Reporting dangerous driving. An easier way?

[BlackPanther]

After seeing many many commuting videos on here of bad driving (and posting a few myself) what about this for an idea? Any company that has a fleet of vehicles can voluntarily sign up to a website.
Any one with video evidence of bad driving simply enters the number plate/time/date/location etc, and a brief description of what happened onto the website.
When a number plate is entered the video is forwarded to the transport manager of said company. They view it, and take action.

Whilst this would 'punish' bad driving, it would also prevent a lot of cases of bad driving/road rage if the drivers for a company knew that their bosses had signed up to it, and were made aware of just how many cyclists have cameras nowadays.

It sounds almost too simple. Have I just had an idea that someone's already had??? If so, I apologise!

If not, can I take it to Dragons Den. I'm sure companies would pay a small subscription fee if it meant fewer accidents.

 

[Duckehhh]

I doubt any company would sign up because no companies have bad and dangerous drivers.

 

[ianrauk]

Let alone pay a fee...

 

[gaz]

Not going to work. How are you going to know which companies have which numberplates? They are going to provide those to you and then keep them updated? I don't think so. As Ian pointed out, will they want to pay a fee? Which you will of course need to keep something like this running, it will take some resources to keep it updated and to chase down companies for info.

If something is dangerous enough that it's dangerous driving, then it warrants being reported to the police.
We have to have use a bit of 'give and take' whilst some things are silly and annoying for us, they aren't serious enough to warrant police action or in my opinion a video online (not directed at you, but I note some people moan about anything and everything)

Your best and in fact anyones best course of action is to try and get onside with the police, work out a system of reporting stuff and making things easier. It's best to try and do this with some traffic cops. This is what several of us did with RoadSafe london when it was first set up (it wasn't meant for cyclists to use the way we did) and things have progressed from there.

The great thing about using the police for things like this is that they can use a lot more resources than we ever could. For example with a recent incident of mine, they got VOSA involved to look at the company and to sharpen up driver training, add on extra mirrors to the vehicles and put stickers in the cabs to remind drivers to look out for cyclists.

 

[Kookas]

The vast majority of cyclists don't have cameras. You're much more likely to be caught on CCTV than a helmet cam.

 

[BlackPanther]

Not going to work. How are you going to know which companies have which numberplates?

When you're caught speeding, the NIP goes straight to the transport manager (t.m), who then passes it on to the offending driver, so if the government/dvla participated that's one route that would work. If not, then if a company registered it's fleets details with (for example) 'Unsafelydriven.co.uk' then as soon as that numberplate was entered in a complaint, it would automatically be forwarded to that companies t.m. As far as non-human interaction websites go, it sounds like a doddle to implement, cheap to run and if government sponsered should be free. It would depend on the t.m. updating change of vehicles, but that isn't much work.

As for the cost? Well many (especially reputable) haulage companies already spend money to improve safety. For example with driving training/refresher courses. They also spend money to reduce accidents on driver aids which are not legal requirements (why not when they improve safety is beyond me), for example with reversing aids, additional mirrors, Fresnel lenses, etc etc.

I have to say that this kind of scheme would improve safety more than the current CPC course, which consists of doing 5 courses, most of which overlap with each other, and has one of the most idiotic loopholes. You can just do the same course 5 times and pass. Still, as long as it keeps trainers in a job, and makes lots of money, eh?

Maybe I'm thinking over simplistically, but I've seen far worse cases of money being 'wasted' (see above) but I think that the multitude of cctv cameras has already improved road safety in towns. I would like to see more red light cameras, and I would like to be able to easily report rlj's as I have caught quite a few on camera, sometimes going through 3 or 4 seconds after the red.

Other than having direct access to police resources (by having a relative in the force) I think the roads would be safer for all of us if we had easier routes to go down when reporting dangerous driving. I'm Blackpanther, and that's my 2 cents.

 

[gaz]

What exactly do you think should be reported by such a system?
RLJing and speeding?

 

[BlackPanther]

Any dangerous driving. Excessive speeding, rljing close passes, mobile phone use, reading the newspaper whilst driving, threatening language, bouncing off kerb (due to distraction/tiredness). Basically, anything that if you were a transport manager, you'd like to know about, so the driver in question could be disciplined/re educated to make the roads safer for all.

Just to reiterate, any company worth it's salt wants to know that it's vehicles are being driven in a safe, responsible, courteous manner.

 

[gaz]

Anything that is dangerous driving should be reported to the police.