I don’t get why neither of them turned up at the hearings. Why would you do that? It does smell of entitlement

I think it’s the awareness course he never turned up to. Can’t see where it says he never turned up to court

Ah yes, you’re correct. The first person didn’t bother to pay the fine rather than didn’t attend hearing.  It was the second person that didn’t bother to attend either of the two hearings.  I don’t get it, what were they expecting to happen

They were expecting the courts to think like them about cyclists and find them not guilty. These people can’t believe that they are wrong.

i_scoff_cake
Free Member

I’ve had much closer passes this year.

TBF I used to get closer passes every week. I’m pretty surprised that this one was acted on- pleased, but still, surprised.

Superficial

Interesting that the papers took the angle sympathising with the gammon, when the story really should be about an entitled moron ignoring warnings and fines. I expect nothing better, of course.

It’s not a case of judge strongly enforcing the close passing law either – it’s “this idiot is wasting everyone’s time by refusing to take the course when he’s clearly in the wrong, so he gets the book thrown at him”

How about this one – looks like the driver even clips the cyclist with the wing mirror but because there’s no injury the police might only give the driver a warning / at most a fixed penalty. I don’t know what more they have to do to be hit with a careless driving charge 🤷‍♂️

https://road.cc/content/news/near-miss-day-784-293637?fs=e&s=cl

I’m currently averaging about 1 ticket every 2-3 rides on my current training route. Its not hard to pass safely, the more people read about this stuff the quicker attitudes will change. I’ve had one close pass in Majorca, the car had a GB sticker….

Not sure if it’s courage or just self awareness and empathy.

+1

Even a modicum of consideration for other more vulnerable road-user’s mortal safety is a step too far for many.

It takes a bit of courage to say to yourself – “I didn’t get that right, what would I do better next time?”

Yeah it does, but not a massive amount.
Driving is not a right, i do my best to maintain a good standard, because other peoples wellbeing/lives depend on it.
I genuinely don’t find it difficult, but i do pay attention to it.
Stupid old count could have avoided all of this by paying attention to his driving.
Large car? No excuse.
Running late? No excuse.
Kindly grandfather? No excuse.
I drive a coach, absolutely none of the excuses this fella gave would be accepted if i used them against an allegation of careless driving.
It’s not hard, pay attention to the road ffs. . .

As much as I’m glad someone got found guilty of a close pass and was given a sizeable fine, I hate the idea of having to spend hundreds of squids on having decent quality camera technology front and back that can record rides of typically up to ~5 hours…

And then trying not to spend hours after each ride playing back footage, looking for what I would consider poor driving.

You know you can buy cycling cameras for around £50 each that will record for 4+ hours, takes 2 secs to turn on or off

Records in 3 minute sections and takes around 5 mins max to find the clip your looking for and review the footage in a 4 hour recorded ride and the quality is fine for getting dangerous drivers prosecuted/fined/sent on driver awareness courses

Also have a dashcam front and rear in the car which cost more, if someone does hit me or someone else in the car or on the bike then at least i have evidence of who it was

The Chilli cam is meant to be good for the price, 2 cameras for under £100

I think the point is that it’s quite a sad state of affairs when people using bicycles perfectly legally have to make a ~£100(+) investment (plus wasted time) in pre-emptive evidence gathering because there’s an increased likelihood that they’ll be squashed by a gammon operated SUV…

It really shouldn’t be the case that people find it necessary to record relatively mundane, supposedly safe activities “Just in Case” a general purpose bell end attempts to kill them.

Unfortunately it just feels like yet more Broken Britain/Culture war, DM rage baiting fodder now. I’m almost past caring, just ban all Cars until the whole adult population of the UK proves they can behave like grown ups*

*(which we never will)

Unfortunately it just feels like yet more Culture war

Fortunately for us, there’s no culture war to stoke against bike people. Unfortunately, that’s because even the nice half of the country are against bikes.

I use 1 chilli tech cam, cost £50 takes about 10-15mins to report online. I mainly do it as it gives me a focus rather than wanting to drag the fat **** out of their cars and kick them to death.

That BBC article is fabulous, it is a masterclass in entitlement and ignorance.

I’ve never had a fine before, except for that time I got a fine!
My son and I measured it, it proved that I definitely broke the law!
The fine is ridiculous, I don’t understand it, but I refused to take the lesser penalty!

All evidence that he still doesn’t believe he did anything wrong and is therefore still a risk to other cyclists.

All evidence that he still doesn’t believe he did anything wrong and is therefore still a risk to other cyclists.

Potentially even more of a risk of he decides to “teach cyclists a lesson” or something similar.

“A cyclist dobbed me in so I’ll punish all cyclists” kind of mentality.

A rear camera is less than a tank of petrol. Commute by bike for a week and bingo. Free camera

Nothing happened with this one. Police not truly interested.

It felt close 🙁

“It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Does to me you ****

Much easier to see how close the above one is, compared to the OP one.

Stopping the original video at 0:07, I’d eyeball the car-grass gap as 1.2m. Give 50cm minimum from bike tyre to the grass, then another 50cm for the offside of the bike to the handlebar, and we’re at 20cm closeness.

I’m currently averaging about 1 ticket every 2-3 rides on my current training route. Its not hard to pass safely, the more people read about this stuff the quicker attitudes will change. I’ve had one close pass in Majorca, the car had a GB sticker….

And this is why I try and avoid roads these days. It doesn’t help that the roads near me (in Cheshire) are absolute cancer being very narrow, full of blind bends (hedgerows) and super busy.

Yep, I avoid roads as much as I can for same reason (narrow, blind bends etc,.).
Not really for my safety as never actually been hit but for my state of mind. I ride for enjoyment, to relax, to clear my head etc,. and getting wound up over peoples dangerous driving ruins that.

I ride for enjoyment, to relax, to clear my head etc,. and getting wound up over peoples dangerous driving ruins that.

It’s really depressing how much a single close pass or road rage incident can ruin an entire ride. You can have a lovely day out, amazing weather, nice trails/roads, pleasant cafe stop and then one senseless overtake will ruin the whole vibe. ☹️

Yeah, there is a particularly bad stretch just as I am nearly home. A completely pointless 40 zone between 2 villages that is only 500m long.

Last time I rode along it at the end of a ride got the usual close pass, car then turned down my dead end road. I arrived at the same time so his overtake didn’t get him there any quicker.

Fortunately I had calmed down enough not to confront the ruddy faced old tosser. But it ruined the end of the ride completely.

I’m not saying its not a close pass, but I have had closer passes than that, now I have a camera too!

I try hard not to let these close passes get to me, but it really puts a downer on the ride when they happen!

Last time I rode along it at the end of a ride got the usual close pass, car then turned down my dead end road. I arrived at the same time so his overtake didn’t get him there any quicker.

Fortunately I had calmed down enough not to confront the ruddy faced old tosser. But it ruined the end of the ride completely.

Similar happened to me, a real poor close-pass overtake in my village. I recognised the car to be someone from the next road along from mine, so went and had a word.

I like to think that the person has reflected on their actions and was reminded that I am a person just like her.

It’s really depressing how much a single close pass or road rage incident can ruin an entire ride.

Exactly my commute to work this morning. The number of close passes was off the scale today. Back to as much off-road route as I can. I was going to ask a ‘why can’t folks just…’ question but now its got me annoyed and depressed again. Time to fix the MTB commuter again and try and enjoy the limited off-road routes I can.

Now we have 1.5 metres minimum passing space at speeds under 30mph in the Highway Code, I wonder how many more centuries it will be until we get markings on the road ~2 metres from road edge on 30mph roads?

Had to stop an old guy doing a very close pass yesterday.

2 lane road. Fairly narrow. I’m driving with a few cars in front of me and a few behind doing 30mph.

Ahead on the opposite side of the road is a cyclist coming towards me. Right behind his rear wheel is a car. As I get closer, the car is angling for an overtake despite the cars coming towards him in my lane.

I then move my car towards the centre white lines to basically force him not to do the overtake as he would have been about 30cm from cyclist.

As I pass him, he’s a guy easily 80+ years old, looking very impatient

Exactly my commute to work this morning. The number of close passes was off the scale today.

Wonder what it’ll be like next week with the train strikes – lots of people who don’t normally drive to work suddenly being pitched onto unfamiliar routes in already heavy traffic…

Was close passed by a car yesterday. I shouted out ‘too close!’. Car screeched to stop and irate woman stomped out telling me she was a psycho killer threatening to beat me up. Changed her mind when I unclipped and stood my 6’1” 100kg self up. Was thinking how many times I had to let her hit me before I could reasonably lay her out given the queue of witnesses that were forced to stop behind, but just rode past in the end. This kind of shit happens now and again to me on roads. It’s ridiculous that the right wing press has worked these muppets up into a frenzy of indignation:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/06/16/blame-cyclists-stoking-flames-road-culture-war/

Similar happened to me, a real poor close-pass overtake in my village. I recognised the car to be someone from the next road along from mine, so went and had a word.

I like to think that the person has reflected on their actions and was reminded that I am a person just like her.

I had a close pass not so long ago and the driver turned into a supermarket car park almost immediately. I may have inconvenienced their shop by following them into the car park, slowly around the whole thing, and then straight out of the exit because they didn’t want to confront the person they’d almost just killed.

Was close passed by a car yesterday. I shouted out ‘too close!’. Car screeched to stop and irate woman stomped out telling me she was a psycho killer threatening to beat me up.

I never understand this one.

Driver is presumably in a massive hurry because they just HAVE to get past you. There and then, right away. Can’t wait.

Yet when they look in the rear view mirror to see the cyclist gesticulating angrily, they have all the time in the world to stop the car, get out and threaten violence.

I had it a while ago coming up to a set of traffic light,s they changed to red so like a good little cyclist I stopped. The car behind floored it past me to jump the lights, missing me by inches. When he saw me giving a “WTF?!” gesture to him, he slammed the brakes on and pulled onto the pavement on the far side of the junction, jumped out and started looking to cross the road. Thankfully, traffic was far too heavy for him to do this and eventually he got back in his car and drove off. I was already prepared to turn around or get on the pavement and ride off and I had a towpath not far away to escape onto as well but that was a close call both from his overtake as he jumped the lights and nearly being beaten up.

This week has seen an uptick in idiot passes. Last week was 0 submissions on the 3 days of commutes. This week has been 4 submissions out of 2 rides with a few not submitted as I’m out of time. They all seem to happen around the same roads as well.
Have even set up a little script that does the donkey work of entering my details into their website.

Dash cams are useful as well. Colleague got a FPN for speeding on the motorway. Viewed the footage and the sign changed literally as he went under it. Appealed and got it cancelled.

Occasionally on the worst ones I’m asked for the actual footage rather than a youtube link. That means they’re actually being prosecuted rather than just a warning letter. Nice feeling as those are the ones that have very nearly taken me out. Will pop them over to NMOTD once it’s clear of court.

@supernova I hope you told her you are Reverand Miller and you live at 666. 😉

I may have occasionally uttered an involuntary OI!!! but I try not to get involved now. If they genuinely don’t know what they did, they deserve pity, not aggression, and if they do know and do it deliberately, I’m not going to challenge and find out exactly how unhinged they are when they have 2T of fast moving metal box to demonstrate it with.

10 metres up the road on reflection, I think that woman had spent most of her life being walloped by one bloke or another and my adding to it, no matter how justified, was not going to improve the life chances of the kids in the car.