Brake-checking motorist deliberately causes crash: Hertfordshire Police tell cyclist video evidence “does not provide a realistic prospect of conviction”

Perhaps if Plod put as much effort into doing their job as they do into not doing it...

Update.

First of all, my thanks for your support. I haven't even told Mrs Mungecrundle about this incident and I almost feel ashamed to have been involved. I think I now have an inkling of understanding about how people who suffer much more serious crimes against their person must feel, it isn't pleasant. Having support from an internet community of strangers is surprisingly uplifting.

As a result of it being brought to his attention by a Road.cc reader, Boopop presumably? Marc Attwell, the Deputy Local Policing Commander for Hertfordshire Constabulary has reached out via the Road.cc editorial team and has offered to review how this incident has been processed by the collisions unit. I also submitted an official complaint via the IOPC.

Whilst I appreciate the sentiment, I would strongly urge that no-one involves themselves in any kind of revenge action on the car. It could have been borrowed, it could be on cloned plates, it could have been sold on to an innocent third party, I don't want you to put yourself at risk of violence or a criminal record. Furthermore, I have been provided with the details of the registered keeper. I'm not sure if the Police meant to send that information and I'm concerned that they may have also sent my details to the other person. Given that they have already demonstrated a willingness to use violence I don't want to find that the cars on my driveway have suffered vandalism in a revenge for revenge escalation.

I drive and motorcycle around 10,000 miles a year. I use dashcams and over many years cannot post footage of a single incident where another motorist put me or my passengers at any kind of risk, nor any incident of aggression by or towards me. On the bicycle though, I sometimes feel like a duck in a shooting gallery with close passes and left hooks. Wether alone or out with a group, there is a tiny minority of motorists who have a zero tolerance attitude to our presence on the road and when the aggression, verbal abuse and honking turns into actual violence I really expect the Police to actually deal with it.

I'm a firm believer in a mantra, taught to me by a vastly experienced motorcycle instructor, that if you are involved in a collision and your vehicle was moving then there was definitely something different you could have done to avoid it. If your vehicle was stationary then there was probably something you could have done to avoid it. What I'll learn from this incident is not to put myself on a line that reduces my bailout options should I have any suspicions at all about the car driver pulling a similar brake check stunt. Also, and more importantly, to be aware of the red mist chase mode instinct.

thats disgusting behaviour from the driver and the police. But not unexpected. Fuck them quite frankly. If they dont do anything with footage that clear then they've got a vendette against cyclists. There was no reason at all for beeping there, the driver overtook for no reason before a junction/ roundabout, should have waited behind anyway. If he didnt like the fact a faster cyclist was overtaking a slower one then they shouldnt have overtaken the cyclist in the first place. Is it ok for a car to overtake a cyclist, but not ok for a cyclist to overtake a cyclist? lets just say when i was riding beside a shared path,  holding 30 mph and overtaking another rider, a cop car came up behind me, blaring their horn. The passenger leaned out the window and pointed at the cycle lane. We got into a heated argument over it. So no, i dont care for police and their ''actions'' or ''crackdowns''. Because its all bollocks. They dont know how to drive or what to do around cyclists any more than regular people. The only cops you can trust with driving laws are the traffic cops. Theyve done all the high speed training and vulnerable road users info. The panda cops havent. 

The 'Bulldogs for Britain' sticker in the rear window says it all, really.

Well, I live not too far away from this area. If I happen to see a silver Ford Fusion Zetec 1.4 petrol with registration EK61HGZ knocking about, I'll know what to do

Guilty on all counts, at least 3 offences there

Police don't give a shit , they are just another bunch of revenue seekers for the government. Don't forget they turn up after the crime has been committed, but woe if you have a rear brake light out or drive 1 mph over the speed limit , then your treated like you have murdered someone . I mean most people who join the police do it for the power trip. I respect people not a uniform . Most encounters I've had with the "fuzz " they have been arseholes on a power trip and I told them so. 
That driver could have killed that cyclist. But no money in prosecuting him . That's the truth.  I'd love to know what  would have happened to that driver if the cyclist was a copper ....... just had a thought ,i wonder if the driver has a couple of mates in the right places, wouldn't surprise me .   If that was another car instead of a  bike ? 

Find his address and insert a brick into his rear window.

I found a Herts police superintendent on twitter, and have just sent him a DM after the following tweet:

https://twitter.com/SuptAttwell/status/1225872575743561729

This is the DM I sent:

Evening, I'm sure if you get in touch with the staff at http://road.cc they'll be able to get you in touch with the person that suffered this incident. Here's the link again https://road.cc/content/news/270977-brake-checking-motorist-deliberately.... My two main concerns with this case are A: It seems pretty clear to me that the driver used their car as a weapon with the car towards the end of the video with the brake check. B: Even if for some reason the CPS would say there wasn't enough evidence for a conviction, surely there's enough evidence for careless driving towards the beginning of the video given the wing mirror hitting the cyclist. Then as others have said in the comment section on the article, the driver must have known they'd been involved in a crash, yet they didn't stop at the scene, and also they presumably didn't inform the police of the incident within 24 hours either. Essentially there's plenty of reasons to punish the driver for their behaviour in that video but it seems the police force is not interested. It seems like a dangerous precedent to set to me. I have front and rear cameras myself and if this level of high quality footage isn't enough evidence to convict or at least *do something* I feel as if I may as well chuck my cameras in the bin. Thanks for your time and I look forward to hearing back from you. Thanks, Tom.

Report it to readers letters with the registration in Royston crow stating the polices response. Include the registration number and state the driver failed to stop and exchange insurance details. Plus, check on DVLA website to see if it is currently insured ,taxed and mot. Add that to the letter too if not legal! Good luck!

Mungecrundle, I do hope you have the patience to pursue this, words to describe the driver completely fail me.

The first overtake was poor judgement and clumsy

Second overtake was a collision with improper use of the horn.

The brake check, was quite obvious as the footage shows the exit to be clear as the vehicle is approaching and you do not stop suddenly on the exit to a roundabout for no reason. Most police forces view brake checks that as dangerous driving, six points.

Leaving the scene of an 'accident'

Not exchanging details.

Not reporting it within 24 hours

Is there anything I've missed?

You could always try the route of getting the keepers details and sending a letter asking for damages then when they don't reply, small claims court.

Fingers crossed.

Hertfordshire Police are lazy fucking morons.

That is all I have to say.

Hand it in on a plate, and the police still aren't interested. One wonders how they treat offences with even less evidence.

I just watched Cycling Gaz's compilation of a year's worth of filming bad driving and taking his complaints to the police and chapeau to him!! What a result! I can't understand why the police failed to act in a number of the incidents - was it owing to the number of times Gaz said the F word and invited the drivers to F themselves? It takes an awful lot of patience to continue with a complaint, as I have found to my cost, but I do hope you continue with this one. The sheer psychopathic brain in that car must be stopped somehow!

Inappropriate use of horn, collision 1 (wing mirror), collision 2 (brake check), driving away from collisions without exchanging details, failure to report collision within 24 hours.

Was this the Sarge on his way back from the Fox & Hounds to the station?

This guy needs some grief over the dropped case : https://www.police.uk/hertfordshire/pcc/

Beyond reasonable doubt = nobody in the office could figure out how to play the video so we gave up and dealt out stock reply

Please make an official complaint. If the police won't pursue that, what hope have we got?   

This is me.

I'm really upset about this incident and the Police response, they really did not want to deal with it, left it until after the 14 day period when it could have been pursued by a NIP and now consider insufficient evidence when the evidence provided meets their website portal requirements. Getting them to accept that I was not injured was Kafkaesque. I get that injury accidents need to be reported in person at a Police station, road traffic act requirement apparently or some nonsense, but as my nearest station would be Stevenage some 20 miles away it was neither convenient or necessary, I don't do spurious whiplash claims, but it does raise the question of how you are supposed to report an injury collision from your hospital bed?

It seems like a green light to the tiny minority of cyclist hating motorists who have absolutely no tolerance of our presence on the road. You can be filmed committing the most atrocious driving, actually knock someone off, leave the scene and expect to get away scot-free.

I have reviewed the footage many times, the car starts with a poor overtake before the roundabout. From my position I can see the traffic on the roundabout, I can see that the VW is turning right and I've already eased off to arrive at the roundabout as it clears. When the Ford overtakes I just put him in the "bit of a muppet - unable to look or plan ahead" category. I slide up the inside, maybe that annoyed him, enter the roundabout without stopping and take a decent wide line to overtake the slower cyclist as I exit the roundabout at which point there is a blast of horn from behind. I indicate that I'm going to complete my overtake, you can see this from the shadow. I pass the other cyclist and start to move back in. Maybe the driver didn't see the other cyclist, maybe I didn't move back in quick enough for his liking? I should say that on this day there was a fair tail wind and without overbragging I am a reasonably powerful rider, certainly capable of 25mph+ on that stretch of road in those conditions even on the MTB. The next thing I know, the Ford is passing me so close that the wing mirror grazes my forearm and hits the end of my bars, you can hear this on the video and see that it is folded in following the contact. I'm unbalanced and my right foot comes out of my cleat in reaction, you can see the shadow of this in the video, the passenger door brushes against my foot.

Now I'm upset, I don't know what I'm going to do if I catch the bastard, but in a fantasy world it would involve a hot poker and a pit of rabid squirrels. If nothing else I think I want to demonstrate that I wasn't holding him up. I'm accelerating and trying to re-engage my right foot, looking down I don't notice that the car has braked to a halt and when I do it is far too late to evade or stop.

The other cyclist sensibly took to the pavement. He didn't stop but I did catch up with him round the corner. He didn't want to provide a witness statement as he said he didn't want the hassle with the Police, fair enough but a third party may have been helpful to get the incident followed up properly.

As you can see from my shadow there is no gesticulation at the driver at any point, and from the soundtrack no verbal interaction, I know I'm on camera even if the motorist doesn't.

I realise that many people get hit and run every day and many end up with injuries or worse. Obviously I'm really hacked off about this as it happened to me, and therefore seems really important to me though I appreciate that to the rest of the 7 billion people on planet Earth it is just someone else getting involved in road related stupidity. However I'm hoping that by publishing this on Road.cc that some mileage can be made in the cause of road safety for cyclists, I'd hope that British Cycling and other road safety organisations could use this example to put some shame on Hertfordshire Constabulary.