Please report dangerous drivers to the police - Roadsafe. Report to plod, not just whinge here.

Appreciate thoughts on whether the response below is at all reasonable, before I pen something fairly blunt about cycle paths not removing obligations for safe driving. There's no real single incident, just a constant lack of space from every single one of their vehicles...

My grumble:

Dear sirs

Give cyclists more room. Your drivers consistently pass too close to cyclists, particularly on the 50mph stretch of the A814. This culminated in two separate incidents last Friday afternoon with your coaches passing within 18 inches of the edge of my handlebars at 50mph.

Might I remind you of your obligations under the highway code to give motorcyclists, cyclists and horse riders at least as much room as you would when overtaking a car (rule 163), to not overtake when you force another road user to take avoiding action (rule 167), and all the comments on vulnerable road users in 211-213.

Unless you can assure me that you have a process in place for taking action on this, I'll simply report the next occurence directly to the police under driving without due care, in line with recent successful prosecutions made in England in similar situations.

Plenty of cyclists now carry cheap video cameras to combat dangerous driving. Please don't force me to become one of them.

Yours sincerely

Their response:

I have noted your comments however, i can not take any action against drivers if i do not know who they are. Many of our vehicles now have cctv with external cameras so any issues of poor driving standards are recorded but i would require dates, times and registratiuon numbers to follow this up.

Might i suggest that you use the cycle path provided on this strech of road and such issues will not occur.

Regards

Alistair Wilson
Wilson's of Rhu Ltd.