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news
Near Miss of the Day 852Near Miss of the Day 852: Motorist's dashcam catches another driver's close pass on cyclist
Keep your eyes focused on the right-hand lane to catch today's Near Miss of the Day submission...
The motorist who filmed the close pass told us the other driver received a fixed-penalty notice for the incident from July which was reported to Sussex Police via the Operation Crackdown online reporting page.
"I thought it put an interesting different perspective on these videos, being from an observer's position rather than the victim," James told road.cc.
"The driver can be seen to be distracted, reaching across the dashboard with his left hand, whilst apearing to have a mug in his right hand, and simultaneously passing the poor cyclist super-close. I am not really sure why this was not a dangerous or careless driving charge rather than an FPN to be honest."
The report also raised questions about the Operation Crackdown portal, which our reader notes "now states that for 'GDPR' reasons you have to inform other drivers that you are filming using a dashcam in order for them to be useable."
The portal has the following statement which needs ticking before making a report.
I confirm that I understand that dashcam footage falls under the Category of CCTV and as the footage is taken in the public domain, the Domestic Purposes Exemption under the Data Protection Act/UKGDPR does not apply and therefore all users are Data Controllers in their own right. As such you should be informing the public that they are being filmed and should have some form of notification on your mode of transport as you have responsibilities under the Data Protection Act /UKGDPR
"Clearly it is not possible to tell the drivers of all the cars around you that you are recording them," James told us. "It seems a very strange statement to me."
road.cc contacted Sussex Police for clarification but never received a reply.
> Near Miss of the Day turns 100 — Why do we do the feature and what have we learnt from it?
Over the years road.cc has reported on literally hundreds of close passes and near misses involving badly driven vehicles from every corner of the country – so many, in fact, that we’ve decided to turn the phenomenon into a regular feature on the site. One day hopefully we will run out of close passes and near misses to report on, but until that happy day arrives, Near Miss of the Day will keep rolling on.
If you’ve caught on camera a close encounter of the uncomfortable kind with another road user that you’d like to share with the wider cycling community please send it to us at info [at] road.cc or send us a message via the road.cc Facebook page.
If the video is on YouTube, please send us a link, if not we can add any footage you supply to our YouTube channel as an unlisted video (so it won't show up on searches).
Please also let us know whether you contacted the police and if so what their reaction was, as well as the reaction of the vehicle operator if it was a bus, lorry or van with company markings etc.
> What to do if you capture a near miss or close pass (or worse) on camera while cycling
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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33 comments
This is probably a fruitless dispute, but people can make up whatever interpretations of the law they choose- it's whether the interpretation is at all sensible that counts. Clearly, requiring people to state that they have complied with a stupid condition, which virtually zero % of them have complied with, before a complaint is accepted is not sensible and is not going anywhere. At present, it appears that imposing this condition is a reliable marker for a duff police force which has no intention of taking any significant action against offenders, although I concede that Lancashire (on the evidence I have) is a lot worse than Sussex
There is an option (possibly of especial interest to our fellow cyclists in Garston), of reporting misuse or incorrect application of data protection laws to the information commissioner. If their understanding of data law is this in correct, what else are they fucking up?
If their understanding of data law is this incorrect, what else are they fucking up?
Quite a lot, is the verdict of many people on Lancashire Constabulary at the moment.
Its a grey area. If you squint and look at it funny it can be argued that its a valid interpretation. (Certainly there have been EU rulings in this direction).
Its a grey area
No it isn't. I have travelled many dangerous miles around Lancashire over many years. I have never seen any 'indication' that any bike or vehicle is filming. So who is making the many hundreds of reports to OpSnap Lancs which are complying with this directive. Who is making them in Sussex?
Please dont conflate my words about what the law says with your experiences around Lancs or on the portal they are 2 or 3 completely different things.
Its a bit like saying the speed limit on a motorway is 70mph compared to what actually happens.
"I am not really sure why this was not a dangerous or careless driving charge rather than an FPN to be honest."
Just being a bit pendatic, but a FPN is necessarily underpinned by a criminal charge, presumably careless driving in this case. Accepting the FPN means admiting guilt to the charge. If the driver does not wish to admit guilt, they can contest it in court, in which case it would be treated no differently than if the driver had received a court summons in the first instance.
Indeed. One suspects what they actually mean is why was the driver permitted the option of an FPN (presumably 3 points and £100) rather than being taken directly to court for potentially higher sanctions.
Surprised no-one mentioned it was a Taxi. Brighton and Hove judging by the Aquamarine bonnet.
Inspite of the GDPR dodge being used given the angle and the passing distance being obscured I'm mildly surprised the cops did anything for this one. So (minor) kudos for that.
Yes, B&H taxi at bottom of Coldean Lane. You can see he passes after the bus stop and so has no way of giving even 0.5 metres of clearance. I suspect the police could work that out, and probably also considered his distraction (reaching across dash with one hand and holding cup with other) not acceptable.
That was shocking driving without question for which there is no excuse.
Please don't accuse me of victim blaming. I in no way consider that the cyclist was in any way responsible for the appalling driving in this video. However it does highlight the importance of good road positioning to discourage overtaking like this. I frequently see nervous cyclists riding in the gutter in the knowledge that there are many car drivers who will choose to squeeze past them resulting in them feeling even more nervous or just giving up cycling as a means of transport. Of course riding out from the edge of the road doesn’t guarantee that drivers still won’t try and squeeze past (I had one this week) but at least I had somewhere to go.
I was recently following a mum with two children on a very new looking longtail ebike. I was so encouraged to see that she had made the choice to invest probably around £5000 in this bike to take her kids to and from school rather than use a car. However I was terrified for her as she rode along hugging the kerb, knowing how many close passes she and her kids would be subjected to. There is a real need for better public education about cyclist’s road positioning for both cyclists and drivers. Of course proper segregated cycling infrastructure in our towns and cities would be a huge help.
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My thoughts exactly.
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Moving on from the camera notification stuff, and there is no doubt the pass was dangerously close.
Looking at the incident closely, the rider appears to initially be on he left of a line marking a bus stop and has possibly moved into this area to facilitate passing on an obviously busy and narrow road before coming to the width restriction. However he then moves over the line into the main traffic lane immediatly prior to the close pass. Should this then be treated as changing lanes so did he in effect change lanes without signalling or checking properly and "cut up" the van, surely he should be waiting until it is clear before he pulls out from the bus stop.
I don't think the bus stop constitutes a separate lane, and as a vulnerable road user the 'professional' taxi driver should have anticipated her movement - he had clear visibility of the upcoming narrowing, and the cyclist, well in advance.
Agree that better positioning would help.
Never mind that the driver was holding a cup in one hand and reaching across the dashboard with the other...
My thinking also... I'm sure there is a potential dodge here... 'the cyclist left the carriageway, so I proceeded to pass, only for the cyclist to return to the carriageway without signal or warning'.
It's amazing the way drivers mind's think really. However from my brush with the law, and subsequent correctional training, I understand its about confirmation bias; we all, tend to see / hear etc. the things that back up our preferred view / requirements.
In the moment the driver probably really did expect the cyclist to stop in the bus lane to let him through, as that's what he wanted to happen. The cyclist moving into the bus lane, confirmed it... vroom, off I go!
That rider was following the firstnamenumbers school of riding, keeping to the edge, using the bus stop line as a guide to the edge.
Also, typical casual cyclist, not really engaged in watching the traffic, just blindly relying on motorists being decent human beings. The pass itself didn't happen until after the road narrowed. The conflict was entirely predictable and although the riding was poor, any competent driver could see what was going to happen. The rider was only guilty of a lack of a sense of impending doom and failing to take a dominant position in the road.
If I were using the bus stop as a passing place, I would only do it if I knew what my exit strategy was. There is a bit of road near me where I will effectively leave the carriageway onto a painted area to let cars pass, but as I approach the end, I'm shoulder checking and making it clear I am intending to retake my place. Following cars, if any, can see I went out of my way for cars in front and are less inclined to try and bully past on the next narrow bit, only narrow because of a lot of metal boxes left lying at the side of the road.
So I wonder if Sussex Police when they ask for dash cam/door cam footage recording crimes do they refuse if the provider has no proof advising they are recording?
Peak compliance bullshit
How many of the following drivers also passed the cyclist too close?
Earlier drivers had also passed a little close, which I could see from the drivers seat but the camera didn't pick up. I am sure the following drivers were similarly guilty but I also didn't have footage of that.
I confirm that I understand that dashcam footage falls under the Category of CCTV and as the footage is taken in the public domain, the Domestic Purposes Exemption under the Data Protection Act/UKGDPR does not apply and therefore all users are Data Controllers in their own right. As such you should be informing the public that they are being filmed and should have some form of notification on your mode of transport as you have responsibilities under the Data Protection Act /UKGDPR
I reported on this ages ago. Sussex copied this dodge from Lancashire Constabulary word for word, after Lancashire had been running it for almost a year. The idea is that they can 'invalidate' the testimony in the report if they need to by showing that the statement was untrue. I declare in my reports that I display no such notification. Clearly, there is no legal basis for the requirement (you have to 'accept' the statement before the report is 'accepted'. Imagine the result if the requirement was genuine: shyster lawyers declaring that their client had no time to observe the notification so 'no case to answer'!
It's ridiculous for them to throw around GDPR when there's clear exemptions for the purposes of law enforcement. I'm no lawyer, but I don't believe they're correct about it being considered CCTV unless it's a commercial vehicle (e.g Taxi, company van etc) which will need a notice.
Yes, they've got it wrong, the GDPR doesn't even apply to domestic activities: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-t...
If you were being cynical, you might think they've put that statement there to discourage the submission of video reports.
Also from ICO (https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/domestic-cctv-systems/ ):
Data protection law says that people who capture images or audio recordings from outside their property boundary using a fixed camera, such as a CCTV camera or smart doorbell, should:
tell people that they are using recording equipment; etc
These rules only apply to fixed cameras. They do not cover roaming cameras, such as drones or dashboard cameras (dashcams).
The only guidance they have on dashcams is for organisations: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/sme-web-hub/whats-new/blogs/dashcams-and-uk-gdpr-what-small-businesses-need-to-know/
Yep, it all boils down to an 'expectation of privacy'. If someone is physically present and openly observing the same scene they are filming with a camera, in a public place, it's obvious to any 3rd party they have no expectation of privacy.
One reason organisations need further guidance for dashcam use, is an employee might expect an element of privacy when driving a works vehicle alone. It would be an invasion of privacy to record their conversations and video their actions without their knowlege or consent.
Even if GDPR applied to mobile cameras, recording a vehicle Registration plate is Not Personally Identity Information (PII) since it only identifies the vehicle.
PII is only relevant to the Registered Keeper of the vehicle, and the Police only get that from the DVLA so are the Data Controller, not the witness.
Completely bogus nonsense from Sussex Police. Obviously their Data Protection Officer should know that..
Not entirely bogus. There have been German rulings on plates as PII and the (dis)proportionality of dashcam filiming in the street. Since GDPR is a unifying framework its arguably a similar interpretation should hold true in the UK. Albeit the ICO guidance is pretty clear....
If you were being cynical, you might think they've put that statement there to discourage the submission of video reports
Yes, they're always aiming at that, but the main aim is to discredit the reporter for essentially lying in his statement. Today's version of the ancestral Lancashire Constabulary GDPR dodge is:
I confirm that I understand that dashcam footage falls under the Category of CCTV and as the footage is taken in the public domain, the Domestic Purposes Exemption under the Data Protection Act/UKGDPR does not apply and therefore all users are Data Controllers in their own right. As such you should be informing the public that they are being filmed and should have some form of notification on your mode of transport as you have responsibilities under the Data Protection Act /UKGDPR
You will see this is word-for-word the model for Sussex's declaration
Yes, the GDPR rubbish is just a dodge by suspect forces. I have never yet seen anyone in a vehicle or on a bike in North Lancashire with a camera notification
For once the author of the video actually was a witness!
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