are cycling up Cotham Road, about to go down over the roundabout to Cotham Hill. Cotham Road is calmer now the zebra crossing is in, and as you can see, the few cars passing on the bank holiday gives my son a wide berth, which is appreciated.

As we approach the roundabout, at 08:00 on 29 of April, I get my son in the correct place to go over, check that nothing is pulling out and we set off. I can hear the sound of a car approaching from the left, from St Michael's Hill, so I warn my son that this this car on the left is the next hazard we are going to worry about -as you can hear in the commentary.

As we get partway over, I pull ahead of my son, to make sure the approach car sees us slows down in good time.

However, instead of looking, instead of slowing down, this car pulls straight out onto the mini roundabout. If I had been about 50cm further ahead, I would have been hit, and if my son had been about 1.5m ahead of where he was, he would have been hit.

The car registration was R242AAC, I repeat this phonetically multiple times after the incident, along with the date and time, and at 1:12 in the video you can see the registration number, along with the Honda logo and the Accord model name.

The driver was a white male, with -I believe -brownish hair. He saw me and waved mildly apologetically as he continues through the junction without slowing down, continuing down Hampton Road. I follow him briefly enough to confirm the registration number, then turn back to see my son.

We are impressed not just by the driver's bravery in pulling out on what can be a busy roundabout without looking, but in their successful attempt to avoid what are apparently repeated attempts by the police to contact the driver, as with a video like this it would be pretty hard to deny your car was there.

We hope that nobody in the Bristol Area manages to spot this dark blue Honda Accord registration number R242AAC, that is R242 AAC and then immediately contacts the Avon and Somerset police on the phone number 101. All readers of this blog must keep an eye out for this car and make sure there are no cyclists in the area, to defend this bold driver from the menace caused by militant troublemakers who video their journeys round the city and complain about such minor things like nearly being killed.

The fact that if you hide for six months you can avoid prosecution is a new one to us. We look forward to using that technique ourselves in the near future.