Category Archives: Road Justice

Articles relating to road user behaviour, enforcement and policing

More weird GM Police arguments.

I had occasion to report another incident to the Police last Friday. I may blog about that in due course, but this post is just about the conversation I had with the police officer who dealt with the case when … Continue reading

Greater Manchester Police – Time to Act!

OK, this is getting ridiculous now. I wasn’t intending to turn my police complaint into an open letter,  but recent events convince me that it’s well past time to get serious about this. Back in February, I wrote about police … Continue reading

GM Police Again Refuse to Deal With Aggressive Drivers – Episode 2

A week days ago, I posted an article about the Greater Manchester Police Force’s refusal to deal with driving that is deliberately dangerous or intimidating. It happens that I was also, whilst writing that, reporting another incident in which a … Continue reading

GM Police still refusing to deal with aggressive drivers.

Last week, I had occasion to report two different instances of aggressive driving – road rage, in fact. The two incidents are shown in the following videos (I will refer to them by the registration numbers of the vehicles involved): … Continue reading

Heartily sick of these pathetic anti-cyclist attitudes.

There is a certain type of person who refuses to accept the responsibility that comes with being in charge of a tonne or more of powerful,  dangerous machinery in a public place, and tries to justify their disgusting attitude by … Continue reading

A response to a well-meaning, but ill-informed driver.

Three days ago, a driver in Bristol posted a video that has got quoted in the local press. This driver was aggrieved because his car was damaged by someone who was unable to be traced. I can understand why he … Continue reading

Highlighting the bad bits.

Update (6th March 2014): Modified the annotations in the map to include links to videos showing examples of the problems that I encounter at these locations. Yesterday, I saw the following Twitter post from the All Party Cycling Group: My … Continue reading

Do the police normalize dangerously bad driving?

I have thought for a while about writing something about this issue, but time never seems to be on my side. However, I have had a number of experiences and encounters this week that have prompted me to set something … Continue reading

The very common problem of tailgating.

Tailgating by motorists is something that rightly annoys a great many cyclists, partly because, despite it’s being very dangerous, it is so common and often deliberate. Here are two examples from a single morning commute in May 2013: Those were … Continue reading

Playing billiards with cyclists?

Introduction In the game of billiards, points can be scored by hitting the red ball and the opponent’s cue ball in the same shot; that is called a cannon. I wonder whether the equivalent on the road involves hitting two … Continue reading

Calibrating distances on video camera images

One of the problems with the video footage produced by cameras that are worn by cyclists is in the interpretation of images produced to determine passing and following distances. This could be an issue when trying to get video evidence … Continue reading

Superb responses from Stagecoach and First Bus

I have generally found that the standard of bus driving that I encounter on my daily commute has improved dramatically over the past year or so. Some of this seems to have been after my visit to First Bus’s training … Continue reading

Dangerous driving, road rage bully – the result.

At the end of June, I wrote here (with a video of the incident) about the poor police response to what I considered to be a very serious road rage incident. In that post, I pasted the police complaint that … Continue reading

House of Commons Cycling Debate – Write to Your MP

As a result of the report produced by the ‘Get Britain Cycling’ inquiry, and the online petition that was raised to promote it, there will be a debate in the House of Commons to debate the findings set out in … Continue reading

Do the police have an ingrained prejudice against cyclists?

UPDATE: There is a follow up article here. This post primarily looks at an incident that happened to me recently and the police response to that. However, I was prompted to make this blog post about it when I saw … Continue reading

A rash of good drivers? Just business as usual.

About a week ago, I posted a boring video, showing what it is usually like cycling to work. No problems, drivers leaving plenty of space when overtaking, drivers holding back whilst I go through a junction or a pinch point … Continue reading

Extreme straw men and reductionist thinking.

It is frustrating that there seems to be so much disagreement between different cycle campaigners regarding what is required to get more people cycling in Britain. What is particularly annoying is that a lot of the arguments seem to centre … Continue reading

Visit to First Bus

A couple of weeks ago, I received an invitation to visit the training centre at the First Bus depot in Bolton, so yesterday morning I went along and met some very nice people who showed me what they are doing … Continue reading

KW56BVP – Close Pass And Ignorance

The driver of a car that cut me up was so ashamed of his behaviour that he complained to YouTube about the video, alleging privacy violations. Unfortunately, YouTube haven’t a clue about what is or isn’t a privacy violation and … Continue reading

Correcting the Misrepresentation of Presumed Liability

I have written before about presumed liability, when I wrote to my MP about it last year. Presumed liability is the principle that, when a driver is involved in a collision with a cyclist, then unless that driver can prove … Continue reading

Arriva Bus Company’s Cavalier Attitude

[See also this later article about another incident I reported in 2015.] On 2nd May, I wrote to Arriva to complain about the driving of one of their bus drivers on 23rd April 2012. Yesterday, after speaking to them on … Continue reading

IAM’s Misuse of Dodgy Statistics

Yesterday, there was a furore among the cycling community about a press release that had been issued to the press by the Institute of Advanced Motorists as a result of a SurveyMonkey survey that had been carried out. The survey … Continue reading

Why do bus drivers pull in on cyclists?

I often have the experience of a bus driver starting to overtake me a reasonable distance away, then pulling in too early so that the rear of the bus nearly hits me. It is also common to have the experience … Continue reading

The Times cycling advice is flawed (in my opinion)

Although I welcome and support the Times’s “safe cycling” campaign, I think the advice given in its graphical article is flawed. It looks as though it was put together in a hurry, to be honest. In particular, I felt the … Continue reading

“You complain about me passing close, and then pass me even closer!”

This is a cry that I have heard a number of times from drivers who are unable to understand the difference between someone riding a small, lightweight, human powered machine, and someone driving a huge 1,200kg steel box propelled by … Continue reading

Presumed Liability (and Strict Liability)

[For a deeper explanation of presumed liability, see this later article.] Back in February, I was prompted to write to my MP to request that the government consider introducing a principle of presumed liability*. The letter I wrote is shown … Continue reading

Why do you … feel a need to video your journeys?

I was asked this question in a discussion forum recently and it forced me to think about it a bit more. I did this without looking at answers to similar questions in other people’s blogs, so that I could produce … Continue reading

Drivers rarely seem to think ahead.

It seems that, in the majority of cases where drivers overtake cycle commuters impatiently and/or dangerously, the cyclist catches up with the vehicle again fairly soon, showing that the overtake was not only dangerous, but completely pointless. The video below … Continue reading

Dangerous Overtaking – DfT acknowledges the problem but will not act.

Like many cyclists, I have been getting fed up with the small but significant percentage of drivers who pass far too close when overtaking, and like many others, I have been looking at how we might try to get things … Continue reading

A Message to Courteous Motorists

Motorists are often criticised by cyclists and other people for their bad or careless behaviour when driving near cyclists. This criticism is understandable given recent research on the causes of accidents involving bicycles, but we often fail to recognize the … Continue reading