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400bhp

Guru
400Bhp Im never unfair to gaz, I think he knows that. He puts his head up to be shot at,and good on him for that. I dont agree with him on a lot of things, but he believes in what he does and goes about it in the right way IMO. he s not slow in accepting observations and comments, its just a shame some of the other road warriors on here don t take a leaf out of his book. By the way Im always fair :thumbsup:

Fair point boss :smile:
 

Norm

Guest
No, you can easily check if you want to. (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=RT03BEX)

Oh, and they were offences because I found them bl**dy offensive.
The second one, approaching the roundabout, was crap but the first didn't look like an issue to me. I'd have been more worried about the silver Megane (WC53 FHR?) who went past in front of the Mini, as they passed you at the entrance to a road coming in from your right. If a car had been coming out of that road and turning left, it could have been messy. There is a significant risk coming from that Megane, IMO, and it's ironic that wasn't commented.
 

gb155

Fan Boy No More.
Location
Manchester-Ish
Oh, and I'm not keen on opinions such as rude tw@t and that sort of thing going into videos. I think we'll have far more impact if we're calm and matter of fact in descriptions. Same goes for speaking to motons, but then best practice is not to speak to them at all.


Agreed 110% mate

I'm about to get back into helmet camming so count me in !
 

MrHappyCyclist

Riding the Devil's HIghway
Location
Bolton, England
The second one, approaching the roundabout, was crap but the first didn't look like an issue to me. I'd have been more worried about the silver Megane (WC53 FHR?) who went past in front of the Mini, as they passed you at the entrance to a road coming in from your right. If a car had been coming out of that road and turning left, it could have been messy. There is a significant risk coming from that Megane, IMO, and it's ironic that wasn't commented.
Well, you are of course entitled to your opinion, but I disagree. The Megane was no problem; they gave me plenty of space and there was no problem with the side road as you can see quite a way down it and there weren't any vehicles in sight. The mini, on the other hand, passed far too close, even though there was plenty of room to move further out without even encroaching on the oncoming lane.

However, notwithstanding my earlier comments about their being few and far between, this pair of videos does show the value of identifying repeat "offenders". I don't think the first incident alone warrants any further action, but the two incidents taken together show a pattern of impatient, inconsiderate driving and disregard for other people's safety that ought to be dealt with.
 
OP
OP
B

BentMikey

Rider of Seolferwulf
Location
South London
678CR is another one, and I'm sure there are more I recall seeing.

LOL on the Subaru driver totally destroying the point that a filmed driver will get angry and misbehave around cyclists after being outed on youtube.
 

400bhp

Guru
678CR is another one, and I'm sure there are more I recall seeing.

LOL on the Subaru driver totally destroying the point that a filmed driver will get angry and misbehave around cyclists after being outed on youtube.

Was it Youtube that changed his driving (on this particular occasion) then? Did you have a chat?
 

Origamist

Legendary Member
Was it Youtube that changed his driving (on this particular occasion) then? Did you have a chat?

I believe the police also had words.
 

Jezston

Über Member
Location
London
It's nice that this thread seems to have gone back on track somewhat.

Thoughts about the system of referencing videos:


Method

(Mr Happy Cyclist - please comment on the practicality of this in relation to how your system worked!)

1. Some kind of 'group' is set up, either via YouTube subscription or whatever is practical, which submitters have to join and/or are invited to.
2. When a member encounters an incident, they post it online with whatever tags are required for an automated script to grab the reg details from. E.g. they need to put "RD=" or something before the plate so the bot can identify it, unless MHC's script is cleverer than that!
3. This gets added to some list hidden away somewhere.
4. If the reg the member has entered matches one already on the list, they and the related submitters are alerted to each other's incidents in some way.
5. Perhaps also the reg can be searched somehow to see if existing submissions exist before a member needs to submit a new one, although there may be additional privacy implications there.


Discussion & Action

"Who decides what's dangerous or not?"

My opinion? Those submitting the videos, then ultimately the Police.

If someone puts a new video up (perhaps they could search the database on the reg before submitting?), and then gets an alert saying someone else already has an incident with that reg plate on their channel, they can look at it. If they feel the other incident isn't a big deal or it turns out to be different car or suchlike, and they don't think their own video is that bad, they can just leave it. If they think that their incident was bad enough to be worth reporting to police, this additional video could support their case.

Then, they can report it to the police should they wish, and it's up to the police to ultimately decide if the incident is bad enough. The viewing officer might decide that one such incident on it's own isn't worth persuing, but several instances of bad driving (or even bad cycling) warrant action.

I don't think such decision making should be down to the community - but there's no reason why discussion shouldn't take place which can affect the submitters decision whether to proceed or not.

But as we've seen from this thread, like shouting abuse at drivers in the street - hurling abuse at each other isn't the most constructive method to get your points accepted. It just puts people on the defensive and less willing and likely to take on board your points, or even engage with others at all, even if those points may be legitimate. If you've got something to say, and you think it would be genuinely useful, then say it politely and respectfully and you'll be more likely to be taken seriously. And I'm not saying any of that doesn't apply to me.

Thoughts?

 

MrHappyCyclist

Riding the Devil's HIghway
Location
Bolton, England
It's nice that this thread seems to have gone back on track somewhat.
Thoughts about the system of referencing videos:
<snip>
As far as my script is concerned, it is indeed a bit cleverer than that (even if I do say so myself). It scrapes the VRNs from the titles of all the videos in a channel, and will detect and capture any of the following formats:
"AAAnnnA" "AAAnnA" "AAAnA" "AnnnAAA" "AnnAAA" "AnAAA" "AAnnAAA" "AAA#nnnA" "AAA#nnA" "AAA#nA" "Annn#AAA" "Ann#AAA" "An#AAA" "AAnn#AAA"
(where A is an upper case letter, n is a number and # is a space)
with appropriate restrictions on which letters and numbers are allowed in each position of each format. There are very few false positives, but it misses those that have non-standard VRNs; for example, it missed Mikey's 678CR one, which is a weird personal number plate. The weird ones could well be handled by a tag or prefix as you suggest. It then searches the whole of YouTube for each of the VRNs listed, both with and without the spaces, and displays the ones that have the registration number in the title.

However, I developed the script for fun because I enjoy writing programs and playing with public APIs, and whilst it works well ("does the job right"), I'm not convinced that it currently is of much use ("does the right job"). As I said before, videos of repeat offenders are currently few and far between, so the benefit is not clear. If Mikey is right and the use of cameras (and posting) becomes very common, then that may change, but right now hardly seems worth it (though I'm happy to contribute the code and help).

Perhaps we could come back to that idea as a support mechanism for people who want to make official complaints some time in the future. However, there is another point in that context regarding the usefulness of the script. The benefit of the script is just that it can go through the whole history of a channel and check for other videos featuring the same vehicle for all of them (often hundreds). For an individual who wishes to check whether a particular vehicle has been featured before, it is easy just to do a search on YouTube (which uses the Google search engine). So again, I'm not sure of the benefit.

Regarding the decision on whether to report a particular incident to the police (or Roadsafe for those lucky enough to have it or similar), it is up to the individual to decide that. I think the community aspect boils down to reaching some common understanding of which incidents are worth reporting and which are not, and that could be useful given the amount of disagreement on here. Of course, that is more to do with whether the complainant is likely to get anywhere than whether the incident itself has merit, and sharing experience of that could be (is already?) useful.

The other way in which videos could be useful is their use for campaigning. I think the key issue right now with the effectiveness of videos for this is that there are far too many of them and, whilst huge numbers of these do show bad and dangerous driving, most of them do not make an impact on the viewer. The comments in this thread whenever videos have been linked to illustrates this very well. Remember, this is not about whether the incident portrayed was worthy of posting, it is about whether it has sufficient impact to be useful for campaigning purposes. That is where gathering together a collection of relatively high impact videos from different cyclists could by useful and IMO is where we might usefully focus our attention. The process you outlined could be useful as a basis for that.

(But these are my opinions, of course.)
 

Jezston

Über Member
Location
London
For an individual who wishes to check whether a particular vehicle has been featured before, it is easy just to do a search on YouTube (which uses the Google search engine). So again, I'm not sure of the benefit.

Yeah that's kind of a serious point ;)

But I think there's still benefits to be had, such as an alert if someone else has. As has been said, cameras are rare and matches even rarer. But personal cameras - amongst all forms of transport - are becoming increasingly common, and so matches are becoming more likely.
 

lukesdad

Guest
678CR is another one, and I'm sure there are more I recall seeing.

LOL on the Subaru driver totally destroying the point that a filmed driver will get angry and misbehave around cyclists after being outed on youtube.
Im not so sure it does, the second clip could have easily been somone else driving, the style being so different, for example his spouse ?
 
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