Action Group Meeting - cycling deaths caused by lorries

Treadders - so good to hear from you! I have LOADS of issues re the investigation, and ask any other family of a dead cyclist and Im sure they will too. I wrote a 7 page doc challenging their conclusions.
A draft guide for familiies has been drawn up but apparently it encourages families to ask "too many" questions of the police they dont like it and want it changed, as they think it implies they dont do a good job. Dont get me started on this one....
The first thing you could do is make the Road Death Investigation Manual - a good document I have read very well - compulsory instead of advisory. I dont think many Senior Investigation Officers will have read it as well as I have. Becuase it is not mandatory, so it is nearly worthless if they dont wnat to do what it suggests. Im sure they have enough compulsory stuff to read.
Working Group - Investigation

Ktee,

I am but a simple office monkey but I can ask around with some of my colleagues about how this kind of policy document gets disseminated to police forces and what is done to encourage it's adoption.

I would suggest a possible approach in this area would be to lobby the Met Police Service to adopt the Road Deaths Investigation Manual, if they haven't already (I may be able to find out if they have or not). However, I do think there is a big difference between adoption at the corporate level and actually putting policy into practice at operational level.

A good route to putting pressure on the Met Police Service would be to approach the Met Police Authority, the chair of which is that well known cyclist, Boris Johnson. The MPA and Boris in particular have a lot of power over the MPS and I'm sure he would be interested if officers were ignoring published ACPO policy.

It is a crazy situation when victims families have to chase up the police to ensure a proper investigation is carried out, I really feel for you. I'll try to find out as much as I can.