Police Scotland

[Pebble]

So...with the increase in driver intimidation, I thought i would see if Police Scotland had a reporting process for cases of bad driving or cyclist intimidation. I invested in Cycliq front a rear cameras a couple of months ago, but it appears that they will be worthless unless I am actually involved in a more major incident than being overtaken dangerously close to a traffic island, then punishment sharp braking ahead of me, then waiting on the other side of the roundabout to pull out behind me and shout from their window at me, meanwhile holding up the traffic behind....

This was Police Scotland's reply to my query as to whether they had a reporting process.....

Thank you for your email.

The footage can be sent to contactus@scotland.pnn.police.uk or by replying to this email. We can then arrange for an officer to speak to you, please be aware we are unable to provide warning to a driver, this is a formal procedure and you would need to be prepared to go to court if a crime is established.

All a bit pointless then......

Sadly I had the same a few months back, sent the video in, spoke to them on the phone etc and they just seemed totally uninterested unless I went down the full prosecution going to court route.

Having being involved as a witness and a juror in the past (nothing to do with cycling) getting deeply involved and enduring the ridiculous time wasting the legal professions seem to so embrace seems a fate worse than the stupidly close pass. Also getting involved would mean the wife seeing the video and that would just cause worry for her every time i'm out riding. So on balance it just seems more sensible just to forget it.

I certainly do see the need for complainants to stand up in court, I certainly would demand that if I was being accused. However when evidence is so clear cut I wish there was a better way. It is a difficult one and I do not have an answer.

[Jdsk]

However when evidence is so clear cut I wish there was a better way. It is a difficult one and I do not have an answer.

A couple of points on policy:

1 Traffic offences have generally adopted the principles used for centuries for criminal offences. But not entirely, for example the accumulation of penalty points. If we could move many more to being administrative and related to the privilege of driving on public roads rather than trying to squeeze them into that criminal analogy it might work a lot better.

2 Many traffic offences were passed into law with everyone involved knowing that rates of detection would be very low. Exceeding the speed limit is an obvious example. But changes in the available technology now permit near-universal detection. See recent discussion of autonomous vehicle stuff (rather than slow cycling!).

Facing up to both of these has a lot to offer to people who'd like to ride bikes on public roads.

Jonathan

[thirdcrank]

... Sadly I had the same a few months back, sent the video in, spoke to them on the phone etc and they just seemed totally uninterested unless I went down the full prosecution going to court route.

Having being involved as a witness and a juror in the past (nothing to do with cycling) getting deeply involved and enduring the ridiculous time wasting the legal professions seem to so embrace seems a fate worse than the stupidly close pass. Also getting involved would mean the wife seeing the video and that would just cause worry for her every time i'm out riding. So on balance it just seems more sensible just to forget it.

I certainly do see the need for complainants to stand up in court, I certainly would demand that if I was being accused. However when evidence is so clear cut I wish there was a better way. It is a difficult one and I do not have an answer.

I have posted before and probably more than once that the biggest miscarriage of justice is that 90% of people who witness an offence "don't want to get involved" and of the remaining 10% few will "get involved" a second time.

The fact remains that under the present system, anybody reporting an offence has to be willing to be involved if they want it to result in action. Indeed, the legal position is that witnesses can be compelled to testify with severe alternatives. In practice, that's largely been abandoned. Unless something has changed, in E&W the CPS require a witness's attitude to attending court to be included in their statement.

Also, the system has never got to grips with witnesses being intimidated.

[mediumbird]

Thirdcrank, you sound either ex or currently serving Police Officer? Appreciate what you say, and I suppose I am like a lot of the population in being put off by the whole go to court thing, the protracted and usually expensive legal process. If only there was a middle ground in reporting issues, rather than the nuclear option.
I can also assure you that there was zero interaction with the driver before the incident. This occurred in an open road and he was just one car of many that passed us that day. We were 40 miles into a ride without any incident prior to then. If I knew how to upload the video here I would, just for constructive criticism. I have both front and rear views.

[thirdcrank]

viewtopic.php?p=1533710#p1533710

Re: earlier interactions, I was talking generally. There is often more to a report to police than meets the eye and the earlier it emerges the better.

Re: posting video, AFAIK, it's not possible on here. You need to post it somewhere else like youtube then post with a link. Members of this forum can be very critical of the members' vids BTW.

[mediumbird]

https://forum.cyclinguk.org/viewtopic.php?p=1533710#p1533710

Re: earlier interactions, I was talking generally. There is often more to a report to police than meets the eye and the earlier it emerges the better.

Re: posting video, AFAIK, it's not possible on here. You need to post it somewhere else like youtube then post with a link. Members of this forum can be very critical of the members' vids BTW.

Yes, I have seen that, so probably won’t add the video to the forum croc pit then. Might end up more intimidated than I was yesterday on the bike...

[TrevA]

Does anyone follow CyclingMikey on YouTube? He seems quite successful in getting people prosecuted, fined and points on their licence. Around £40,000 in fines and well over 700 penalty points issued in one year by the Met Police responding to the videos he has sent in. He tends to get people for phone use and careless driving rather than close passes though. Perhaps the Met are a bit more used to dealing with video evidence than Police Scotland.

Here’s one of Mikey’s more famous cases:

https://youtu.be/PA8ah2dwMxQ

[thirdcrank]

Here's a recent thread about cyclingmikey

viewtopic.php?p=1511089#p1511089

[Jdsk]

Perhaps the Met are a bit more used to dealing with video evidence than Police Scotland.

And other variation between forces has been described. That's a problem, but it's also an opportunity... it's often much easier to get something adopted if it's known to work elsewhere.

Jonathan

[thirdcrank]

I'd be cautious about commenting on Police Scotland from a perspective of how things work - or don't - in England.

Close passing, which I think was what triggered this thread is always going to be difficult to prove with only footage from a helmet or handlebar mounted camera. This partly because these cameras tend to have wide-angle lenses which make distances seem larger and then, overtaking a cyclist too closely is not a specific offence. A prosecution can only be for dangerous/careless/inconsiderate cycling, all of which can have a subjective element. (And as I've said before, if crashes rarely result in prosecution, what hope is there for near misses?)

Using a phone is an offence and it's largely cut-and-dried. Also, it's one of the so-called Fatal Four so hard for the authorities to ignore.

[mediumbird]

It wasn’t close passing, it was overtaking me as I approached a roundabout, very close to the central traffic island, so he had to veer into my path to avoid me, then doing two punishment braking manoeuvres in front of me, then stopping on the far side of the roundabout to then follow me, drive alongside me slowly whilst shouting out the passenger window at me(the passenger was studiously ignoring me...).

[thirdcrank]

It wasn’t close passing, it was overtaking me as I approached a roundabout, very close to the central traffic island, so he had to veer into my path to avoid me, then doing two punishment braking manoeuvres in front of me, then stopping on the far side of the roundabout to then follow me, drive alongside me slowly whilst shouting out the passenger window at me(the passenger was studiously ignoring me...).

IMO there should normally be a proper investigation into something like that, and footage from a helmet cam of the driving and of the suspect's face and a soundtrack of the shouting would be excellent evidence both of identification and the threatening behaviour. That would also give some context to the bad driving. But all that has to be "proved." The cameraman (or woman in this case?) has to give evidence of what happened and to "produce" the relevant footage which acts as corroboration of their testimony. Producing the footage includes saying how it was created and testifying that it has not been tampered with. The footage cannot normally stand on its own. The only big exception I can think of would be if a rider (or driver with a dashcam) were to be killed in the incident, in which case, the investigating police officer would produce the footage and testify how they found it during their investigation. Obviously, if the police seized incriminating footage of a cameraman's lawbreaking, the officer seizing it would produce it.

There are a couple of examples of what I'm saying on Martin Porter's Cycling Lawyer blog (I've got tired of linking to them.) In one he had a mugshot of the suspect badmouthing him. In the other, he launched an unsuccessful private prosecution of a close overtaker.

[mediumbird]

Ha ha. Yes a mature woman was the cameraman in this instance I don’t have a helmet cam only front and rear ones as I was concerned about the effect of a helmet cam should I come off the bike. So, you can’t prove who the driver was.
I’m not going to do anything about it, but it has been an enlightening debate, so thanks.

[irc]

I agree with Thirdcrank that there is little point the police warning anyone for an incident they have not witnessed themselves. Unless they investigate it fully to establish if there is evidence for charges then any offender is liable to just deny doing anything wrong. After all as a local cyclist who has reported many incidents to Police Scotland found even video footage does not mean a guilty verdict at court.

http://www.magnatom.net/2015/06/my-day-in-court.html

[mikeymo]

I agree with Thirdcrank that there is little point the police warning anyone for an incident they have not witnessed themselves.

I had an "interaction" when I was driving in what I refer to as "the wild west" also known as Chapeltown, Leeds. A driver was texting (or similar) and drifting into my lane. I sounded my horn, and when he looked up I did a sort of "keep your eyes on the road" sign. He went ballistic, it was a bit scary. So I locked the doors and pretended to call somebody on my phone. He drove off at high speed.

So I called the police, and told them about the offence, and being threatened. They took details, and called me back. They said he was "known to us", had been round to see him, and "his version of events was of course a bit different to yours".

So although this didn't result in any sort of court action, there is, presumably, some sort of mark on his file. So I don't think it's a waste of time just because it doesn't end up in a conviction.

There have been other times when things I have reported definitely have ended up in a conviction. To be honest, I've often been impressed with the response of the police whenever I've reported suspected drunk drivers, unsecured child passengers and such like. Though these reports have usually been when I've been driving, rather than cycling. And I think police willingness to follow up reports of "minor" traffic offences seems to have got less in recent years, presumably due to cuts.