The Psychology of Overtaking and VE08NXK

There is surprisingly little literature available online on the topic of The Psychology of Overtaking.

One paper you can find dates from 1997, Overtaking Road-accidents: Differences in Manoeuvre as a Function of Driver Age, by Clarke et al, of Nottingham University

Without going into the details, in particular questioning whether there's enough information on the general population of drivers and overtakers to reach conclusions about age, it does contain a good introductory summary of past work.

One quote in particular stands out

Wilson and Greensmith (1983) returned to the theme of the ‘‘inertial driver’’ in their multivariate analysis of drivers’ accident status in relation to observed driving patterns, gender and exposure. They report that accident-involved drivers drive more quickly ‘‘...and move around continually (especially overtaking) in traffic’’. The typical inertial driver differs from his high-exposure accident-free counterpart, in that he seems unwilling to change speeds in response to conditions by using gear changes, deceleration or braking.

This is interesting, as it does document a common behaviour you encounter on a bike: the driver willing to endanger themselves and others rather than tap on the brakes.

Here is a classic example on Belmont Hill, N. Somerset




Although it's a sharp bend, the gradient of the hill means that you can see oncoming traffic, especially when they have their lights on in the late afternoon. Look up to the top right of the picture and you can see a car coming down the hill. Bear in mind, it is still daylight, there may be an unlit vehicle or cyclist, and they would not be visible.

The presence of the car hasn't stopped the van VE08NXK from choosing to overtake precisely at the corner, going round the bend on completely the wrong side of the road. Either they hadn't looked or they didn't care. The driver coming down the hill was distinctly unhappy.

It would be really interesting to see what the reasoning of the driver was here. We cannot but suspect that it would be a "the cyclist forced me to make a dangerous overtake" claim, when really it was a "I was unwilling to adjust my speed in any way". Maybe we shall find out, having just reported them to A&S police as part of "Grass a Driver week".

Grass a driver week: MK59USB, texting across a junction

Apparently some police forces in the country are now rolling out enforcement of driving too close to tax dodgers, maybe even section 59 ASB orders, which are interesting as there is a lower burden of proof. It doesn't impact penalties or insurance, simply threatens to take the car away.

We watch these experiments with trepidation.

Meanwhile, Bristol has a page to report incidents for their records alone.

This week we are conducting a small experiment to report a few dangerous drivers to this site, to see what happens. Expect followups if there are any results.


First, MK59USB on Tyndall's Park Road, crossing Whiteladies Road while reading their phone.



There are now pedestrian crossing lights on some of the arms of the junctions, specifically Tyndall's Park Road has a walk and ike one (a small dip in the kerb allows the bikes over); Whiteladies Road inbound also has green. These require left-turns to be restricted, which has long been a rule more ignored than observed. The council has recently done some raised corner sharpening; be interesting to see what's happening.

Where there is not any pedestrian crossing is on St Pauls Road —the Clifton Side— people run across when there is a gap, such as when vehicles heading inbound are waiting to turn right, and in that little gap between Whiteladies Road going read and TPR/St Pauls Road going green.

Which means this mercedes is about to head towards a junction where there are likely to be people sprinting across. Will they put down their phone?

No, is the answer, they keep on looking at it, going down to one-handed so they can hold the steering wheel with the other. About half way through the junction, they look up, notice the cyclist, and hold the phone down out of sight.

Interesting question: what would have happened if the tax-dodger hadn't been there?

The experiment begins, then, by filing this on the A&S police site, see how they react.

What about the full report an incident process? Too much hassle given its inevitable that nothing is going to happen. If they don't act when you go to the station with a CD of a video and a complaint, it's unlikely that they will react to a youtube URL.

Traffic Cameras: they don't shoot black americans

One of the recurrent themes in the UK press, with the Daily Mail-esque "Speed Cameras steal from motorists" story also recurring in the US,

Usually there are people quoted demanding instead real police, in real police cars, catching people "really" breaking traffic laws —by which presumably they mean "people other than themselves"

What doesn't get covered, though is how scary it is to be stopped by the US police compared to those in the UK. In the UK you get pulled over with some opening gambit like "is this your car, sir?", or "how much have you had to drink this evening?".

In contrast, in the US the lights go on so bright, with such a loud siren that you look up from your phone with a jerk, to see the police car filling your mirror and pull over in fright. Only here, the police officer (almost invariably a white man) walks over with their hand near their gun, ask you to wind down the window and then keep your hands visible, all the while standing a bit behind the door so that you are in front of them and its easier for them to shoot you than vice versa.



It is frightening, and you have to be so careful not do to anything not to make them overreact, and reach for the gun. And that's just as a white adult male in a nice car in a nice part of the US.

Now imagine you are an 18 year old black american being stopped at night. You know the police have a track record of shooting black americans even when pulled over for "minor traffic misdemeanours".  This is a country where failing to indicate as you change lanes has a death penalty.

You are going to be scared whenever you get pulled over, if you look at the statistics from places like Ferguson, you will be pulled over a lot more than white americans, and the is a small but tangible risk of you not getting out the stop alive.

In contrast

1. Traffic cameras don't pick on drivers because of their skin colour or age/state of vehicle.
2. Traffic cameras don't shoot black americans. Or any american, to come to it.

While in suburban americans may scream about unjust and unfair traffic cameras, you might find some locals with different opinions. Ask black americans kids whether they'd prefer being stopped by the police with a risk of being shot or having traffic violation fines sent in the post —you may find more support for the cameras. Now ask their parent, those parents who worry about their children going out for drives at night in the US, and they may give a very different answer.

Traffic Cameras: they don't shoot anyone

Get your tanks off my lawn!

As d-day for the Clifton RPZ rollout approaches, already tempers are getting hot. What will happen? Will it be tanks up Whiteladies road a-la Soviet Liberation of Berlin, or will be house-to-house battling like Stalingrad?

We know this: it'll be noisy.

Clifton Resident James Gadd sends us this video of one of the pre-RPZ skirmishes -one where the Clifton Popular Front and their tank are nowhere to be seen. Here it's commuter vs resident, soon escalating to the police and then finally the builders. As anyone who has spent time in the city will know, builder's trucks are some of the most damaged out there, and so have little qualms about banging up against someone's car while they get their scaffolding out. Which is why that's the time even the police should consider their exit strategy.

Part one: opening skirmish



Part two: the residents come out with their pitchforks



Part 3: here come the Polis



Part 4: I see your police car and raise you a Builder's Lorry


Part 5: call it a draw



James -thank you for these, and we look forward to more as rollout day arrives!

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.

The Danger of Twitter

Twitter alert!!!

Now, here at Bristol Traffic, none of us do Twitter.

It's not our thing, so we leave that to others like @ipayroadtax to point out how cyclists continuously get in our way, without contributing to the costs of our roads.

More importantly, we don't do twitter because we know how it can be used to persecute us.

Take this example: here's an innocent tweet from a motorist (@andythomas365), sitting waiting for the lights to change just north of Stokes Croft:

Nothing wrong with this, you might think, except some clever clog spotted it and has now alerted the Police to the use of a mobile device to take photos whilst driving...

See that? 

The Police are straight on to it, even pointing out where to go to find out how many points you may get for using a phone while waiting at the lights.

Our advice: stay away from Twitter!

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.

Police Tactics

Good to see the Police are employing people to help discourage cycling in Bristol. Especially trying to discourage those travelling with children onboard their bicycle for the school run (as was the case in this video submitted by S via our East Bristol franchise). The TSD Fleet Support vehicle WX11EWN is a van that is registered as an Avon and Somerset Police Force vehicle and even shows up as part of proud collection of vehicles on Flickr if you Google "TSD Fleet Support Flickr".

Visit the videos Youtube page for full info at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwpkhDdHOpY

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.

Mountain Rescue at Avon Gorge

Thursday Lunchtime in Clifton. A fire engine nonchalantly parked across the Clifton approach to the Suspension Bridge stops anyone from getting through.


A couple of cyclists are experiencing what it is like to cross the bridge without someone important in a Mercedes driving 6" behind them.


 
Why the closure? looks like the fire brigade are rescuing someone off the Avon Gorge, just to the side of Giant's Cave Buttress (you can see the ropes over the lighter limestone)
 
The climber seems be being evacuated from the bottom of the climb.
We hope all is well.

(PS: for anyone thinking of using these photos, this particular are released under the CC 'with attribution' license, meaning the site "Bristol Traffic" and URL http://bristolcars.blogspot.com should be used. To publish without crediting us is a copyright issue)

Not the "moment of madness" defence again

The Former Bristol Evening Post has an article about someone disqualified from driving, caught by the police's ANPR camera in an unmarked car and then going for a sprint round Hanham, nearly hitting an oncoming cyclist and then crashing into bollards.

IT "was a moment of madness"

Some observations

1. There's nothing wrong with nearly hitting an oncoming cyclist, in fact is a common and necessary operation in our cities.
2. Bollards are the cause of many of the accidents in our cities.
3. ANPR camera recognition hooked up to insurance and registration checkers are another example of the surveillance and nanny state at work. That's a bit like those in house baby-intercoms, for anyone  wondering what a "surveillance nanny state is".

Our key observation is this though: that moment of madness defence is getting ever  more boring. 

If you look at its origin, being caught in engaging in consensual sex in a public place -and who doesn't do that from time to time?- what it really means is "it is unfortunate that this particular time  I was caught by a police force who consider what I was doing to be illegal". The probability of being caught with your kit off in public is surprisingly low, based on our experiments, so the M-o-M defence is pretty weak there. We say:  own up and say 'so what?'.

Which is precisely what the driver should have done here. Disqualified, no insurance, unregistered car, driving badly: so what?

As it is the judged has recognised the "moment of madness" defence is wearing thin:

 "This was more than a moment of madness. It was six or seven minutes of extremely bad driving. It's pure luck you didn't injure or kill someone."

Again, six to seven minutes of extremely bad driving where it pure luck you didn't injure or kill someone? That's the school run summarised in a single sentence.

Moments of Madness

Last month we covered how the bus driver accused of deliberately running over a cyclist outside the magistrates court was in court over the incident.

The news is now out that he's been sentenced to 17 months in jail after pleading guilty to dangerous driving and GBH, which, given the video, was hard to defeat with the "I didn't see him" defence.

The video is pretty awful for anyone to watch: if you want to know what it looks like when a bus sideswipes someone on a bicycle -when the bus isn't even going that fast.


The evening post says that the bus driver, Gavin Hill, has been disqualified from driving for 30 months, and will have to take an extended driving test afterwards. Apparently the action was "a moment of madness".

Well, we hope that Phil isn't suffering long-term consequences, and that the outcome does provide some reassurance that society frowns on such explicit attempts to cause death and injury.

Now, let us turn to today's other "moment of madness", this time by one David Lowrey, of Kingsway, St George, where the Evening Post says:   A VIOLENT motorist beat up a cyclist by the side of the road before getting someone to lie for him as he tried to escape conviction..

When we heard the "someone to lie for him" phrase we checked to see if David Lowrey was on the coalition cabinet, but no, he was someone who started a fight with someone on a bicycle who had the audacity to make some kind of gesture to the car as the car encroached into the cycle lane.

Again, "a moment of madness", this time with four months jail; no mention of driving penalty or what penalty he or the "independent witness" get for trying to pervert the course of justice (*)

If these court cases weren't in the papers on the same day, the "moment of madness" defence might sound somewhat realistic. As it is, it comes out looking a contrived.

For that reason, we had a look around to see where else the "moment of madness" defence had cropped up.

• Ron Davies, welsh secretary, robbed at knifepoint by a some people he went down to Clapham Common  with"a moment of madness"
• Sir John Guielgud, set up by the police who actually had undercover police trying to entrap men seeking a bit of discreet consensual sex, again "a moment of madness".
• Hugh Grant getting caught paying a prostitute for a bit of entertainment in a public lavatory while on a business trip without his wife.

There we have it then, two separate scenarios where defence lawyers recommend the "moment of madness" defence

1. You've rammed or assaulted someone on a bicycle and want to make it clear that normally you are a safe and docile driver and suddenly "a moment of madness" came over you. You didn't mean to cause physical injury and hope to be let off lightly.
2. You got caught by the police engaged in some outdoor sex act which the legal system at that time and place considered illegal. You want to imply that the fact the police caught you with your trousers down was not because you do it very often but because you "had a moment of madness" and you were very unlucky. You also don't want your political/acting/religious career ruined, so you have to pretend it was somehow an accident.

There you have it then, two situations where the "moment of madness" defence crops up. Can we note, then, that for the second of these sets of legal cases, nobody gets hurt. In fact, most of the participants in the situations seemed, at least to an extent, engaged in consensual acts. Whereas nobody volunteers to be run over by a bus at the bearpit, or head-butted by a complete stranger.

Either way, it's become a bit of a cliche. Please, defence lawyers, come up with some new phrase.

(*) On the topic of independent witnesses, can we remind everyone that not only do ex-spouses turn on you, but if you are having someone pretend to be a complete stranger so as to devalue the line up evidence, remember that as covered in Ugander et al., The Anatomy of the Facebook Social Graph, it's fairly easy to determine if the pairwise distance between you and the independent witness is only one or two hops, or the you are both parts of the same clique of acquaintances. Less formally: you can't say "I have never met this person" if you keep identifying each other as friends in facebook photos.

Update: for anyone in the mainstream media who is not actually appearing in the Leveson inquiry or in a 1:1 meeting with Don Murdoch, trying to contact us -please read more than one article on this site, especially the media corner, before emailing us. You will discover that you wouldn't consider us a serious and unbiased news outlet. Which, coincidentally, is exactly how we view the television and printed news outlets. 

Costa Fortune

BMWs cost a fortune. And this one, LF52XBW, parked up on the pavement on Gloucester Road today was being eyed up and photographed by more than a few people today. Hence the security looking after it.

But why was it there?


Well, it's complicated. The bit of road that runs between the Bear Pit and Filton Avenue changes names a few times - North Street, Stokes Croft, Cheltenham Road and Gloucester Road. It's Bristol's premier cycle commute route, and home to a Bristol Showcase Bus Route. The people that inhabit the road rather like its independent feel, free, mostly, from the anodyne 'High Street' shops and outlets so pervasive of most British towns and cities. The residents tend to kick off a bit when corporate idiocy tries to impose its muscle on the local populace.


Ergo, today there was a bit of a protest outside the new Costa Coffee which is apparently illegally opening on Gloucester Road. It seems franchise holder, Stuart Montgomery, plans to ride rough-shod over Planning Law and open a new outlet here, having been refused planning permission to do so. The complication is not that he can do it, but that it is not until he does it that Bristol City Council can serve an enforcement notice*** on him to cease trading.

Local councillors Jon Rogers and Gus Hoyt turned up, along with MP Stephen Williams to register their support for the protesters in front of both HTV and the local press. The usual anarchist protesters also daubed chalk on the pavement, even after the politicians had left and the police had arrived with their CCTV van. But this is middle-class Bishopston, so no trouble.

Back to the BMW though. Why was it there?


The best suggestion I heard was by Jon Rogers, who asked, "Is it the prize for the first person to buy a coffee here?" That, of course, will allow the Council to force the apparently unwelcome franchise to close.

On a lighter note, though, there is a new, independent, Bread Stall down the road in Stokes Croft, outside the old Sofa Riot shop, not competing with any existing business except Tesco. Now even the transient student population can get decent bread without having to use a multinational minimart.

*** He recently tried the same trick in Whiteladies Road, where, we hear, an enforcement notice has been served by BCC after he opened a Costas in the former Derbyshire's newsagents premises. Of course, enforcement takes time, so business is being done.

Reclaiming the Streets

There's a growing scandal in the press that an undercover policeman infiltrated the group Reclaim the Streets.

While we do not approve of the activities of these tax dodgers, we can't speak highly of the police infiltrating a group of lentil-eating- ippies just because their activities brought the traffic in city centres to a halt at peak hours.

If bringing the city to a halt a peak hours by blocking the streets with your vehicle is a crime -then we are all criminals. 

Look at the scene above: the M32 after 9am on a weekday. Brought to a halt. Is this a crime? No, it's commuting. the only thing wrong here is that we can't use the hard shoulder even though everyone is only doing 15 mph.

That's one reason we don't approve. Where will they draw the line? Start with the hippies, soon they will be trying to find out who kept torching speed cameras, attending meetings of the Association of British Drivers and keeping an eye on us patriots.

The other reason we don't approve: it's a complete waste of time and effort.

Imagine the the uncover police team christmas party as they all get together and discuss how they protected the nation from its enemies, inside and out

• "I infiltrated Real IRA and kept the Northern Ireland peace settlement alive."
• "I infiltrated a group of drug dealers and kept 500kg of cocaine out of Britain."
• "I infiltrated Reclaim the Streets and pedalled a human-powered sound system round Clapham."

You'd be laughed at and be so embarrassed you'd find excuses not to go to the following year's party. It's the bottom ring of undercover police work, worse even than that dire film Kindergarten Cop where Schwarzenegger goes undercover as a school teacher. At least he didn't have to cycle round south London on a three person bicycle where the one at the back powered a loudspeaker.

It's just not impressive. It's not the thing you sign up for is it? That's the really shocking thing: the government could be bothered to infiltrate these groups. We wouldn't. Especially now the Bristol Cycling Campaign have stopped holding their meetings in that room above the Cornubia Pub.

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.

En Vacance

People are asking "when will Bristol Traffic update us with what's going on in the Bristol City Centre?"

A big chunk of the B.T. team are actually on our summer vacation abroad, in France, Germany and the Yachts of important media types and ogliarchs of former Soviet Countries and Arabic-speaking dictatorships

We are doing this for your own good. Without us arranging the important deals with the owners of the press, the Evening Post's coverage would change; without us securing modest kickbacks from the supplying of russian gas to the UK, we wouldn't be able to pay our gas bills.

The situation is not so desperate that we need to return. We are beginning level-2 escalation, with both Boris Johnson and David Cameron returned. Frankly we were getting bored with them anyway. Cameron keeps wittering on about how never knew that Rebekah Brooks, which is why the Murdochs asked him to leave the yacht. As for Boris, there's only so much of his smugness anyone can take. Even Cameron's wife kept "accidentally" spilling red wine on him, just to keep sending him back to his room.

If things do get more out of hand, and trouble escalates to the urban ghettoes of the city: Henleaze, Westbury on Trym and Stoke Bishop, we will come back and declare a state of emergency.

As a precaution, FirstBus have pre-emptively withdrawn all service from the city. Forever.

Fraternal Greetings from Stokes Croft to Waltham Forest

While this site has tended to document the Walthamization of Bristol -the transformation of parts of the city into little parts of the elusive Freewheeler's London district "Waltham Forest", today we are pleased to see the flow of urban features has reversed, and Waltham Forest is now a little bit of Stokes Croft.

People of Waltham Forest: Welcome to our city! There are many other aspects of Stokes Croft you may wish to copy! With bars, cafes, bicycles drugs and paid-for-sex, it is Britain's mini-Amsterdam!

Keeping Tesco Safe

Here one weekday morning, the police are ensuring that Tesco is safe.

Especially from people on bicycles, who will have to past further out on the road.

This will make the customers feel less threatened -even during the hours that the bike/bus lane is active.

Gloucester Road #2: an eerie calm over the A38

Normally this road on a Saturday is pretty chaotic: through traffic, shoppers trying to park outside their shops, either in the designated areas, or in the bus stops, the buses trying to get through, pedestrians trying to get across without walking 200m to the lights and back again; then there are the cyclists.

Today: silence.

Police to keep things calm, close the road and keep people on foot out the way.

One conclusion you can draw from the emptiness of the parking area is that the area really is only used by shoppers and shop staff. Today there's just a Paul Roberts car and a fireman -who does walk around with helmet and hi-viz clothes with identification details, the way we think everyone should dress.

There's also a command unit with a CCTV camera to the top and a satellite uplink pointing towards something in geostationary orbit above Africa.

The odd thing is everyone assumes at first that the troubles have come up from Stokes Croft -an eviction, another bank wrecked. But not today. It's worth visiting though, just see what Gloucester Road is really like when closed to traffic.

Gloucester Road Incident #1

Some breaking news here: Gloucester Road is closed on account of the Thai Nail Bar Corrections Nail Studio near the co-op and just round from Franco's Hairdresser's blew up at 10:00 today; Gloucester Road is closed.

1. The good news: no serious injuries.

2. People are free to re-use these photos with accreditation, though they would be better off contacting Franco and team -last seen outside the Blue Lagoon having early beers, as they have better photos, on account of being at work three doors away at the time. No haircuts are on offer today.

Gloucester Road is closed off even to foot traffic from the Breadstore to the Hobgoblin pub.

You can just make out on the pavement some burned out bits of shop.

Apparently they have chemicals on site; the owner was upstairs.

The road is closed to cars from Zetland Road; people are being directed to Elton Road or right onto Cheltenham Road and Cromwell Road.

There was some concern by outsiders looking to get to the cricket match that they didn't know where to go. Turn onto Cromwell Road, head up to the first left-turn that isn't no entry, head along that road all the way and you end up at the cricket ground. For us locals, that's faster than the A38 anyway.

Wishing anyone injured a fast recovery.

Update: Allotmentqueen says: "Creations Nail Studio, actually, next door to Simply Thai. But then, as a van driver, I don't expect you get your nails done that often. "