I was passed extremely closely by an Arriva bus doing 50mph on a single carriageway two weeks back. after banging on the side of the bus as he was stuck in a queue of traffic and asking him what kind of driving was that he states he never even saw me and turns back to ask his passengers if they'd seen me
An exchange of verbals and I'm in front of the bus taking his number (still a queue of traffic to join a very busy dual with no lights) when he gets off the bus with mobile phone in hand, he gets right up close and threatens to put me (back) in hospital, I had a visible bandage on my arm from a blood test not 10 minutes previous. I just coughed in his face to get him to move away.
A guy from the car in front gets out and breaks things up.
I report it to police, the officer basically states that she could do me for public order offence, to which i reply let's go that route then, she then backs off and says but she doesn't want to. I get a phone call this week, the bus company stated they didn't have cctv on that particular bus to which I'm calling BS on that, the officer hasn't even checked the bus nor has identified the driver in any case. So she said she wouldn't do anything re the driving but would take a statement from me regarding public order offence for the driver for his threats.
Now if she's saying my word is enough for her to follow through pertaining to a public order offence then why isn't it enough for the more threatening driving offence?
Basically unless you are armed with a camera the police aren't interested in doing anything, how did the police deal with poor driving in the past when reported by members of the public when there was no 'evidence' apart from the word of the victim?
Is there any evidence thus far that this initiative (AKA actual enforcement of the law as it already existed) has made things safer for people on bikes, how is that measured?