CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!

Close Passes with Video Evidence

(56 posts)
  • Started 4 years ago by EdinburghCycleCam
  • Latest reply from Arellcat

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12

  1. chdot
    Admin

    There may be another thread where this is relevant

    “

    Freedom of Information Response Our reference: FOI 23-0282

    Responded to: 21 February 2023

    Your recent request for information is replicated below, together with our response.
    The reason why the implementation of the dash cam portal has been delayed and the timescale for it becoming operational please.

    I believe funding has been provided by the Scottish Government and that Police Scotland is one of only four forces in the UK not to currently have this facility, which can save lives

    In response to your request, a grant from Transport Scotland was received by Police Scotland to assist in the implementation of a pilot for a National Safety Dash-Cam Portal (NDSP). The funding did not cover the full implementation costs for the pilot and a significant investment in resources and funding was required from Police Scotland.

    Since the approval of the grant, the resource and funding picture within Police Scotland has changed significantly and this has impacted on numerous areas of Policing, including the NDSP project. Due to these challenges, all projects are being reviewed and prioritised by the Force Executive. Once this review has been completed, a revised timetable for implementation of the NDSP will be possible.

    If you require any further assistance please contact us quoting the reference above.
    You can request a review of this response within the next 40 working days by email or by letter (Information Management - FOI, Police Scotland, Clyde Gateway, 2 French Street, Dalmarnock, G40 4EH). Requests must include the reason for your dissatisfaction.

    If you remain dissatisfied following our review response, you can appeal to the Office of the Scottish Information Commissioner (OSIC) within 6 months - online, by email or by letter (OSIC, Kinburn Castle, Doubledykes Road, St Andrews, KY16 9DS).
    Following an OSIC appeal, you can appeal to the Court of Session on a point of law only. This response will be added to our Disclosure Log in seven days' time.

    “

    https://twitter.com/ianbarker900/status/1628066521019719680

    Posted 1 year ago #

  2. Yodhrin
    Member

    So they're holding it hostage to try and extract more funding from the government, as suspected. It's been pointed out elsewhere that it certainly costs the police a fair amount of money to process submissions individually as they are now and the only reason it isn't an issue for them is the low number of submissions - perhaps it's time for an organised campaign of malicious compliance? Force them to implement the portal because to do otherwise would cost them too much money.

    Posted 1 year ago #

  3. Murun Buchstansangur
    Member

    “Delays to the introduction of an online road safety reporting portal are putting cyclists in Scotland "at risk", says Cycling UK - after Police Scotland took over a year to report an alleged hit-and-incident which left a rider "unable to sit down for a week", leading to the case being dismissed.”

    https://road.cc/content/news/call-scottish-safety-portal-would-deliver-justice-299731

    Posted 1 year ago #

  4. Murun Buchstansangur
    Member

    https://twitter.com/EdCycleHome/status/1643675021582245898

    “ Police just confirming that the close pass below wouldn't be against the law, since everyone was "in their own lanes"!!

    So if you are cycling, DO NOT use
    @CllrScottArthur
    's painted cycle lanes for your own sake! I certainly won't be anymore!”

    Tweeter seems to have been blocked by Cringer Arthur in response.

    Posted 1 year ago #

  5. Frenchy
    Member

    A wee birdie described Police Scotland's dashcam portal pilot as "canned" to me today.

    If I understood correctly, they are planning to include it in a more general online crime reporting project. But I will not be holding my breath.

    Posted 1 year ago #

  6. Yodhrin
    Member

    Wait I thought they were given earmarked funding specifically to run it, are they going to return that then?

    Posted 1 year ago #

  7. neddie
    Member

    Meanwhile the streets are getting more and more lawless. Rampant speeding and phone use at the wheel. Add in blatant blocking junctions & crossings with red light jumping

    Posted 1 year ago #

  8. Morningsider
    Member

    @Frenchy - ah, yes. The "Digital Evidence Sharing Capability" (DESC). This is very much NOT the National Dashcam Safety Portal. You cannot freely submit video evidence using DESC. You have to report an offence to the police the traditional way and they can choose to ask that you submit video evidence using the DESC portal.

    Posted 1 year ago #

  9. chdot
    Admin

    “

    Police Scotland should be “red faced” at being among the last forces in the UK to introduce a system for submitting dashcam footage of traffic accidents, active travel minister Patrick Harvie has said.

    The minister responsible for walking and cycling north of the Border spoke of his “great frustration” at the delay to the launch of the national dashcam safety portal, and he pledged to continue to “rattle the cage” with Police Scotland.

    “

    https://web.archive.org/web/20231029112947/https://www.scotsman.com/news/transport/patrick-harvie-says-police-scotland-should-be-red-faced-over-failure-to-introduce-dashcam-scheme-4386893

    Posted 1 year ago #

  10. Arellcat
    Moderator

    Wikipedia tells me the Scotland Police Authority answers to the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs, and the SPA holds Police Scotland to account. I think if I were Patrick Harvie I would be speaking with Angela Constance rather than trying to get Police Scotland to play ball directly, since it sounds like PS has its own agenda already decided.

    If DESC is basically a system to let you upload footage directly, instead of having police come to your house to view and perhaps take away footage, and not a system to upload footage as and when the need arises, how do the other police forces who do this already deal with what is presumably a very high work rate to analyse and classify each video file submitted? Is it a resourcing problem in PS or a computing problem?

    Posted 1 year ago #

  11. Yodhrin
    Member

    It's a "we want more funding in general so we're going to frustrate your policy agenda until we get it, who cares how many road lice die in the meantime" problem IMO.

    Posted 1 year ago #

  12. acsimpson
    Member

    @Yodhrin, It definitely looks like an institutianlised problem to me too.

    Posted 1 year ago #

  13. Frenchy
    Member

    Cycling UK Scotland confirming that the Dashcam portal pilot has been canned: https://www.cyclinguk.org/press-release/scotlands-roads-less-safe-due-police-scotland-inaction-says-cycling-uk

    Posted 1 year ago #

  14. Yodhrin
    Member

    Confirmation, were it necessary, that Police Scotland don't give a hoot about road crime. Their touted "alternative" that won't even be ready until 2025 assuming it's on time isn't anything of the sort, and amounts to little more than them accepting digital files as part of their standard process rather than demanding you burn them a DVD or USB stick - they'll still want in-person statements and interviews and will still push the resulting case through the normal slow-as-molasses channels.

    What I don't understand is why the Scottish Government are just rolling over. Literally just effing tell them to do it. Don't encourage, don't suggest, don't cajole, *instruct*.

    Posted 1 year ago #

  15. fimm
    Member

    What I don't understand is why the Scottish Government are just rolling over. Literally just effing tell them to do it. Don't encourage, don't suggest, don't cajole, *instruct*.

    Isn't that because they can't? In the same way that Suella Braverman can't instruct the Metropolitan Police how to police a demonstration?

    Posted 1 year ago #

  16. Dave
    Member

    They could do it in practice by squeezing their budget but making an extra ringfenced pot available to make up the difference, subject to roads policing transformation?

    Posted 1 year ago #

  17. ejstubbs
    Member

    My understanding is that there is an evidential issue in Scotland to do with corroboration: you can't be prosecuted on evidence from a single source, or something like that. A single piece of video evidence of a road traffic offence e.g. from a dashcam therefore needs some kind of corroboration before the offence can be prosecuted. It sounds as if the requirement to have the video backed up by a statement is a bit of a weaselly way to get around the corroboration requirement. Someone submitting dashcam footage of a traffic offence is hardly likely to say that something different happened in their statement, especially since it's their dashcam footage, which they can study in detail at their leisure to make sure that their statement matches the video. Bottom line: it feels to me like it's time that Scottish law did some catching up with modern technology. In which regard: how does corroboration work with speed cameras?

    (I'm aware that the corroboration rule has recently been amended wrt rape cases but on the face of it that seems to be a change in what can be accepted as corroborating evidence, rather than a change in the corroboration rule itself, which is what some media reports seemed to be suggesting that it was.)

    Posted 1 year ago #

  18. Yodhrin
    Member

    Does a statement *need* to be taken in person rather than submitted along with the video evidence? Can the government not request the Advocate General issue guidance that they can be submitted in writing by email, and that the video can then be considered corroboration of the victim's witness statement? They can apparently tell police they don't have to arrest people for possession of drugs the law says are illegal, so they clearly have a fair bit of latitude. Could the police not amend their order of operations such that they accept dashcam footage and submit it for processing, then only require statements to be given if they send a NIP? Could they take statements over the phone?

    Even if there is a genuine roadblock(aha) in corroboration - and frankly given Police Scotland's general attitude any excuses they come out with are suspect as far as I'm concerned - there should be a way to get this done *if the people in charge had the will*. They could knock together a "road violence safety bill" in a couple of weeks that could address any legal quibbles and place a legal duty on the police to operate the system, if they actually wanted to.

    Posted 1 year ago #

  19. Arellcat
    Moderator

    Cycling UK Scotland confirming that the Dashcam portal pilot has been canned

    We are extremely disappointed that Police Scotland has gone back on its commitment to develop and roll out the National Dashcam Safety Portal across Scotland as a vital road safety tool.

    The technology is there, so it’s hard to understand why Police Scotland has refused to adopt it, when the case for its introduction is overwhelming: it will save them time and money, is widely supported by the public and road user groups and is used successfully everywhere else in Great Britain.

    This to me implies that someone somewhere is being economical with the truth. All we know is that PS has decided that the NDSP is "not the optimum route". But we're still not being told why, and uncovering the 'why' of things is what the FOI regs are for.

    Posted 1 year ago #

  20. Dave
    Member

    The thing is that we don't really need the fully automatic system they have in England & Wales. Imagine you could submit the video, they triage it and only if they actively think it's worth prosecuting do you get a notification inviting you to arrange an officer visit, statement, and so on and so forth. That would be 90% of the battle.

    Posted 1 year ago #

  21. Arellcat
    Moderator

    Hence my earlier question about how other police forces do that triage. The problem seems to me, like with self-driving cars, that human unconscious bias creeps in when teaching or programming such an autonomous or automatic system, and so that triage might favour one mode of travel over another.

    Posted 1 year ago #

  22. Yodhrin
    Member

    @Arellcat It's not really "autonomous" in that way, a human being always looks at the video and decides the appropriate action even with the NDSP system down south. The forces that are doing well appear to be the ones who have a specialist group of a handful of civvies with actual training on road traffic law who handle the "triage" and who's decisions will be rubber-stamped by an officer, or which handle the videos in their dedicated traffic unit.

    The benefit of that system is for the user/victim, since you simply go to the website, upload the video with your statement on what happened and other info, then it gets fired directly to people who(ostensibly) know what they're talking about and actually do something with it, often just directly issuing points & a fine using the police's summary powers. As opposed to reporting like any other crime, getting interviewed(if they can be bothered) by a couple of local plods who's view of traffic crime won't be that different from a typical motorist, and then(if you're lucky) they will then go and gather witness statements and actually pass on to the PF before the 2 week window runs out. More likely if they do anything at all it will just be "we had a word, and they know they were a very naughty boy and promised not to do it again".

    Posted 1 year ago #

  23. Tulyar
    Member

    Coming late to this, but I do note @ejstubbs correctly notes that in Scotland we have Roman Law rather than Common Law, and so a slightly different process may well apply to how a case is progressed

    From a presentation to the weekly ActiveTravelCaf sessions a detail was noted that having an officer at a desk triaging material delivered 20 times more TOR, to take forward for FPN or court appearances, than a patrolling officer might achieve in a single shift

    One advantage of doing this at a desk is that officers not available for patrolling (typically over 5% are 'sick' & stood down) can sit in a comfortable office but be very productive

    Our challenge is to get the processing portal accessible and working efficiently

    I'd also highlight a further issue which has affected me, after a hit & run in June 2022. Incident was on Bridge Street Glasgow at 16.25, and I had an electric bus driving in the furthest lane to the right. At a rough guess there were at least 10 First Glasgow Buses with quality CCTV cameras that would have images of the car involved but the only image I got to see was at 16.32 from the MvGills bus that passed the scene 7 minutes after the crash. The mess of poor communications meant all the First Glasgow images were lost

    Bus camera images might also show how badly laid out the bus stop cycle lanes are, or other details to reduce road risks, as well as capturing any incident that affects a rider or pedestrian

    Posted 9 months ago #

  24. chdot
    Admin

    Instructive bit of video (includes rule 2 language!) wholly in line with thread title

    “

    Clear visibility, vehicles ahead safely overtaken, then pull in before central reservation ONE impatient driver hasn't seen their actions nor the island. Could have been bad ( what colour is adrenalin ? :-) ) Cyclists hitting/hopping deep pothole

    “

    https://twitter.com/martynbolt/status/1758971500344832326?

    Comments mix of blame for driver and cyclists

    Posted 9 months ago #

  25. neddie
    Member

    Seems like the polis can set up a video reporting portal quickly enough for bonfire night violence. So why can’t they do it for systemic road violence?

    https://mipp.police.uk/operation/SCOT24S16-PO1

    Posted 1 week ago #

  26. Arellcat
    Moderator

    Probably because fireworks and associated pyrotechnic articles are dangerous, but cars somehow aren't, or because it's not every day (I assume) that neds throw bricks and petrol bombs and fireworks at police, so the resource to manage video evidence is manageable, unlike the resource needed to manage the likely mass influx of footage of drivers.

    Worth doing a FOI request for it though.

    Posted 1 week ago #

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