The R242AAC incident: the outcome

There's an article in the Independentsaying "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.

CF54UWV: never own up to a SMIDSY, even if you don't think it's being videoed

We got sent this video for review of an event at 09:10 this morning, just off Park Row. And what a lovely video it is.



As you can see, the tax dodger descends St Michael's Hill then goes to the front of the road, waiting for a green light and then heading off along Perry Road with the goal of turning into Lodge Street and so descend to The Centre. While they are trying to do this, a road tax payer driving the premium Audi CF54UWV comes up Lower Park Row and starts to pull out. The tax-dodger expresses some concern here and then has to take evasive action by getting up on the pavement, before pulling in front of the Audi where he stops and expresses some more concern to the driver.

The driver says "I'm Sorry, I didn't see you". We suspect that some more discussions would have taken place if the cars behind hadn't started sounding their horns -nobody died, no need for a post-mortem- so the cyclist sets off. The Audi is no longer behind the bicycle at the bottom, implying it has turned into Lodge Place and the office parking therein.

The tax dodger then proceeds to make life hard for the car behind by giving way to other cars, rather than recognise that from their actions on the horn, they are clearly also important and in a hurry.

Here's our review

1. The Tax Dodger is to be praised for wearing a helmet. The helmet camera, well, it provides entertainment.
2. If they had waited behind all the cars on St Michaels Hill, they would not have been the first road user to approach Lodge Street. This would have reduce the risk of collision, as the taxpayer would have had something larger to spot. Furthermore, the MPV sounding its horn would not have been held up, as it was waiting on St Michael's Hill too -and would have been ahead of the cyclist.
3. There is a small dotted line bike lane on Park Row. This would have caused the collision to happen earlier, and so not hold up the MPV.
4. Getting on the pavement as a form of evasive action is illegal. If they had a registration number, they'd have been reported to the police for it.
5. If they had been hit, their lack of third party insurance would have placed all the costs of repair to an expensive vehicle on that driver.
6. After the incident, the actions of being nice to all cars pulling out was insensitive. They had already held up at least three important people who had paid for the right to be there; this just made things worse. 
7. If they hadn't been on a bicycle, none of this would have happened.

We are also going to discuss the actions of the female Audi driver.

• Although playing the "I'm not going to look" gambit does help in some pullout negotiations, in this situation we'd have sounded our horn to make clear we were coming through.
• If you drive an old van you have better negotiating power. 
• It's clearly a fast car, you could have looked at the bike, then done the same action aggressively enough that they wouldn't have caught up with you.
• Never, never, never say "I'm sorry, I didn't see you". Your insurance company will hate you for it, and in a world of universal cameras, your actions will be permanently associated with CF54UWV, Bristol and your apparent place of work, Lodge Place, for as long as google's servers retain the data.

The correct thing to say in this situation is usually something like "get out the way, I pay for the roads and you don't". Sometimes we also demand they have insurance, though given our van's current insurance state, that would be a bit hypocritical. Speaking of insurance, we hope that the cyclist does not contact your insurers and provide them with some hard data on your driving techniques. That is one of the reasons why we do not insure our vehicle.

Nevertheless: We in the Bristol Traffic Project salute the driver of CF54UWV for taking a personal stand against making Bristol city a safe and friendly place to ride a bicycle! Your single-handed actions should be celebrated! We hope that all other cyclists heading along this road -and there are clearly many of a weekday morning- will recognise that you are important and give way appropriately.

The Battle of the Bearpit Continues

We are pleased to have another photo from "TH", who is rapidly becoming out city-centre correspondent, today with another "Bearpit Incident", this one being rated as "minor" in the international Bearpit Incident Scale.

Apparently the Snap-on van was trying to cut into the road running into Park Row, when the car which was following the markings on the road went ahead and followed the markings on the road, forcing the van to cancel its plan. The van driver is apparently making their views known to the driver of the car.

No, this is not the Bristol Traffic van. Furthermore, the tactic of staying the right hand lane all the way from the end of the M32 to this roundabout is effective as it is the least congested, especially at the bearpit roundabout itself. but you should start to cut in earlier, once the lights from newfoundland way go green, then stay in the right of the two lanes past the bus station -so avoiding any waiting buses. You should only swerve into the left hand lane after passing the bus station.

This is one of the problems of driving like a local in Bristol: you have to know the real solutions to every junction, not what is painted on the ground, which are merely hints for tourists.

Left Hook at Kellaway Building Supplies

A tax-dodging troublemaker emails us this video to say "Is this white van DK04TBX that nearly ran me over on June 10 in its rush to get to Kellaway Building Supplies on Shaldon Road yours?"

Here is the response composed by our lawyers

• Askmid says this vehicle is a VW Transport T30TDi. As the Bristol Traffic Team's white van is a Ford Transit at least ten years older, we deny responsibility.
• We think all criticism of this van is unfounded, as by accelerating past the bicycle before cutting over it, it left plenty of room.
• By indicating its intent to turn left while it went past the bicycle, the cyclist had plenty of time to take evasive action.
• Kellaway Building supplies plays a key role in supplying everything a white van in the building trade needs apart from copies of the Sun and cans of Red Bull. As the Bristol Traffic van is a key part of the Bristol sex industry supply chain, Kellaway Building Supplies rarely appears in our list of destinations, apart from when meeting the needs of an individual with an obsession about loft insulation. A superinjunction prevents us identifying the specific board members of one of our local football teams.

We trust that these answers are satisfactory.

co-existence

Some of the cyclists think that if there are enough of them on our roads the rest of society will suddenly welcome them, it will suddenly become safer, and that everyone will happily dance around singing Dutch songs. Well, we have some bad news there

The increase in the number of people cycling, combined with the rises in petrol's costs, merely makes us angrier and more resentful

It's not enough they aren't paying to use the roads, they hold us up. The more bicycles, the more we get held up. We can experiment with this by secretly instrumenting cyclists and then collecting the videos, and seeing if conflict increases or decreases over time.

Here we see white van YB06BDO being held up by a bicycle as it turns into Cotham Hill from Aberdeen Road. It stops. What does the rider have to complain about? At least this driver wasn't on the phone.


He stopped, polite discussion followed. None of this road-rage stuff. A friendly city. Why do they complain so?

Kingsdown update

Shocking footage in Kingsdown, where we can see the paint lines for the resident parking zone going up, even though the zone isn't going live until 2011.

We even have video coverage of a drive-by review of Freemantle Square, showing two things

1. They've even yellow-lined the corners
2. The parking area is to narrow for a premium SUV -it's almost as if they want us van drivers to feel unwelcome.

That's OK, we are used to be hated. And we aren't scared of yellow lines on corners. Indeed, this fellow driver has managed to park on two corners at once

This is something to be impressed by.

If the council had not selfishly put bollards up by the double yellow lines , it would have been able to park on the pavements instead.

While admiring our own upload, youtube recommended this related video, which is quite entertaining, by one bristolcyclista, who is getting pretty irate at WR54HRW for turning over them.

Bristolcyclista -if you had not been on a bicycle, you would not have been nearly hit. Therefore, you are the cause of the situation. You may think "but what would she have done if I was in a car", but the answer there is simple: it depends on the car. Everyone gives way to a battered white van or a 1970s volvo.