Reporting bad driving in London

[Bad Company]

Yet another 'let's have a go at motorists thread'. How depressing.

 

[stowie]

Yet another 'let's have a go at motorists thread'. How depressing.

I think you will find it is "have a go a appalling driving" thread. I am a motorist, and don't feel in the least bit "got at" by the posts, possibly because I try not to engage in the dangerous driving that would get reported to the site and that can be seen on the videos. In fact, in Gaz's video, the motorist is clearly having a go himself - in a way most would find intimidating. Why people would think that they should be able to get away with this type of behaviour when driving a car (would one condone it if it happened in a shop for instance?) is beyond me.

Perhaps you should think of it less as "having a go" at motorists, more asking them to live up their responsibilities when driving a dangerous vehicle?

 

[Twenty Inch]

Yet another 'let's have a go at motorists thread'. How depressing.

Yet another "didn't bother to read the thread properly" response.

Firstly, the thread is about reporting bad driving in London, so obviously people are going to talk about bad driving. If you want a thread that talks about good driving, go over to "The happy "Nothing bad happened on my commute today" thread", or one of the numerous others talking about good driving.

Secondly, I'm a motorist too. Why would I have a go at myself?

Thirdly, the thread is actually discussing people's experiences of using a new service promoted by the Met Police that is intended to have an impact on road safety.

 

[BSRU]

I had a chat with the sergeant in charge of our local traffic unit, he stated they would never use video evidence for minor traffic incidents, i.e. anything that does not involve a collision is minor.
The unfortunate but understandable reason given, was the defence laywers would have that evidence thrown out on the basis it was not recorded and stored on approved equipment. It is far to easy for someone to tamper with digital video files nowadays so it is not regarded as safe evidence, unless other witness's corroborate the footage.

 

[Bad Company]

Perhaps you should think of it less as "having a go" at motorists, more asking them to live up their responsibilities when driving a dangerous vehicle?

The vast majority of motorists do just that. I am also aware that most of us on this forum are cyclists AND motorists. It just seems to me that there is so much criticism in commuting that becomes dissproportianate.

The chavs driving badly are dangerours to other road users including cyclists, motorists and pedestrians but let's keep this in proportion - there really arn't that many of them.

 

[Twenty Inch]

The vast majority of motorists do just that. I am also aware that most of us on this forum are cyclists AND motorists. It just seems to me that there is so much criticism in commuting that becomes dissproportianate.

The chavs driving badly are dangerours to other road users including cyclists, motorists and pedestrians but let's keep this in proportion - there really arn't that many of them.

There aren't that many, but the consequences are potentially so grave that it's little wonder people get upset. Many people on this forum have been hospitalised by indifferent and poor driving, (including myself). This is before we start to consider the few cases of actually deliberate aggressive driving.

In any event, chavs are easy. It's the overweight, middle-aged white guy in a big saloon car who is more of a threat, simply because of their prevalence and lack of any idea of what cycling is like.

 

[stowie]

The vast majority of motorists do just that. I am also aware that most of us on this forum are cyclists AND motorists. It just seems to me that there is so much criticism in commuting that becomes dissproportianate.

The chavs driving badly are dangerours to other road users including cyclists, motorists and pedestrians but let's keep this in proportion - there really arn't that many of them.

I completely agree. The vast majority of motorists try to interact reasonably with other road users, including cyclists. And when a motorist does put a cyclist at risk, in many cases it is the motorist either making a mistake, or being ignorant of the cyclist's needs. And experience and maybe education would help them. But there is absolutely a minority of motorists (and we have all meet them from time to time), who act in a dangerous manner around cyclists to intimidate or because they cannot be bothered to wait etc. These people, at the moment, tend to get away with these actions and they shouldn't. They will only change their behaviour if they believe there is a reasonable chance they will get caught.

I would say that a board such as this will make the number of bad drivers look greater simply because people don't tend to report every time they have an uneventful journey (aside from the nothing happened thread!)

The issue is that the small minority of aggressive and bullying drivers are disproportionately dangerous to vulnerable road users.

 

[gaz]

Anyone that has gone through my previous blog posts will know that I'm a user of the RoadSafe London website and I was invited to meet the team that run it.

Only today I reported two incidences to RoadSafe, one for a white van that overtook me far to close and another where I'm concerned that a scooter rider hasn't done his CBT and is putting him self in danger due to his riding style.

Recently a Freedom of information request was logged by Tim Lennon asked some questions about the operation and response of RoadSafe Lodon. The full FOI can be found here.

I don't know the person that requested this FOI, or what there intentions where, I'm unaware if they are a blogger as i was passed this link by one of my twitter followers and he found it in the comments of another blog post.

A lot of people are complaining that this is no better than before. The roadsafe website makes it easy to make a complaint about a vehicle and their driver but without proof the police are unlikely to do anything about it. Which to me is understandable.
And you have to be realistic with what you expect them to do.

Looking at the results of the FOI request, it's clear that they are using the information they are getting in a positive way. The information is being passed on to specific teams that can deal with them in a better way, and arrests and prosecutions are being made where possible.

With 1225 reports made with RoadSafe in nearly a year and 659 letters sent out to the registered keepers and/or companies. Your complaint has a 1 in 2 chance of having some action being taken place. A letter might not do much, but it should be kept on record against the vehicle that they have been contacted about their driving in the past.

More than 40% of the reports are about cycling 'near miss' this just shows that a vast majority of the users of it are cyclists. And I know that most of the London helmet camera users will report the worst stuff they see to RoadSafe, So I expect a vast majority of those 530 cycling near misses will be accompanied by video evidence.
With lots of video evidence going to the police with regards to issues that we cyclists face on a daily basis, one can only hope that they listen and help to do something about it.
Clearly we are going a step in the right direction as the cycling task force has been launched and they are tackling various issues across London by bicycle.

The only bad thing to pick up from this information is the fact that the traffic to the webpage is quite low. I still haven't seen any advertising about this form, and I only found out due to word of mouth from other cyclists.
I recall from when I met the officers that run the website, they said something about a soft launch first of all and then going public later. An extended testing period?






Originaly posted on Croydon Cyclist

 

[As Easy As Riding A Bike]

With 1225 reports made with RoadSafe in nearly a year

That does seem like quite a low figure.

My reports to Crackdown, the Sussex Police version, have numbers in the high 28,000s - i.e. nearly 30,000 reports have been made. AFAIK the scheme has only been running a little longer than Roadsafe.

I'm not quite sure what lies behind the discrepancy.

 

[gaz]

That does seem like quite a low figure.

My reports to Crackdown, the Sussex Police version, have numbers in the high 28,000s - i.e. nearly 30,000 reports have been made. AFAIK the scheme has only been running a little longer than Roadsafe.

I'm not quite sure what lies behind the discrepancy.

They haven't advertised to at all! Where as Crackdown in sussex was a pretty major operation with news coverage and everything!