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news
Northumbria Police video still.PNG8 in 10 close pass videos result in action against driver, says police force
On a day on which we have published the 500th video in our Near Miss of the Day series, one police force has said that almost 80 per cent of videos submitted to it showing close passes and other examples of poor driving have resulted in action being taken against the motorist involved.
Northumbria Police have today published a compilation of such videos to coincide with the launch today by the charity Brake of National Road Safety Week, and is encouraging people to upload more footage of drivers putting vulnerable road users at risk on the roads it patrols.
🎥 This shocking footage shows how cyclists' lives are being put at risk by dangerous drivers.
It's been released as part of #RoadSafetyWeek2020 with figures showing an 11% increase in serious injury or fatal collisions involving cyclists 📈
Read our thread to find out more 👇 pic.twitter.com/gRKaOtDLn9
— Northumbria Police (@northumbriapol) November 16, 2020
Chief Inspector Sam Rennison, who heads the Force’s Road Safety Department, said: “Modern technology means drivers no longer need to be caught red-handed by the police at the scene of a crime to be prosecuted.
“As it stands, 77 per cent of the footage submissions we do get result in positive action being taken, whether that be a warning or a prosecution.
“But we still don’t see a large number of submissions from vulnerable road users and this week we want to appeal to cyclists to submit more footage.
“A minority of motorists are not showing the required amount of respect to other road users and that needs to change.
“Too many vulnerable road users are seriously injured or killed because they have been knocked down by someone driving in a dangerous manner.
“We have been very good at socially distancing and giving two metres space in the community and now we need to apply that logic to the roads.”
The force said that in the year to August there were 336 incidents involving cyclists in its area with 80 of those leading to serious or fatal injuries.
That reflected an 11 per cent increase in serious or fatal injuries compared to the previous year and is highest figure in the last four years, partly attributable to levels of cycling doubling during lockdown.
Chief Inspector Rennison highlighted, as a number of other forces have done, that examples of poor cycling could not be compared to, or even used as an excuse for, poor driving.
She said: “It is only a minority of drivers who drive in such a dangerous manner that they put the lives of cyclists and pedestrians at risk.
“We are not trying to demonise all motorists but the reality is when a driver behaves in a dangerous manner then it puts people’s lives at risk.
“There are occasions when cyclists behave irresponsibly on the roads but those actions seldom result in a serious collision or a death,” she added.
Indeed, a graphic circulated on social media today, taken from a new report by the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, starkly illustrates which groups of road users are responsible for most deaths on Britain’s roads.
We often focus our enforcement efforts against those who do most harm to vulnerable road users.
This chart shows why a lot of that effort is directed at car drivers.
On average 5 people are killed every day in the UK as a result of a collision.
We must all do better.#Fatal5 pic.twitter.com/EqfEGygGQM
— Roads Policing Unit (RPU) - Surrey Police - UK (@SurreyRoadCops) November 16, 2020
It was a point emphasised by Northumbria Police in response to one reply to its original tweet.
Do you know the number of cyclists who collided with a vehicle and led to the serious injury or death of the driver? It's zero.
Don't use a minority of cyclists behaving inappropriately to excuse the behaviour of drivers seriously injuring and killing cyclists on the road.
— Northumbria Police (@northumbriapol) November 16, 2020
“Ultimately we are trying to save lives and we believe encouraging more people to submit footage, whether you’re a cyclist or a driver, can help us do that,” the chief inspector added.
Footage of incidents that happen in Northumbria can be submitted to the force by visiting its website and clicking on ‘Report and Incident’.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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24 comments
Living on the edgeof two shires, Northamptonshire and Warwickshire, neither which are interested in any close passes. Having submitted several, I find that with Warwickshire you get nothing back, with Northamptonshire, they class it as a victimless crime and therefore quote data protection laws and state they cannot give you an update.
I've even had a Northants Police Farce police car try and tell ten cyclists riding two abreast that they aren't allowed to. Trying to tell them about the highway code fell on deaf ears. If this is the attitude of the standard bobby, then it's little wonder why nothing gets done.
I think the Tour of Britain when it restarts, should only visit counties who's Police force actually care about cyclists and there wellbeing.
Pfff! Northumbria Police are clearly making a fuss about nothing! Essex Police would immediately dismiss these cases as insignificant because not one of the cyclists brakes or wobbles after the close pass. These cyclists are wasting police time with their piffling complaints!!
Your view until you, or your family member, becomes a victim of a dangerous driver - then you'd be "clearly be making a fuss" and "wasting police time"
Methinks there may have been a large part of tongue embedded firmly in cheek here!
The Twitter response is spot on - poor old Mark won't know what hit him but still thinks helmets, clothing, lights etc, are a reason for him to drive a ton of metal straight at a person on a bike...
Was anyone else surprised that cyclists killed more people than scooter drivers. I find that very strange.
I can't see where you found that.
I thought this was odd too. Seems that 50cc or less are not often involved in accidents.
My hunch is that it represents a declining market for 50cc mopeds and scooters - 50cc ownership is much much lower than it used to be as everyone has had to do CBT for licenses applied for after 2001 and if you have your CBT you might as well go on and get a bigger bike.
Its been on a long term decline from 19% of the overall motorbike sector in 1994 to 5% in 2019. Infact everything under 500cc has been in long term decline. 2 strokes being mostly phased out probably has something to do with it too.
Source: VEH0305 from here : https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/veh03
That's from the DoT RAS10-012 stats then from 2013-2018.
One death in 2019, although how many motorcycles 50cc and under are there ?
I suspect it's a combination of there not being many of them and the fact that, unlike cyclists, infrastructure (like shared paths) does not put them in close contact with pedestrians.
I also like that for the video they've chosen passes which some drivers might (and, if you look at the responses on Twitter, do) think are ok, rather than just sharing the rabid, horn blaring, run you off the road type encounters that everyone can agree are criminal. It gives a strong message to what I think is probably the majority of drivers - who are not actively hostile towards cyclists, but who don't necessarily give active thought to the issues involved in passing us safely - that they might unwittingly be part of the problem.
FWIW I was surprised by some of those clips they included if they sent NIPs on all of them, not that they werent the kind of stuff youd want the police to clamp down on,but I've captured worse on video that I've never bothered to submit because you review it yourself and it doesnt look so bad on video and over time just become desensitized to it and just end up believing well the police arent interested anyway
If they are taking the view that
that to me is only for the good, and I'd love for Herts to take this view too
It also suggests that with an 80% follow up, riders are judging it right o whether to send in, and not, regardless of accusations from the gammons, "wasting Police time"
This would be a good measure for me. I've only recently got fibre broadband ('normal' broadband was mostly fine for my purposes) so in the past it had to be a pretty offensive incident for me to spend 4 hours uploading the video!!
Well, I doff my hat to Northumbria Police. What an excellent example they are setting. Hat's of too for strong messages from Surrey Police, particularly the succinct response to a fairly standard moan.
Thank you very much! Chapeau!
Not my experience with the Met. I certainly have not had 8 in 10 submissions followed up. I've had three in total. Two were just the 'driver has been contacted' and one was a court appearance. The rest? Nothing. Just an email thanking me for my submission. Some of the worst close passes I have chased up but still just get fobbed off until the Met simply stop replying.
Great to see this pro-active work from Northumbria Police, I wish Derbyshire would follow their lead, they don't seem to bother with most footage.
I wish lancashire Police would show an ounce of interest. I reported a woman texing whilst driving, who I had turned around in order to film her expletive filled rant as to why she was entitiled to text whilst driving. I had her texting whilst driving and telling me to fuck off in glorious HD. The officer seemed more interested in why I was' on the wrong side of the road', even though I was stationary, then told me she had more important things to attend to. Fuckwits, Lancs Plod. they have lost all respect I had for them, and I used to be a police community volunteer!
Nice twitter responses by NP. well impressed, chapeau!
Cat amongst the pigeons?
If Northumbria can produce these figures, why can't other forces? Lancs? Hampshire?
WMP please.
Because Lancs couldn't give a fuck.