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

You gotta love cab drivers!
YouTube - ‪V245LGK 84372 - Close Pass & Cut up‬‏

this made me lol, then worry a bit about the state of humanity, then lol a bit more.
I think you handled that very well, did you pursue the matter?

All the cabby had to do was not be a jack-off and everyones day would have been a lot happier, including his fair! Also his argument of "get back in your cycle lane" is substantially floored considering he himself likely spends a large proportion of his time on the road IN cycle lanes.

interesting idea...

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_ll9zicNYoA1qk9zm9o1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1307683388&Signature=JjVBDD4q0YVwnpr6fnp%2BfPpKWes%3D

after this mornings ride in i'd much rather have one that said 'YOU DRIVE LIKE A CUNT' in massive magenta letters. written on a brick. a magnetic brick if you must.

magentic brick?

they work!

and I don't care how they work...

FFS.. Bending bus overtakes me near Imp War museum only to immediately pull into a bus stop and literally run me off the road.

Why? WHY!

#obligatory "you fucking prick" shout through his window

Buses have CCTV all over them; we don't have to rely on it being our word against the driver's. Make a complaint. People have had good results from doing so and the more cyclists who do not let these incidents pass the more likely bus companies are to take cyclists' safety seriously. And that's not so easy to say.

You're right Will of course..

I admit surrendering to a "what's the point, won't make any difference, can't be arsed to complain.." attitude..

Which is sloppy.. Change is due.

I'll update people on the response to my letter to Sunlightlater on, suffice to say that I'm relatively happy with it. I do feel that it does go to show that complaining to the companys involved is worth it. Especially where they are a larger company, who feel they have a reputation to maintain.

Hurrah for giant faceless corporations!

this made me lol, then worry a bit about the state of humanity, then lol a bit more.
I think you handled that very well, did you pursue the matter?

All the cabby had to do was not be a jack-off and everyones day would have been a lot happier, including his fair! Also his argument of "get back in your cycle lane" is substantially floored considering he himself likely spends a large proportion of his time on the road IN cycle lanes.

That "professional driver" needs to be taken off the road. It's clear he was ready to use the torch as a weapon, the foul-mouthed micro-cocked thug.

I just used the Roadsafe London site for the first time to report a passenger carrying an infant on her lap in a little hatchback.

The driver's driving seemed a bit iffy as well.

Thanks for the link!
I just reported a white van driver who first was beeping along behind me on Queensbridge Road whilst he was driving on the right, yes the right side, of the road because of the traffic queue due to the temporary lights by the Richmond Rd crossing. I turned around and gave him a shrug of the shoulders and shouted 'what? I'm not doing anything wrong'. I then had a second run in with him on Richmond Rd and he came from Malvern Road and turning right onto Richmond Rd. He saw me, sped towards me on purpose whilst on his mobile phone! I shouted at him to get off his f-ing phone and pay attention whilst he passed me. Then he stopped and was swearing in his foul east end builders chavvy acceent and was probably gonna get out of his van and beat me up, (he probably doesn't care if he beats up a girl, or a child or puppy for that matter) so I just waited behind the van where he couldn't see me and he sped off, but I got the license plate number. I know this isn't the worst thing that has happened, but I think this shit shouldn't happen at all and it pisses me off. I have a right to be on the road as a cyclist and the right to not feel threatened and double dicks like that should be punished. I'm not expecting anything to come out of reporting it, but you never know...

Sorry, rant over...

As promised, I the e-mails that I got back from Sunlight, and my reply to it, and their response to that...

Dear MrDrem

Thank you for your comments. I apologise if I did not make myself clearer as I was not trying to negate our driver's responsibility in regard to stopping at the correct position, I was merely pointing out that you may have not been aware of the fact that a commercial vehicle of that size takes at least twice the stopping distance of that referred to in the Highway code, and in this case our driver would have required somewhere in the region of 46 metres, or twelve car lengths to bring his vehicle to a safe static position..

With regard to the condition of our lorries please feel reassured that we have to conform to very strict legal requirements regarding the servicing and monitoring of our fleet which ensures that they are all fit for purpose.

Regards

Jonathan

Jonathan Phippen
Group Logistics Manager
Mobile:

         Core Values 

Caring~Agile~Reliable~Efficient

From: MrDrem
Sent: 04 June 2011 11:36
To: Jonathan Phippen
Subject: RE: Incident with Sunlight Vehicle

Dear Mr Phippen,

Thank you for your reply, whilst most of it is encouraging, particularly with regards to the training plans that you have, I have to take slight issue with regards the suggestion that there is any mitigation for the jumping the lights.

The traffic lights at this point of the road are both at the side of the road, and in the centre of it, whils this cannot be seen on the video, a swift glance at Googles Street View service would have shown you this. The attached URL shows this http://bit.ly/jqcMC9. I am concerned that you are suggesting that your driver could not bring his lorry from a slow speed to a complete stop in a full solid amber to red cycle of traffic lights without jumping two stop lines. The speed limit on that road is 30 mph, and I can confirm that we were tarveling at well under that speed.

I am sure that you can understand my concern that if this is the case, and your lorries are not able to stop within this distance, that they may not be safe to be on the road at all.

Regards,

MrDrem

Subject: Incident with Sunlight Vehicle
Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 10:12:42 +0100
From: Jonathan Phippen
To: MrDrem
CC:

Dear MrDrem

Thank you very much for drawing to our attention the incident involving one of our commercial vehicles.

I have studied the recording you made of the incident and can only apologise for the language which our driver used when approached by yourself. He was in the wrong for doing this and should not have positioned his vehicle where he did, over both white stop lines, but the size and weight of his vehicle would have had a slight mitigation in this case whilst having to pull up at the traffic lights which had been obscured by the parked lorry.

We have spoken to the driver's Transport Manager, and I personally have arranged to meet all the Transport Managers at the offending site in the third week of June to reiterate our Group's view of respecting other road users and cyclists in particular. We have recently joined "Brake" to help us become more aware of road safety and to drive our own improvements as it is our aim to be the leader within our industry,but it will take some time to alter attitudes and responses which have been in place for too long.

To this end I am writing the Group's Driver CPC training schedule for 2012 in which I have included a ten minute session on how to drive safely in the vicinity of cyclists which reflects both the highlights given by the highway code, and our own Group's desire to promote road safety into our fleet, especially in this decade of road safety.

I trust that from our response to your complaint and from the ongoing driver training already planned you can see how seriously we take our commitment to the safety of other road users and cyclists in particular. In this case we have not met our normal standards, which I regret, and we will continue to strive to get the message across to all of our 1200 drivers until everyone drives in a fashion which would meet your approval.

With regards

Jonathan

Jonathan Phippen
Group Logistics Manager

when I see people driving whilst on the phone or playing with sat navs, I turn into a self made vigilante. I will do anything in my power to ruin their day. Plods have powers handed to them on a plate to deal with them, including potentially lucrative on the spot fines to be collected, yet they do fuck all about it.

Today whilst driving stuff to the tip was sat in a mini que of traffic turning left, there is no bike lane, only a pile of parked cars, edging up to where I can make it into the junction a chavvy unit on an argo's bike flies up the inside twatting the parked cars mirror backwards with his bars then meanders off thru the rest of the traffic into oncoming traffic (passed thru a gap) and nearly gets cleaned out by an artic doing 30+
either his brain cells were maxxed out with all the things happening before him, or he was just a C-Unit, or more likely pissed, it was about 6pm lol.

Thanks for the link!
IThen he stopped and was swearing in his foul east end builders chavvy acceent and

Oh my God, how awful for you. Perhaps an elocution lesson would help him drive more responsibly.

Oh my God, how awful for you. Perhaps an elocution lesson would help him drive more responsibly.

Maybe I should have described him as "typical road rage white van driver' instead, my apologies!

Was cycling down Holloway road this evening, towards Angel, in the bus lane which was clear in front of me when all of a sudden a white van driver pulls out of the right lane, across me without looking or indicating and at speed. Fortunately I was in the centre of the lane so could pull to the left up into a side street (which luckily was there otherwise it would have been me+curb+van=face smeared along the pavement).

Jcgarcia was in front of the van and heard my yelling so stopped him and asked what he thought he was doing, by which point I had walked along the pavement to knock on his window to ask if he saw me - once again I was completely disregarded as an actual human being...grr!

Got his number plate and now trying to work out the best way of going about reporting this imbecile.

glad you're not hurt, Betty.
https://secure.met.police.uk/roadsafelondon/
did it have anything written on the side of the van? Try googling the numberplate.

What can us rural cyclists do about drivers who pass at an inch away at about 60? If a camera is the answer where do you point it - backwards?

take the lane a bit more, near the centre.

It'll encourage them to overtake you properly, and when they don't, you still have room to manoverve away from the offending vehicles.

+1 go slap bang in the middle -

happened this morning, small van tooting away even as he approached the stop line I was waiting at! After lights went green, he continued hooting away behind me..... from nowhere an inner voice suddenly said what would Wiganwill do in this situation - bingo, acknowledged the driver, smiled and continued and as if I had done an Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness version of course) thought control process, he overtook at a safe distance and everyone lived happily ever after.

+1 ride at least in the ruts in the road, if not even more centrally, then when you hear they have slowed down or are only overtaking when they actually have space, move back towards pavement a bit.
when driving I get loads of people just about run into the back of me as I tend to give cyclists out on fast roads a lot more berth (so they don't get sucked in behind my wagon), and many cars still just about scrape them.

+1 ride at least in the ruts in the road, if not even more centrally, then when you notice that they have slowed down or are only overtaking when they actually have space, stay on your line

fixed.

Try and look back more often, never rely on your ears.

and ***don't ***move back, stay on your line, moving back give them more room, and thus they may feel the need to take that room you've gave up.

as other has said, it based on your risk assessment of certain senario, if there's a narrow road that's very long and there's a couple of car behind you, sometime it's okay to move out a bit to let the car pass safety, after all it's all about working with the traffic.

On country roads early in the morning most drivers aren't expecting to stop within the distance they can see. If they come around a bend and find me in the middle of thelane at a 50mph differential..... I currently position myself about half way between kerb and centre of the lane - feels like I have some room to move if I have to but at least once a week I get some cnut who howls past so I nearly shit myself.