VU61HXM : Nissan Driver doing clifton roundabouts "french style" in the snow

We're an organisation which believes in data and experimentation. We have time for experts.


Normally we can't be arsed to send videos of near misses to A&S police on the basis that it seems an exercise in futility. Let's look at the track record of our limited number of attempts

1. Sept 2012, R242AAC. Shoots out a roundabout, nearly hits the parent. Outcome: Five penalty points. Notable that (then) Cllr Jon Rogers was pulled in early —is this the way to get a result?
2. April 2014: Double-overtaking driver of Peugeot L861CDW nearly runs over family. Outcome: A&S Police Sergeant tells off cyclist for swearing when they think their son is about to die.
3. Feb 2016, SWC scaffolds van HK15FYH. Reporting this van driving over a roundabout while texting involved cycling to Chipping Sodbury to hand over a CD with the video and file a report. When followed later that month, nobody had any record of it. Chipping Sodbury Police: "we passed it on". A&S HQ "we have no record". 

It's got worse. We've gone from Prosecute to Won't Prosecute to No Record of Incident. And that with  a trip to Yate added in.

It's 2019, three years since the last experiment. And this one merits it. A Nissan Note nearly being driven into a cyclist because the driver has chosen to drive the wrong side of the mini roundabout, in winter conditions, where the cyclist is forced to swerve into snow and ice to avoid the car driving into the side of them.

Our tax dodger (expendable) is coming into Clifton on Suspension Bridge road, heading towards the more interesting parts of the city. Because all the side roads are iced up, the main roads are the only options, and there, the central lane where enough traffic has melted the snow.

Our cyclist carefully cycles round the roundabout, making a controlled turn through the junction, avoiding snow, avoiding banking into the turn, lining up perfectly to exit in the snow and ice-free part of the road -the only place to be in these conditions.

Except, what's that engine noise coming from the right hand side? It's the Nissan Note VU61HXM, also taking the roundabout, this time on the completely opposite side of the roundel. If they have a driving license, it had better be a French one. And they have to be able to say more than "quoi? je comprende pas? Est-ce-que il-y-a une probleme?" when questioned.



In normal weather conditions, that would be an selfish and dangerous thing to do. In snow conditions, conditions where the police and met office were warning everyone to think before they travel, and take care when they do —it's tantamount to attempted murder.

The cyclist was: positioned on the snow free part of the road, carefully using their (hydraulic disc) brakes, riding with tyres (2.4" Conti Mountain King ) suited to bad weather, and taking corners really, really carefully, both hands gripping the wide bars for maximum control. Oh, and avoiding the side roads which don't get swept or gritted.

The driver "Oh, this cyclist is taking too long, I'll just dive across the road. Oh, they are shouting and waving. I shall carry on without slowing down or changing my line —they shouldn't have come up the inside of me"

When you see a car aiming straight for the side of you, there's no point trying to argue rights of way, it's time to make an emergency turn into the snow -avoiding braking at the saame time as that's guaranteed to lead to a fall. Then, once to side, controlled deceleration.


If there had been any ice underneath, this would have caused a fall, and, with a car twenty centimetres away, guaranteed injury. We wonder what the driver would have said then —aassuming they stopped at all.

Certainly driving off seemed to be their sole reaction to the near-collision



It's interesting to look back. They only come up behind the bike within the last ten seconds of the approach to the junction —the time the cyclist is gently slowing down. And, irony of irony, because the tax-dodging cyclist stopped to let the family cross the zebra crossing. If instead they'd gone straight over the crossing (the kids hadn't stepped out, so it'd have been legal, albeit antisocial), then VU61HXM wouldn't have had a chance to run over the cyclist.

At the junction itself the driver didn't even make any attempt to drive legally. Look at the angle of the front wheel. They were lined up right from the outset to cut across the roundabout and the cyclist.  Not a moment of hesitation, not even to safely assess whether there were any drivers approaching from the right. The decision to drive on the wrong side of the mini roundabout had been made before they started to pull out.


And it's not like they "just" went onto the painted roundel. They barely grazed it with the passenger side wheels.


The rear view also shows how close they come knocking the cyclist off. With the wide angle lens, that is probably within 15 cm.


The only way to put a safe gap in was to put both hands on those MTB bars bars and steer into the snow, while taking care to stay upright.



This is one of the worse bits of driving experienced for a while. In the worst road conditions Bristol has experienced for almost a year.  In terms of actions, it makes the cut for the CPS guidelines for prosecuting dangerous driving.

• failing to have a proper and safe regard for vulnerable road users such as cyclists
• overtaking which could not have been carried out safely;
• disregard of traffic lights and other road signs, which, on an objective analysis, would appear to be deliberate;

And particularly:

• a brief but obvious danger arising from a seriously dangerous manoeuvre. 

Let's see what happens. Filing planned for Saturday, with the full "dull" long video and a detailed statement; will do a followup in the week to make sure the NIP is in the post, then we'll see whether this makes the cut as something worthy of the CPS's time. Oh and this time: ruthlessness from our side. Missing report: escalate. Failure to prosecute: escalate and publicise.

If A&S police don't do better than they have done in the 2014 and 2016 experiments, they may as well cancel their safe passing program and give out Nissan Notes instead.

Dear Redland-based driver of Audi YS12ZPX

We've discussed before the concept of a "Redland Mum": a parent who is prepared to injure other road users in order to make sure that they get to school at pickup and dropoff time. It's why the ten minutes before the school gate close and open events are one of the hazardous times.

This video of a driver endangering a cyclist was taken at 15:00, in Redland, so meets many of the checklist items. You'd have to know their final destination to know if this was a genuine "Redland Mum school run", or just a "Redland Audi Driver in a hurry". We've included the letter the owner shall receive.

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Dear Redland-based driver of Audi YS12ZPX

As promised, here's the video of you going by at a distance I didn't consider acceptable. And, as there was nobody oncoming to squeeze past, no justification at all other than selfish indifference.

Just because you are in a hurry does not justify endangering other Bristolians.

• All it would have taken would have been a small wobble on the bike for a collision. Which if it had occurred would have had adequate video recordings for any prosecution.
• The police are now cycling round the city, enforcing the 1.5m distance from the cyclist which they consider safe. "Careless Driving" is what they prosecute on, ~3 points and its impact on insurance premiums.
  
• Your actions reinforce the reputation that Audi drivers have for being selfish and dangerous.

You didn't even get anywhere, did you? You ended up at the traffic queue at the top of Redland hill. That's the one which is there every afternoon, so you should have been able to predict it.
Not only was I able to catch up, I had to wait at the zebra crossing for you to pull out.

Which comes round to the final point. Your actions were actually counterproductive, weren't they? An extra 50cm of clearance and you wouldn't have been held up at the crossing. Instead you were delayed when you clearly didn't want to be, and now have the video of your driving up online for all to see.

Please, give a little bit more clearance when you pass, maybe even be a bit more patient when trying to drive across the city. Dangerously passing someone just to get to the next traffic queue achieves nothing.

Fixie Riders: don't Slipstream Mountain Bikes

It's January, and you can see who is out and about on their new fixie bike. This rear view video show our (expendable, tax-dodging) reporter turning off St Pauls Road, Clifton, onto Pembroke Road,
at a double-mini-roundabout put in to break Satnav. And coming up from the triangle, along Queen's Road, here comes someone in a shiny clean fixie, who decides to slipstream our reporter (expendable, tax-dodging).



This is where they a number of mistakes

1. Cycling behind someone on a bike without letting them know you are there. Risk: the rider in front might perform some manoeuvre without warning.
2. Cycling directly behind the bike, rather than off to one side, generally further from the pavement. Risk: you have to be able to stop as fast as the bike in front.
3. Cycling behind a mountain bike while you have a fixed wheel bike,
   albeit with a front brake.

We'll assume they were a bit drubbed from the climb and so didn't feel like passing, but they should have hung off to one side. At the very least, when they got behind our reporter (tax-dodging, expendable) they should have looked at the bike, and realised that it was a mountain bike.

In the video, you can see that the fixie rider (tax dodging, expendable, not so good at braking fast), gets to cycle behind the mountain bike until 00:30, when, in front of our reporter, someone on a phone steps out onto the zebra crossing. This puts our reporter into an aggressive-but-non-emergency brake. All well, until someone one a bike shoots up their left, almost into the aforementioned pedestrian. Which was a bit of a surprise.

It was only later, when the question "where did that rider come from", went through our reporters idle mind, that they went for the rear camera and had a look to see what happened. As you can see, they had their hands on the bars, drifted in right behind our camera, and, when the bike in front has to do that stop, nearly ride straight into the back of them, only avoiding it by swerving to the side.

Mountain bikers don't do chain gangs. They don't go along taking turns at the front, slipstreaming each other for performance, before hanging at the back to cycle no handed while you rummage in your back pocket for a gel with the same texture and flavour as baby food. Nor do they try and communicate with each other with little twitches of the hand, or pointing down and waving to say "there's something on the tarmac to avoid".

Instead they cycle along with enough of a gap between the rider in front so that they can see, enjoy and then learn from the mistakes the rider in front makes, rather than join in the crash. Food? Maybe, but they'll stop for that as they are generally lazy and view "cycling no hands" is one of the precursors to a trip to A&E. As for pointing out gravel, potholes or other surface hazards, those are not things to swerve around, they are there to jump over.

And, unlike fixie bikes with one front caliper brake, a modern MTB has hydraulic disk brakes, which, if the bubbles have been squeezed out of the cables, lets the rider bring the bike sliding to a halt with only the light touch of one finger on the brakes.

Because of that one-finger braking, mountain bikers are generally split into the "index finger faction": cycle with their index fingers on the brakes and the "middle finger faction", who use their middle finger. Whatever the choice, except on uphills, they're going to be cycling with their chosen finger on the brakes at all times. And when needed, they'll know to put that on, push their butt backwards to keep maximum weight on that rear wheel, with its 2.2+ inch surface on the ground, and so rather than skid, bring their bike to a halt faster than you could stop a British Leyland era Austin Mini (*).

When you come up behind a bike, see that its got wide tyres and disk brakes on the back, instead of cycling close enough to see whether the brakes are Shimano, SRAM or Hope, you need to think "this is a bike which can stop fast ridden by someone who may know how to use them", and not cycle right up their arse without even saying hello.



Do you know this rider? Are you that rider? Whoever it is: either hang off the side or stay back, especially to mountain bikes. Thanks

(*) MkI Minis had non-servo assisted drum brakes and to stop rear-wheel skid depended on that battery in the boot along with the WD-40, the hammer and the tow rope. As a safety feature, it was designed not to go very fast.

Volvo bug reports, issue #2; SMIDSY

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"Sorry Mate I Didn't See You", as uttered by driver to person they nearly just killed due to failure to properly observe/assess the environment so making a decision based on incomplete and invalid data. Saying "sorry mate" is a way to imply that it was something minor like "sorry I didn't open the door, I didn't see you there", rather than "sorry I almost added you to this years KSI statistics, but I didn't look or comprehend the situation properly".

In this instance the driver did actually seem pretty horrified that she'd nearly done it, and she wasn't on her phone. What could be the cause then, on a clear and quiet afternoon with no other distractions in sight?

Tyndall's Park Road; Highbury Vaults is at the end of it. Before they blocked off Woodland Road on the left side of the climb, you could drive straight over. That kept the road a lot more hazardous, as there'd be cars trying to sprint across. Here though, Woodland Road provides an escape route to the side, with the raised section of road some mild traffic calming of the main university halls of residence to study route for students on foot & bike.  Coming downhill would have been a serious issue.

The vehicle is on camera for 4s of visibility before pulling out, but she doesn't actually stop at the give way, just slow down for <1s and then continue. You have to consider whether the fact that the roads were so quiet got her thinking "these roads are empty" and failed to properly stop & assess the situation. Or she was only looking the right, pulled out and didn't do a second check to the left as she came around.

Complacency?

Volvo bug reports, issue #1: MGIF driver

Given some of the Volvo self driving car developers are ex colleagues of Bristol Traffic team members, we get to file bug reports. Not some directly accessible issue tracker where you get to file stuff like "XC90 driver nearly killed me" only for tech support to close as a "works as intended", but at least get to give them cues about how their land-barges get used and abused in the field. Here's one of this week's Volvos. Mid-afternoon, not rush hour but within range of school pickup times. Sunny days to treasure before the miserable season settles in.

First: "MGIF" , "Must Get In Front"

Definition: A driver who is focused on overtaking the bike without looking ahead to consider "What happens next?

In AI terminology a "planning horizon of 1", usually loses to any computerised chess/draughts player with a horizon >= 2 unless the latter is awful about assessing the value of all enumerated moves & countermoves.

In this instance,

1. the speed limit of the bridge and the rest of the city for the subsequent 1-2+ miles in any direction is 20 mph. You can see one of the signs at 0:01 in the video
2. the cyclist she chooses to pass is doing 19-20 mph, still accelerating in their underresponsive steel-framed MTB.
3. The car a safe stopping distance in front is also doing 20 mph
4. And it'll have to slow down once it gets to the end of the bridge due to the road there (i.e it's 100% predictable, irrespective of time of day & pedestrian/traffic numbers)
5. the oncoming cyclist is going 15 + mph

Which means that

(a) there's no defensible reason to pass the cyclist "I need to break the law to overtake a bike cycling at the speed limit to get behind the other vehicle going at the same speed before I get into the city proper and really have to slow down".

(b) she's failed to anticipate how long it will take to overtake the bike, even as she speeds up to 25-30.

(c) the closure rate with the oncoming cyclist becomes about 40-45 mph. If the oncoming roadie hadn't been keeping to the far left of the lane, there'd have been a collision.

Looking back at the footage, she's hanging back at the split to two lanes at the tolls to make a late-binding choice of which one to go through -a slight sign of impatience.  She takes the left one; the right hand one is occupied by an SUV whose driver can barely see over the wheel, which is why the cyclist chose to hang back and wait: didn't seem safe to go ahead. As the Volvo comes through fairly rapidly, it's probable she has one of the contactless cards which you top up with prepaid bridge crossing tokens; sign of a regular user. Given time of day, perhaps a resident of N. Somerset doing a late pickup of a child from somewhere in Clifton, someone who cannot afford to be held up by any vehicle doing the speed limit.

Now, what is he dev team planning w.r.t. oncoming collision avoidance, where it assesses oncoming velocity of the approaching vehicle, adds with its own and estimates time-to-impact, so perhaps suggesting some alternate actions? And what to suggest? There's the "massively accelerate, swing in hard and then brake" strategy, which is an extension of this drivers decision (and essentially a reward), the alternative is: brake, swing behind the cyclist they tried to pass, put it off. Which is safer, but not generally that common amongst "legacy" manual-drivers. There's some psychological "we're committed now" decision which interferes with the more rational "braking to survive is a good idea" strategy.

enjoy

P.S. UK DVLA now gives MOT history over time: https://www.check-mot.service.gov.uk ...you can see that GP05RZE used to be a 3K/y child seat equipped barge of Hendon, NW London, then over to bristol to do 15K/y. Where you can see from the repeated warnings "pitted/scored disks, front headlamp deterioration" that the owner doesn't actually do any maintenance. Probably not a good sign. Almost as bad as a MkI Golf GTi with the wheels coming off..

Stopping distances experiment #2: The real world

Last week we discussed a (flawed) stopping distance experiment, where we argued that you cannot stop from 18 mph to 0 in 6.5 metres, no matter what the police claim. That's when you are prepared to halt and planning the exact moment to pull on the levers.

What does it a real emergency halt look like? It looks like this video. Taken about half an hour before the one of a BMW driving down a pavement to get past a traffic queue, for reference.

Here is what it looks like when someone runs out in front of you while you are freewheeling down a hill (Hampton Road, BS6). Speed? Let's assume 18-20 mph. You can hear from the noise of the (hope) hubs that there's no pedalling, so this is just a gentle 5-10 mph curve round the mini-roundabout-of-death, a few spins of a drivetrain in precisely the low gear you are always in when you come up the hill from the Arches, and then coasting, relying on gravity to do the work.

• 0:26 small kid runs out from some cars, looks like 3 parked car spaces away. Assume: 12-16 metres.
• No previous visibility, on account of the cars being bigger than him.
• 0:27 cyclist sees this and shouts "wooah!"
• 0:28 bike catches up with where kid was: he's run on to be with his friends. (Assuming 16 metres, that puts velocity at 29 km/h)
• 0:29 cyclist has now slowed down to the kids running-along-the road pace. Asks child to look. Child doesn't appear to hear them.

The entire incident is over within five seconds. There wasn't enough time to slow down before any collison would have occurred. Shouting and swerving while you slow down is all you have.

The gradient of the hill will have made stopping hard, and this wasn't the "prepared for emergency brake" setup of our previous experiment. This is real world going round the town with your hands on the tops of the levers, with gravity fighting the decelleration. The combination of the time to see and actually slow down puts the total stopping distance at something like 20 metres.

Brakingdistances.com says you for a car @ 30kmh/20mph on a -12% gradient you shoud expect 6m of thinking, 14m of stopping. Which seems consistent.

Now imagine that incident happens once a "Kim Brigg's law" is passed: a pedestrian crosses the road, cyclist > 12m away, travelling at 18-20 mph. Cyclist sees pedestrian, shouts out. Tries to veer to the side, hits the child instead. That would appear to be enough to get the mini roundabout reinstated as Bristol's Public Gallows, and your eviscerated remains left to hang for days as school parents block the roundabout in their Volvo XC90s. "Look at that cyclist, he deserved it. Now, why is this anti-car council stopping me from driving at 30, can't they see I'm late for school?"

Who is to blame here?

It's not the kid's fault he wanted to be with his friends, it's not his fault all the parked cars made him invisible until he ran out.

He didn't look. Maybe he was enthusiastic about wanting to be with his friends. Maybe he listened for a car, but didn't hear any engine, so carried on out. Children are like that: Enthusiasm is not a crime.

What did the cyclist do wrong? Well, that's a question. Is freewheeling down a hill at 18-20 mph speed limit "reckless"? "careless"? Wilful endangerment of themselves and others? The Crown Prosecution would probably argue that, while everyone from the Daily Mail to the BBC would use verbs like "plowed" and "flew" as they covered the trial. In which case: driving round the area at 20 mph, especially in a low-engine-noise vehicle (hybrid, electric) is probably even more wilful.

The one thing you can point to the cyclist and say is: you knew term time had just started, and there were other kids on the pavement. Therefore it was likely there'd be more chidren ahead. So maybe you should have braked all the way down that hill. But: no matter what speed you go down that hill on a bike. if there is a car going the same way, it'll be right behind you or trying to get past.

Which moves to a more controversial question: is 20 mph too high a speed during school start/finish times? Should we drop from 20 mph to 15 in areas near schools? For everyone, drivers and cyclists alike?

A letter to Smiths of Gloucestershire, re the blind overtake of their van VE08NKX

Hello

I'm the cyclist the driver of your van VE08NKX chose to overtake on a blind corner on Belmont Hill, Somerset, at 15:46 on 25 November.

I'm the cyclist who shouted a warning to your driver that there was an oncoming car —a warning he chose to ignore:

And I'm the cyclist who videoed your van nearly hitting the oncoming car.


That car braked to avoid a collision, incidentally, and we both waved an acknowledgement to each other of how close it had been.

I've not got in touch before; I was waiting to see how Avon and Somerset Police were going to respond to the complaint that I'd filed online with them. As the time limit for them to file a Notice of Impending Prosecution has expired and they are yet to get in touch, the answer is: nothing.

Your driver has to consider themselves lucky to have not only avoided a head-on collision with an oncoming vehicle, but to avoid any form of punishment from the police for nearly doing so. That is despite the irrefutable video evidence showing them ignoring a shouted warning and overtaking where they had no visibility. If A&S Police were to adopt the prosecute-on-video-evidence policy which the Central Midlands Police are now operating, they would now be facing a choice between prosecution to Dangerous Driving or pleading guilty to the lesser offence of Careless Driving.

As it is: no prosecution, no pleading, no penalty, no points on their license, and no insurance premium.

That fact reflects as badly on our local police as it does on your employee.

Given the police's utter inaction, you can report to your driver that this particular near-crash won't result in any prosecution.

However, you do need to consider your brand tainted. It's clear from your website that you take site safety as seriously as it needs to be —but it's also clear from the video that your staff are treating off site safety with utter disdain. This driver endangered other road users in a van with your business name and telephone number painted on three sides of the vehicle, making identifying this employer trivial. The more incidents like this, the more videos of your drivers will go online, the more that safety theme gets devalued.

Please: tell your driver that in a world of helmet cameras and dashcams —the era of "getting away" with dangerous driving is over. If they drive dangerously in their free time, it is only the lives of themselves and others and their own driving license which they endanger. When they do it in company vehicles, it is your vehicles they are also threatening, your insurance premiums they are risking, and your brand that they are destroying,

Big Shout Out to SWC scaffolds van HK15FYH!

We don't normally go to S gloucs on the basis that it's boring.

Nice to see that today, the driver of SWC scaffolds van HK15FYH / HK15 YHF decided to lighten up the journey of our tax dodger by not bothering to slow down for the roundabout.



This isn't a great junction, so the cyclist lined up for a right turn, waited for the traffic coming from the MoD abbey wood direction to go, then set out, slowly enough to be able to react to problems. Which was good, as you can see that the van coming from the left doesn't appear to slow down at all, not until shouted at.

If you look at the still, you can see why: he's got his shiny gold iphone six in his hand



It's interesting to see the driver's reaction: they look up from the phone, look at the cyclist, then drive off, without even bothering to show a hint of remorse.



Which raises the question: report the driver to the police or not? Because that may be the only way to see some remorse, and perhaps even him stopping texting while driving.

Hints of a left hook

Nothing spells "left hook" like a van coming up alongside with its indicators on. However, this one did actually wait for the cyclist to get past.



For London viewers: note the stressful conditions of Bristol streets. This is actually Sustrans NC4, as marked by some fading paint.

For ABD members from Weston Super Mare and 1973: note the parking spaces stolen by the RPZ, the cyclists in one direction, and how a van was held from turning by another bicycle —costing the company and city money.

Tribars: not for urban use

Following on from our coverage of the fact that its sporty cars that lose from the 20 mph zone, we should look at the impact of the figures on bicycles.

Before anyone points out that bicycles are exempt from the limit, consider that if it becomes a speed that people expect, then going above it would create problems for people assuming you are heading more slowly. Though as any tax-dodger will point out, most people passing your or pulling out assume you are near-stationary and plan their manoeuvre  accordingly.

Even so, fast bikes don't have a place in the city. Stick to 20 or less: and if you can do that on the uphills you've earned those numbers.

What it does mean is that just like fast cars, tribars aren't needed in the city, nor are carbon wheels or polka-dot socks.

Yet here we see someone doing 6-8 mph in exactly that setup.

And while it's nice to see that they are staying way below that 20 mph limit, they do have their arms on the tribars. Which is another way of saying "their hands are a long way from the brakes".

As they reach the end of Kensington Place, they approach the give way point at Lansdown Road, where this lack of braking ability almost catches up with them. Because there's a Range-Rover heading north from Lansdown Place —below that 20 mph— and the cyclist needs to make a bit of an emergency swerve from going into it. Which could have damaged the paintwork on the car as well as written off some carbon wheels.

Bikesnob is always taking the piss of triathletes. It doesn't really apply here, but it does send a message to all: plan ahead, keep your hands near the brakes especially as you approach junctions where you are expected to give way.

Note the yellow lines on the road. This is the Clifton Village RPZ, as you can see on a weekday it is now a wasteland.

A&S Police: this is not a crime. Move along now

Some people ask if a 20 mph speed limit is bringing the city to its knees. The answer is no: all you have to do is overtake any car driving too slow for you

The driver of L861CDW demonstrates the correct way to do this, overtaking the Fiat 500 which had slowed down to let a school-running family, a family signalling to turn right.




We aren't going embed it as there is a lot of swearing at the point when the cyclist thinks they are about to get hit by the car. 

If you see the discussion afterwards, the driver runs over the cyclists foot (so they assert), and state this to the driver, who looks back and just swears.

After going to A&E that evening to make sure that their foot was not broken, the parent visited the police, who, after taking a statement and a copy of the video, went to the driver and got his statement

1. The driver of L861CDW overtook the Fiat 500 because he felt it was going too slowly.
2. At the time he started to overtake, he had not seen the cycling family.
3. He did see the cyclists during the overtake, but chose to continue as they were not actually turning.
4. He asserts that if they had been turning, he would have given way to them. This is not an assertion that can be tested, of course.
5. Apparently the driver felt intimidated by the cyclist going "why are you trying to kill me and my family?"
6. Apparently the cyclist damaged the wing mirror of the car as the driver drove off in terror. As he works in the motor industry -runs his own garage- he fixed this himself and is not going to bill the cyclist.
7. The reason for the driver swearing at the cyclist is not because the cyclist just told them that they'd driven over their foot -it merely looks like that in the video. In fact the driver was unaware that he'd done such a thing, therefore "failure to stop and report an accident" does not arise.

As result of his statement, in combination with the hi-definition head-cam video, the police are not going to prosecute the driver for careless driving or any other offence. 

There is not, apparently sufficient evidence that he meets the legal standard of "driving without due care and attention"

If the family had actually been turning, and the driver had failed to give way to us -that is hit them- it would have constituted careless driving and he would have been prosecuted. But the driving seen on the video is not sufficient.

Furthermore, the cyclist swearing at the car as he thinks that he and his son is about to get run over does not put the cyclist in a good light. This means that any claim "they drove off as they felt intimidated" is defensible, even when that driving off includes over the feet of the cyclists.

Lessons for drivers

1. If you are driving in a 20 mph zone, it is acceptable to overtake cars going at a speed you consider too slow.
2. Even if you cannot see more than one vehicle in front of you, the overtake does not constitute "careless"
3. And during the overtake, even if you see that you misjudged what was in front, you can continue with the manoeuvre -provided you don't actually hit anyone in front.

As for the cyclist

1. Even if you are about to get run over, don't swear at the driver.
2. If you follow up a near-hit with the driver, don 't ask intimidating questions like "why are you trying to kill me and my family". As something more subtle and polite.
3. If someone drives over your foot, do make sure you get that on camera too.

It also has some interesting implications:

1. It shows that either it is police policy or the legal system, but videos of driving like this are not considered sufficient for A&S  Police to prosecute the driver for careless driving or other offences. 
2. Cyclists in Bristol may as well give up on the head cameras if they expect it to fulfil any role other than be entertainment for others, or use in an inquest.

Spicing up the school run

Halfords are reporting a surge in sales of helmet cameras. While one motivator may be that it finally resolves the he-did-I-did and she-did-I-did arguments about positions in road, actions and numberplates, we know the real reason is to provide entertaining content for others to watch on youtube.

Of course, that  content needs to be entertaining, which implies "not dull boring journeys where nothing happens".

This is why we are grateful for FW13EKN spicing up the school run

As you can see, most of the journey down Cotham Hill is boring boring boring. Apart from the delivery van in the middle of the road, nothing worth mentioning. This is a boring journey for the parent, while the child has nothing to talk to their school friends about.

This is where the black golf FW13EKN comes into the picture. You can first see it waiting for the zebra crossing to clear, as it has just turned right of Whiteladies Road.

As soon as it gets round the corner, the driver sees that there is a spare bit of double yellow line for him to park his car into, and if he veers across the road aggressively enough he can take it before anyone else.

He also sees the oncoming parent and child, and decides to make their day entertaining by veering rapidly in front of them. It'd be easy to blame the cyclists for being unlit, did the father not have a Hope Vision LED lamp on the front of his bike, and the child a high power LED light of their own. No, this action wasn't done because they hadn't seen the bicycles, it was because they thought they could clear them in time.

Of course, tax dodgers being what they are, they did take up the space, and the way the parent blocked the car off he has been held up for thirty seconds -which is thirty seconds less of the credit-card base consumption that is essential for keeping the British economy afloat.

Eric "common sense" Pickles is proposing some changes to parking, including a 10 minute right to park on double yellows, and an end to the CCTV parking enforcement which stopped this driver parking in Whiteladies Road directly. We say: it doesn't go far enough.

1. Bicycles hold up parking and should be banned.
2. Bike racks take up valuable pavement parking space that should be removed.
3. The consultation doesn't make any mention of giving us 10 minutes grace to park on white zig-zags by zebra crossings -of which there are so many in shopping areas.

Without such changes, the inner city will never be revitalised by people driving in from the suburbs to buy packs of cigarettes.

Returning to the video, you  can see the parent appreciating the extra frisson of excitement the driver added to an otherwise unmemorable school run -which is why he thanks the driver for their contribution. It's hard to see, but the driver waves their hand in acknowledgement of the appreciation.

Ghost Bikes

You cannot be too careful on a dark All Hallows' Eve when you drive home. Ensure that you look all around you, especially at the industrial units on your right as you turn from Trinity Street onto St Philips Road, who knows what nasty creatures maybe lurking there. But just remember, you must shield your face from the baleful red glow of the video camera of a possible Ghost Bike rider. We say possible, as this driver of YCIIEUX did not actually pass though the apparition, so it's not proven yet that they exist...


View on YouTube
(video and text from Obsydian Bris)

Surprise

As more and more of the communist cycling brigade resort to personal CCTV to aid them in whining to the establishment, how can we protect our right to privacy?

Surprise. And if surprise isn't enough a bit more speed will help.


Here the britain-hating-communist is too dumbfounded to even turn around and follow the vehicle to record the number plate, they never expected the vehicle to be travelling "a la continent" to the right of the lane dividing barrier.

A Community RPZ? In Montpelier? As if.

In Montpelier today, Jon "ex-cllr" rogers is having some meetings proposing some community RPZ as opposed to an official one.

What does that mean ? Self enforced? Warning notes? Or something relying on guilt like the blinking 20 mph lights near schools?

It's not going to work -and if you want proof, take a trip round Montpelier

This is Richmond Road, one of the tightest streets in the area to drive along. Everybody walks in the pavement, because the pavement is the only way to fit two lanes worth of cars in.

Here we can see whether or not community-note-in-windscreen RPZs wil work.

Take this car, S589JDG. Purple note in its windscreen.

Anone thinking this note is complaining about a car on the pavement isn't from Montpelier.
 
It says

THIS IS A BAD PLACE TO PARK - SOME CARS CAN'T GET BY - & YOUR CAR RISKS BEING PRANGED

 While one of our reporters was taking the photo, a van had to get by, something that took about 5 minutes of some of the most careful driving you can do in a van, windows down, driver looking out, the Bristol Traffic consultant assisting.

It only worked because van mirrors are a different height to car ones -they managed to clear each other with 3-5 cm of gap, going through at crawling speed. The driver of this van deserves a lot of credit for how carefully they did this -though it did take about five minutes

If there had been contact, this wouldn't have been a wingmirror taxation -this would have been a bodywork tax. Which would have raised some interesting issues on responsibility.
 
If that had happened, the owner of S589JDG would have not seen any photographs from Bristol Traffic on the event -they'd have been destroyed.

Someone will no doubt comment and say "this is a one off", but our dataset says not: car parking in Montpelier makes it impossible to get any vehicle bigger than a van through without severe damage happening. We've also seen near fights developing in St Andrews Road -the wider road parallel to this one- over who reverses so as to let the oncoming traffic past a road narrowed by both-side parking.

We've stated before that it is business traffic where the cost of being held up can have a real cost attached to the time wasted. Commuting, school runs, shopping trips -fixable by setting off earlier. They aren't working hours and the cost is purely subjective.

Working in the city? Different. Delays increase journey times, reduce the number of journeys you can do a day, and place a limit on revenue.

This is why the Kingsdown RPZ has made driving through it easier. There's no need for anyone to write warning notes in purple ink to anyone inconsiderate enough to park so far out on the pavement that they block passing cars, there will be someone full time putting yellow stickers on the cars that hold up vehicles. These are a lot harder to ignore than purple notes, they stand out "pour encourager les autres".

Anyone who thinks a "community RPZ" is going to work is living in a world of unrealistic idealism -and missing the point that an RPZ would not only help residents get about their lives, it would help the business of the city work.

A roll out of RPZs around the inner city would make it a better city for business driving. No commuter-caused congestion; delivery options -and less roads blocked by overparking.

Richmond road is going to be the front line for a Montpelier RPZ -as it is clear that you can't paint parking bays on both sides of the road -and even if the council opens up the paveparking to make it official, there's still not enough room to get vehicles through.

The only viable outcome would be for one side to become no parking. Which would be controversial -and explain why some people are claiming that purple notepaper put in windscreens would work. A community with some wheel clamps and a tow truck might have more effect.

The R242AAC incident: the outcome

There's an article in the Independents aying "Helmet Cameras are useless and the police can't do anything with the videos". Sadly we fear this is untrue: the police can prosecute drivers with the videos -if they choose to do so. The fact that most of the country hasn't seen any such prosecutions is due to the police, not the law.

Sadly, because Bristol police do intervene. Here is the sentencing letter from a small incident in which the car R242AAC forgot to give way to cyclists on a roundabout. We have covered this here and here.


 

Case against Anthony Butterworth, 

I am writing to let you know what has happened in this case in which you are a witness.

At the hearing on 30th December 2011 at North Avon Magistrates Court, Anthony Butterworth pleaded guilty to the following charges:

• Drive a mechanically propelled vehicle on a road/in a public place without due care and attention.

Anthony Butterworth was sentenced as follows

• To pay £375 fine

• Victim surcharge £15

• To pay £35 costs

• Given 5 penalty points.

...etc.

Five penalty points merely for nearly running two cyclists over? It's that -and the impact on the driver's insurance that hurts.

As a reminder, here is the incident in question:



Admittedly, he did pull straight out onto the roundabout without looking, but it was a quiet bank holiday. He had no reason to expect people to be on bicycles at that time in the morning.

The war on the motorists will not be over while the police are using helmet camera videos to impose fines and penalty points on law-abiding motorists!

We actually spoke to the parent who made the video, and got this statement:

"I am pleased that finally this driver was punished for their actions. The police and Jon Rogers were very supportive all through this process -going to a lot of effort to track down and prosecute the driver. I would like to thank everyone involved.

As you can see from the video, my son was wearing a helmet, and he has taken part in the council-backed cycling courses, which instruct children how to cycle safely in our city. 

As you can also see, this does nothing to address the fact that some drivers are selfish and dangerous. You can tell people what the safe position for vehicular cycling is, but unless the drivers look -or care that you are there-, you are still in danger.

The next time someone tries to argue that vehicular cycling is the right approach, that safety in numbers is the answer -and dutch style cycling paths a mistake -point them at this video and say "how could these people have cycled more safely?"

Well, they have the right to their opinions, no matter how misguided they are. We just close with the thought that a police force enforcing laws against motorists for such minor infractions of traffic laws could be one of the most  dangerous parts of a cycling city.

Followup on the "R242AAC incident"

We've been keeping an eye on the Times's Cities Safe for Cycling campaign.


We weren't that worried, because their manifesto was all about infrastructure. Such projects take years and can be put off on the grounds of the "the economy is in crisis -all we can afford is more bypasses".

What they had left out was the one thing that could have made our life tangibly worse straight away -demanding anything resembling enforcement of traffic laws. Today we can drive into ASLs on the phone, speed around the city, park in bike lanes, sound our horn behind cyclists. The underpeople may view all this as harassment, but it is what we need to do to get by in our city. There isn't room in the city for bike lanes, not when short term parking is so critical; stopping behind ASLs costs us seconds when the lights change, and mobile phones reduce the cost of congestion.

We need to break these outdated highway code laws to keep the city moving!

What's  concerned us recently is not just that the times is giving cyclists more publicity, but that they are slowly starting to look at enforcement:

• Put onus on drivers, says cycling world champion Mark Cavendish.
• Tougher sentences demanded against drivers who kill cyclists

That's a danger -a legal system that actually enforces the outdated rules. Of course, for that we will need judges that care about cyclists -which we are fortunately a long way off from having, and a police force that forwards cases to them.

The latter is something we all fear, obviously. Which is why it is so reassuring to look at the Cycling Silk's blog and see that in London, the police, sensibly, refuse to do anything. Indeed, the unit set to to focus on road safety, Roadpeace, are leading the way in this refusal to do anything.

Similarly, up in Glasgow, the one surviving cyclist, Magnatom, has actually been surprised to discover that the police won't do anything about HGVs nearly running him over at roundabouts.

It is critical that this unofficial policy remains. The growing popularity of helmet and handlebar cameras means that the things we used to do with impunity, now become videoed and stuck up online. If the police acted on these videos, then it would be worse than when the speed cameras were turned on.

Which is why today, we have some bad news for all important people in a hurry. Bristol Police do seem to care about the cyclists.

As regular readers may recall, last October we covered an incident where the car R242AAC nearly ran over a cyclist at a mini-roundabout.
 




The cyclist had complained to the police, who were trying to track the driver down. However, the driver had been successfully using the "don't reply to the letters" gambit, along with the "hide under the sofa when the police come by" tactic. It looked like they would get away with it.

Sadly for him, just before the time limit ran out, the police uploaded his registration number to the "cars to stop" list  on all the police cars, and within a week he'd been pulled over, forced to acknowledge he had been the driver, and pulled into court for "driving without due care and attention"

Now, at this point the normal my word vs their word argument would come out, and since the cyclist is trying to prove guilt, it's hard for them to make any defensible claims about our driving. And here is where those helmet cameras really hurt.

The driver had done what we'd do: deny all charges. But as soon as the video was shown to them, they realised that the usual denial tactic was doomed, and changed their plea to guilty.

We'll cover this in more detail shortly, but the key thing to bear in mind is this:

Not only are cyclists filming their journeys, the police in Bristol are acting on their complaints.

This is chilling. At least is hasn't got as far as London or Glasgow yet -maybe we should all move there.

An exchange of views

Another snippet of Taypet21's photostream showing how abusive cyclists can be just because you swerve past them and then in without warning.



Some comments for the elusive Taypet, who, whether they intend it or not, is becoming our Fishponds correspondent.

1. It's not clear that swearing helps you achieve your goal, unless being beaten up is your goal.
2. Yes, you had an exit strategy -and we can see how V484ETF tried to swerve after you, but unless you could be confident that the driver would not catch up with you later, that wasn't a sustainable plan.
3. Lodge Road, eh? You know that Kingswood is getting a bit of a reputation of a place where people on bicycles get beaten up? Just bear that in mind before being quite so abusive. It also doesn't help you if you wish to raise the issue with the polis, as they may have some paperwork for you too.
4. At least he saw you. You weren't going to get Smidsy'd here, and he gave you lots of clearance for the first half of his overtake -right up to the moment he saw the traffic and decided to swing in rather than brake.

As for the driver

1. The emergent ubiquity of cycle cameras means that your actions are more likely to be documented. When at 0:40 you swerved completely into the oncoming lane to pass the (electric) cycle doing approximate 15-20 mph, you should have indicated.
2. Why did you swerve in before you'd actually passed him? There was no oncoming traffic, and if you'd gone past him and then pulled in followed by a full-ABS brake then you'd have stopped before going in to the van (not ours, it is new, clean and has all brake lights lit up), leaving the bicycle to deal with the problem that it was going to have to filter left rather than stop.
3. Finally: why bother, really? You can see the van in front stopped, if your  V-reg doesn't have ABS then your stopping distance on bald tyres isn't going to be great, so look at the speed of the bicycle before trying to pass. 
4. It's not worth the hassle of running them over, especially when the police get called out and those issues about insurance crop up.

We explicitly mention insurance because a quick check of askmid says:

NO V484ETF is NOT showing as insured on the Motor Insurance Database today.

That's despite the fact the DVLA site says the Lexus V484ETF has paid its road tax. 
You need to be glad that Taypet's video has him swearing enough it it that he can't forward it to the police and say "I have evidence that this car is being driven without insurance".

Eric Pickles declares war on infidels

There's been a lot of concern in the press recently about Militant Secularists, who are as despised as much as Militant Cyclists and feared as much as proponents of Sharia Law.

The cabinet has come up with a three pronged plan to encourage more prayer and religion in our streets

1. George Osborne will encourage everyone in the country to pray that his austerity plan will actually work, despite evidence to the contrary.
2. Andrew Lansley will be encourage people to pray for their friends and family to get better, and in fact this will become the primary front line medical care. When Britain was a Christian nation -right up until the militant secularists and their so-called Enlightenment brought evidence-driven medicine to the country, prayer was the only medicine people had. The NHS reforms will return Britain to its roots.
3. Eric Pickles will do more to encourage prayer in our cities.

The last is what interests us, as he has come up with a plan to encourage prayer not only in our local councils, but in our city streets. 

In a special over-skype interview with us, Eric Pickles declared

For too long the militants -be they secularists or cyclists- have had free reign of our cities. I propose to correct this by encouraging cyclists to pray regularly. I have come up with a cost-effective plan to achieve this, which I call "doing absolutely nothing". This, combined with cost-cutting measures and the wrapping up of even half-arsed attempts to fund cycling in British cities -a European invention, I hasten to add- will make the cyclists less militant and more religious.

We are glad to agree with him, and include a video Eric was particularly proud of that shows how it only took one HGV at a roundabout to turn a Glaswegian cyclist back into a devout Glasweigan who now knows that cycling is not an acceptable form of transport.

Eric closed:

Having rediscovered God, we expect Magnatom to return to the traditions of this great country --going to Celtic and Rangers matches and paying for right to hate your fellow Christians. 

We hesitated about pointing out to Eric that Rangers FC is currently in administration, as it would have made him appear out of touch. Nor did we raise the fact that here in the south west, we follow Other Gods. While our Queen declared that she is a defender of all faiths, we are not convinced those that involve human sacrifice were on the list of "all faiths" that she imagined.

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.